A few years ago I moved from Atlanta to Southern California, and onto Windrunner, my Catalina 42, my home, the cocoon for me and my daughter for most of the first year here. The boat and the lifestyle have been just what was needed, and it has been a gift to live this life in this place, aboard this boat; to heal and grow and come back into balance.

But there was also a question in my mind about something crucial to a happy, full life - a question summed up well in a stanza from a U2 song released at the time. It spoke perfectly to where I was, and to one big question I needed to know the answer to, as I reset my life and began to look forward. To paraphrase U2's song "California"

There we sail into the shiny sea
The weight that drags my heart down
That's what took me where I need to be
Which is here, Catalina,
watching the sunset cry like a baby.
California, at the dawn I thought would never come.
But it did, like it always does.
And all I need to know is,
there is no end to love...

~~

Amazingly, while re-discovering myself, while bonding even deeper than before with my daughter, I also found that there is absolutely no end to love - when you are lucky enough to find the right person to love and be loved by. I found someone I'd always loved and appreciated as a friend, could be so very much more.

But if life were always simple... I found this wonderful love while living aboard a sailboat on the ocean and she lived 2200 miles away and four hours from the ocean. Luckily, when we started as a couple, we decided to ignore that reality, and live fully in the times that we did have - about one week/month for the last 15 months. And we kept living our time together like that until the complex question of "place" became a simple answer.

The "person or place" question is one that brings a lot of strong answers from people, particularly people who live on and love the ocean - many can't ever imagine giving it up for any reason. But to me, like much else in life, it depends...

It depends on who the person is.

And that brings me to my next paraphrasing. The right person is the one who makes the question of person or place disappear, makes the decision an easy one, makes it feel like it isn't really a decision at all. For me, the right person looks and feels like these paraphrased lines from Prartho Sereno:

I have so much water
within me
so many wild winds
and more
than enough salt.

Man of the sea
I will be your ocean.

~~

The right person is an ocean to a sailor (or a forest to a person of the woods, or a mountain to a climber, etc), and she has become that to me. My ocean.

So, my Windrunner is for sale. And I will move back to Atlanta as close to Michelle as I can be, and we will sail into uncharted waters together, and see what we can become. I'm betting on a long horizon; the kind with a sunset that seems to last forever, until the sky turns full of stars to wonder at, rejoice in, and navigate by until the sun comes 'round again.

I remain a very lucky man; one of the few who has no trade-off to make, but rather feels like I have a chance to have it all. It is an adventure I can't wait to begin with her.

Bon voyage to everyone, no matter what your journey.

Tom