Wind in my Sails

I am in Connecticut visiting my family.  My aunt has pretty bad breast cancer and she just got done with a really aggressive form of chemo.  She is really sick.  She doesn't have any hair.  I have never been around a cancer patient like this.  It makes me so afraid.

My cousins were here, though (they are my age) and it was great to be around the whole family.  It's so rare to have "everyone together" when you grow up, I always think about people as part of the unit they were with when I was a child.  I love it when it all comes back together.

My uncle recently bought a sailboat off of craigslist.  He doesn't know how to sail very well but we still went out twice this past weekend on the Thames river.  He taught me to sail and now I am totally in love with sailing.  There is magic in the power of wind blowing you across the water- trying to harness it just enough to go where you intend to go but recognizing that you really don't have any control at all.  That wind can die down just as fast as it can pick up.  It falls into my mantra that I've been thinking a lot about in the past few months: "Don't push the river, it flows."  Also, the energy conservation geek in me gets totally high off of the fact that the boat is powered on nothing but wind- way cool.  On one tack I caught the wind and the boat leaned 30 degrees!  (that is a lot)

One hand on the tiller and one hand on the jib line tacking like a motherfucking professional

I was supposed to catch the train back to NYC this afternoon but a huge thunderstorm knocked out the electricity to the Amtrak trains running between Boston and NYC.  I am secretly glad to stay, even though the cousins and their friends are gone now.  I really love how healing it can be to be in a "grownup" household.