Whoever designs the cheap foam pads that are intended to be stretched over the round disc at the bottom of an orbital waxing device, whoever that is they should be ashamed of themselves. I tore through two of those pads last week, late into two different afternoons, standing atop an asphalt driveway trying my best to scrub and polish the remains of the last boating season from the hull of my boat. The machine came with a foam applicator and a cloth buffing cover, and for a moment in the store aisle I thought I might need another foam pad, or another buffing cloth, but I passed. It was just one boat, after all, with two sides and a bottom that I wasn’t planning on waxing. Later that next day, when the first pad tore, I went to buy more.
That first, next pad didn’t fit. Not at all, it whipped and it flung tan colored wax into my hair and onto my shirt and onto my shoes. The coverage was impressive, if maddening. So on that night I abandoned the wax, intent on doing it some other day. But that next day the water was still. The air, somehow warm, the lake pulling me like nothing else. I raced from my office on that morning, down the under-repair highway 50, honking and flashing my lights like an emergency medical worker desperately trying to get to some house somewhere to save someone’s life. I wasn’t that benevolent, but I was racing, and I was, without a single doubt, working to save a life.
My own. So I poured some new wax on, working quickly, methodically, sloppily. I hadn’t the time to see this job done right. I had to–I needed to– get to the lake. So I ladled on some wax, and I rubbed it onto the hull with my cheap, piece of garbage, new wax machine thing, and when I stood back and looked at the job that I had just completed, the hull looked like a kindergarten class had taken to it with tubes of toothpaste and sand paper. Never mind, it would have to do. There wasn’t time. I had spent so many months wishing for this day, and the quickness of my pulse and the desire in my eyes would not suffer any further, unnecessary, delay.
Down Highway 50, this time West, heading for the boat launch. Lights flashing, horn honking, panicked excitement so thick I could barely see through the truck windshield. The launch was full, but not full in the way that it might be on a sunny Saturday a month or two from now, so I pulled in and set the transmission from drive and into reverse, the boat inching closer and closer to its watery reunion. When the gentleman whose sole job it is to charge water lovers for access came close, I didn’t wait for him to question my Florida tags on the boat and preemptively told him that the registration was in Wisconsin but that I hadn’t changed the lettering yet. I figured this up front admission saved me 5, perhaps 10 seconds, and those seconds felt like minutes and the minutes like hours and the hours like an entire winter of absolute misery.
The boat fired on the first crank, which is normal, unless you own my boat, because then it is not. It fired, it smoked, it caused a commotion. Had the nature conservancy across the street not been performing a scheduled burn, there’s little doubt that my smoke would have stood alone as a hazard, and fire trucks from all around would have raced to spray my engine down. The boat started, but sputtered, and sputtered some more, and by the time the engine quit the trailer and the truck had long been gone from the launch. I was stuck, sort of, and I floated and bobbed for a while, mending some old fishing line and arranging a few lures, trying to avoid the stares from shore from the people walking past who knew that no one, ever, launches their boat in the spring only to sit on it 100 yards from shore and tinker with fishing poles.
After time, the boat started. A switch that should have been off was set to on, and once that was remedied the engine purred, as best it can. I throttled up and plied the calm waters, the wind in my face, the sun on my back, the world at my disposal.
I had spent so many months grasping for air. The suffocating winter was harder on me than I believe any winter before it to have been. There were times when I didn’t think I’d make it through to see buds on trees and green grass. I was trapped. Trapped from each day since last November through the moment before that old white boat slipped from its trailer and pushed into the lake. I was, after all that time, finally, entirely, and completely free. I was as Houdini, having escaped from a plight that almost no one thought escape-able. After an afternoon on the water, I am refreshed, replenished. My hope in humanity has been restored. What does the lake look like this year? It looks as it always has. Big, beautiful, and capable of saving at least one life.