Heat in the Skin

I got a bit of sunburn today, rolling around in my 1997 convertible, top down, radio up, DMV waiting to get duplicate titles on the sailboat and trailer I've owned for eleven years and sold tonight. I remember my best friend's father writing out a bill of sale on a slip of paper, selling Puffer to me for a dollar and a tow away on a brand- new trailer my brand- new husband and I bought. We brought her home from Iowa, worrying over every bump on I-29 until she rested safely in Kansas City. I sailed her, and I taught my husband and daughter to sell her. I was so proud to call her mine, to be a person who learned to sail and then actually kept doing it.

We always said we'd sell when we went a season without raising the mast, and last summer was it.

He travels a lot. The slip and trailer storage is expensive. We're ready for something easier.

My daughter was sad as we watched Puffer's new owner haul her away, still bearing the stickers of my lake and the Iowan lake I grew up on. She's headed to Long Island Sound. May she have a good life. She was made the year I was born. I like to think we both have a lot left in us.

Tonight I press my cheek to the patch of skin on my arm where I missed with sunscreen and feel the heat of forty summers on my skin. My body reacts to the sunlight, always. Just like Puffer.

I wonder how I'll get on the water next, but I have no doubt I will. I 'm happiest on the water, not in it or near it, but floating upon it, where the sun can still kiss my skin. Where I'll feel the heat of forty more summers yet.