Pot o'
Gold
© 2014 Tor Pinney - All Rights Reserved
A heavenly
birthday present
Dawn on the morning of my
40th birthday, single-handing 300 miles offshore; I'd just
wrapped up an ambitious, 5-year work stint that earned me
the sailboat of my dreams and a kitty to take her cruising.
Now Sparrow and I were beginning a 6-year voyage that
would eventually carry us 30,000 nautical miles and halfway
around the world. I stepped into the cockpit, inhaled a deep
draught of pure ocean air, and thought "This is what they
mean by 'life begins at 40!'"
Just then I lifted my
eyes and there, arced across our course line not a mile
ahead, was a magnificent rainbow, dense and rich, splashing
every nuance of the spectrum across the mottled sky. It hung
there, neither moving nor dissipating as we drew closer. To
port where one end plunged into the sea (the other was lost
in mist), I was astonished to see the water, churned and
frothed by wind and waves, glowing and pulsing a great,
radiant corona of pure gold. One hundred thousand miles I
had sailed by then and had never seen anything like it.
Gold! I'd always assumed it was a metaphor, but now I
understood. Sailors of old had seen the same thing, and from
their literal description came the fanciful promise:
There's a pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow.
That rainbow held even as
we sailed beneath it, arching right over the masthead, a
heavenly gateway to whatever lay ahead. "Happy birthday,
skipper," it seemed to say. "Here's to your new life, your
true pot of gold."
~ end ~
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