Water In My Blood

I seem to gravitate towards water. It must be in my blood. It intrigues me to think that on some branch of the family tree there is distance ancestor who plied the decks of a profitable pirate vessel. I like the idea of a rogue or black sheep in the family, someone else who has taken a different path. My grandfather has traced our family tree back to the year 1747 complete with names and dates but I'd like to know what these people did. Someone, somewhere in all those generations had to be a seafaring man. Swashbuckling, halyard swinging, bedroom eyes kind of pirate sounds too Johnny Depp but finding out that great great great great great grandfather was actually a fish monger who had his own skiff just doesn't fulfil the fantasy.

It's like being asked what animal would you like to come back as, nobody says a slug or warthog so why can't I imagine a Blackbeard type of character.

Leaving the suburban life behind at the age of 6 we moved to a different country and a different life. That sentence leads you to believe that we moved to a 3^rd world or war torn country but really we just moved to Canada.

Returning to the small town where dad met mom and plans to continue being his own boss,  he had owned a gas station in Watertown, his options were to purchase the local zoo or a restaurant. If I had been given a vote I would have grown up surrounded by monkeys,elephants and ostriches. Circumstance dealt him the restaurant with 12 acres, house and a stream which run down one side of the entire property

Dad must have a bit of the H2O gene in him as well since one of the first things he did was to dam that little stream ( you could do things like that back in the 60's) and create a pond.

I perfected the shallow dive after surfacing time after time with my bathing suit bottom located around my knees full of mud. I learned to balance using a couple of boards nailed together to act as a raft. I become a daredevil when I rode one of the little boats over the dam during a sudden rainstorm.

I took swimming lessons for ever and become a life guard. The first house I bought had a stream running through the property, the second house was across the road from a lake. The first big contract for my catering business was with a yacht club. I've gone on 2 cruises, by myself. According to my date of entering this world, March 22, the astrological chart has deemed me with the sign of the Ram. Had I been born March 21, I would have been a Pisces, the fish. I obviously was a day late.

The night that dad introduced me to Mike “the sailor” my fate was sealed.