Recently out of college and just getting started as a Financial Advisor my company sent me off for a week of training and corporate reprogramming with the other newbies from around the country. Participating in something that felt like a group therapy session, I was asked to draw a single image that best represented me and present it to the group. Not yet 22, on my first adult trip outside of my home state, in between who I was and who I would become, I drew a sailboat.

Perplexed, my new and much older associates peppered me with questions. Do you own a boat? Of course not. Do you like to sail? I dunno. Have you even been on a boat? Not that I can recall. I suppose if I had drawn a flower or a smiley face that would have settled better with their estimations of who I was, a naive young woman. How could a sailboat possibly sum up the likes of me, someone who had traveled nowhere and experienced nothing? As instinctively as I took pencil to paper I knew my little boat represented freedom, something that would come to define me. It was a vision of my future.

A year later I would take my first boat ride around the Statue of Liberty, another iconic symbol that all things are possible, and past the then standing Twin Towers. Not long after I would have my first cruise to the aqua green waters of the Bahamas where I was introduced to motion sickness and formed a lasting friendship with dramamine. At age 25 I chartered my first boat down the Intercoastal waterways of South Florida, past the opulent mansions and mega yachts of the rich and famous. There would be a whole series of boats, vessels, lakes, rivers and oceans that would follow, floating me down the mighty Mississippi, through a German Village in Michigan, past the Hoover Dam, down to the tropical waters of island chains, past glowing skylines, through the everglades, and even under water, skimming the ocean floor alongside giant schools of tropical fish. Every trip served as a confirmation of my destiny, another checkmark on my to-do list.

On our honeymoon my new husband and I arranged for a sailboat to take us out on the warm calm waters of the Golf. The ever present sound of the wind over the ocean, the sunlight refracting in a million points of light on the water, the waves lapping gently at the boat, and the white sail gleaming brightly above us made for something truly amazing. Read More at Florida Girl Meets the Midwest...

Last update: 16-09-2009 07:59

Published in : Chic Blog, General

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