I spent the night in the wine cellar/guest room in the Main House. I slept late as my room had no windows and thus gauging time was difficult. I slept later than I anticipated and expected that when I returned to the infirmary. Of course, the whole crowd was waiting for me when I returned. They told me about CQ's late night hijinx in the shower, and then we all agreed to go to a local place, Double Ds (no joke) for breakfast.

A detail I forgot:

The day before when the Model was furious with the Tough Guy for his drunkenness, CQ told him, "The reason why I like you is you make the rest of us look good." CQ then proceed to spend the next two days proving himself wrong.

I knew we were in trouble when CQ ordered a beer with breakfast.

We walked back to the cabin, and we all decided to head down the lake. Tough Guy went out in a kyak on his own, and I decided I wanted to go out on the water by myself. I was scared, but I figured the worst case scenario was that I would fall in the water and have to swim to shore in freezing water dragging a light weight kayak.

Part of my fear comes from all those horrible sailing classes I had to take as a child. I love the water, but I hate sailing because of my father. He had this whole Earnest Hemingway Old Man in the Sea fantasy. Which would have been fine if he had confined his fantasy to himself and not felt the need to force the entire family to live out his dream. We all had to learn to sail, which ended up terrifying me.

Hard to imagine? Let me explain.

I learned to sail on Martha's Vineyard. Learned not being the appropriately word more like traumatized into functionality. My Dad scheduled himself and my mother for adult lessons and myself, with all children I didn't know, for a group lesson.

Still I would have been fine. If part of lesson hadn't involved capsizing. We were sailing one or two person Selfins, very small light weight sail boats intended to sail for an hour or two during good weather. At one point we were to go out on our own, capsize the boat, and stand on the rudder to right the boat. I followed the instructions. But the boat refused to right itself. I didn't weigh enough. I jumped on the rudder as I was told, nope. There was no way. The boat remained capsized.

And thus fear begins. I was worried the boat would flip, I wouldn't be able to right it, and I would be swept out to sea. But instead of just saying "Ok would you like tennis or swimming lessons instead," I spent the next few years forced to participate in what essentially I thought a very cruel form of torture on my vacation.

And thus we face again the fall out of my parents "just do it" approach to my fear.

Permanent trauma. I've been with therapists longer than I've been with any of my serious boyfriends.

Now to be clear, I loved sailing on a boat with other people. My favorite was the last day of class when as a treat we would be all jump on a catamaran and race around. I love motor boats too. I just don't want to be alone on a sail boat.

But I hadn't been alone on a boat since those sailing classes.

The Model helped me pull the boat out in the water. I discovered how easy it was and took off. My friends on shore wondered where I had gone. I paddled up and down the river only sad that finally, our last day, it felt like a vacation and wishing I had more time to paddled around the lake.