Every time I go down to New York, I make a point of catching up with my best friend from kindergarten. We met on the first day of school as five-year olds, and were pretty much inseparable for our entire childhoods. We lead very different lives now (she still lives just 30 minutes away from the house she grew up in, married with a three-year old), but I'm always amazed how every time we get together, we never seem to run out of things to talk about. You'd think after being friends for 85% of our lives, we'd already have talked about everything there is to talk about! Yet, as with all great friends, we continue to enjoy each other's company immensely, after all these years.
My friend has always been at one with the ocean, the type of girl who LOVES boats and being on the water. When she was growing up, her family owned a boat, named for her, where they spent a lot of time as young children. When my friend got married and had her child, her father gave them that boat. Yet, after 30 years, the boat was starting to show its age, and finally it was time to get a new boat, which they got this past spring. Hence, my friend was very excited to be able to take me out on the new boat (and I was very keen as well to get to see it!)
We met at her house and then went out to the docks, where a tender took us out to the boat. Unfortunately, as we'd had to wake the three-year old from her nap, the kid was very upset with us, and when we got out to the boat, started sobbing uncontrollably. The joys of a three-year old, I suppose, who I hear come by their name "three-nagers" quite honestly. Hence, we had to spend about our first 30 minutes out on the boat with a wailing child, although my friend assured me, "When she's better, she's better, so don't worry, this will all stop any moment."
Indeed, after refusing hugs, snacks, naps, or any other method of being consoled, the child revealed that what she really wanted was to catch crabs. (?!) And so whilst this struck me as totally bizarre, my friend pulled out a crab trap, basically a wire metal cube with sides that let down, that you could drop into the water and the crabs would walk in. It didn't look like anything sophisticated, so I couldn't imagine that it would work.
Would you believe it though, that crab trap was amazing? Every time we popped it down in the water, it would have one or two crabs in it every time we brought it back up. We released the crabs we caught every time (they looked like rock crabs, not very good for eating), but it provided endless amounts of amusement for the three-year old.
Otherwise, we spent our time hanging out on the boat, eating snacks, and just enjoying watching the sunset over the harbour. It was so peaceful out there, I could easily understand why they enjoyed spending so much time on their boat. And it was really funny when we pulled the crab trap up one last time, in addition to a crab, we'd caught a clam! No idea why a clam had decided to latch onto the corner of the crab trap, but whilst it was easy enough for us to open the trap and let the crab go, that clam was really stuck on there! Finally, after much prying, we got him off and tossed him back into the ocean.
After the sun set, my friend's husband came out and joined us briefly, but all too soon we had to call the tender to get back to shore before they closed for the night. So we radioed the tender and they came out, although I remembered from my childhood how much trouble I'd had getting on and off of boats, as you always have to perch on some tiny moving surface to get to another tiny moving surface. Yet luckily I made it onto the tender without falling in (but yet I couldn't help but notice how much easier a time my friends had of it than I did, obviously people with more experienced sea legs!)
We then went back to my friend's house, where I'd brought strawberries and pound cake for dessert. So we spent some more time talking, until at about 1 AM I finally reminded my friend that we both had work in the morning! (It's always so hard to leave the company of such good friends!) But finally we parted ways, and I made my way back home, having had such a wonderful night out with my oldest friend.
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