Diving In [#2]

At some point, we had to shut up about it already. So much conversation. So many words. In our defense, there were lots of words to be had and the universe never really seemed to support much more than talk. So that’s what we did. Yack yack yack.

But then, some things changed:

John’s mom passed away unexpectedly at Christmas; Wyatt’s school became a place where his potentially dangerous decisions were starting to become commonplace; John’s work offered new possibilities for remote transitions. The universe had changed its mind about our Boat Dream — maybe it, too, was tired of the chatter, ready for action.

“If you wanna go, and you wanna take your kids, now’s the time,” seemed like a pretty clear message. “Put up or shut up.”

So we listened. Then we panicked a little. And then we said yes.

Committing to the Boat Dream was big. For me, it was action toward a childhood dream. For John and me together, it was action toward a goal and dream we’d shared for every one of our 20 years together. For the boys, it was the promise of worldwide adventure that, until now, had only been big talk from their middle-aged, boring, run-of-the-mill parents.

It’s a surreal moment when a dream starts to offer the promise of reality.

We still had months of work ahead of us and knew we were at the mercy of fate and luck before we’d ever be able to actually pull it off, but the Boat Dream was officially not-just-a-dream — it had momentum behind it and felt very much alive.

Like all new life, the Boat Dream arrived hungry.

And needy. And it was not much for all-night sleeping. As it turns out, talking about dreams is pretty easy — no wonder we’d become champs at it. But turning a dream into reality? Holy balls. That is some serious business. You’d think that two decades of idle talk and boat books and route research and armchair catamaran shopping would have really done more to prepare us.

It did not.

Fortunately, there’s an adrenaline rush that arrives in the thick of dream-rearing.

It’s undoubtedly how we survived the 2 a.m. panic attacks, the sadness of the goodbyes we remembered to say, and the guilt over those we ran out of time time for. We’ve been in go-mode from Day 1 of “let’s do this” and we haven’t stopped to breathe since.

On May 7th, we stood on the boat that, as my sister put it, “could literally be the Boat Dream Boat.” It’s nothing short of wild to finally be here and not a shred of that realization is lost on us.