Her body and bones

Hands closing over cold ribs, I lay her frame on the rotting boards beneath a drizzling sky. A long-cloistered body unfolds in front of me. She is naked, undone, jagged and stiff in a freezing barn. I smile at the rawness of the day, the vulnerable strips of wood tipped with metal, corrosion clinging to hardware, varnish chipping off delaminating edges. She is a mess. And yet she is mine. 

Mine! (as much as anything can actually be a possession)

I haven’t bought a boat since I was 24 years old. And then it was a partnership, parentship, a ship that would teach me about relating to another human I would spend glorious years with at arms length, both meanings so true, so close and so far. 

This boat is solely mine. A soulful project waiting to work with me as much as I work with her. 

(Can a kayak be a she? I've decided yes; there is no minimum length requirement for the tradition of treating boats as feminine entities.) 

I can feel her tough lines burst through me. She is roughed up at the edges, polish worn to faded yellow and splintering cracks, once-solid metal pieces rotted away. Pieces that may not be replaceable. And she is beautiful. I imagine adventures had and to come. I wonder if she imagined me into buying her from the silver-haired lady in Olympia who told me stories of remote islands and thin sails and the hull stuffed full of food and endless laughter ricocheting over soft waves. 

I piece together the frame and turn the pliable shell over and over, wondering how these bones will fit in the body. Wondering how my body will fit in these bones, the muscles of my arms dipping paddles into the cold clear blue.

Someday. 

But today, I shift the frame on the boards of the barn and realize that yes, I will need to read the directions. And yes, I can do this by myself. And yes, this is exactly what I need. My boat, my project, my dreams. With that solid foundation, the screws set tight, the rudder in place, I can invite others into my small floating world. We can share dreams and paddles and navigate whirlpools, but I want to know her bones and body first. I want to know the how and why and know that I can float on my own. 

And I do. And I am. And she has found me to put her back together.