It’s the Little Things (Oct 2, 2013)

Joshua wet his bed last night – a rarity. It happened early in the morning and he came in to tell us. His berth cushion was soaked – it seems he had forgotten to use the bathroom before bed the night before. I put him back to bed in the salon (i.e., sitting area/dining area) right outside our berth. It was 5:45 am and I knew I would not be going back to sleep. Since the hatch is right over our berth, I looked at the stars for a while (it is pretty cool to see the Big Dipper or the moon above us while lying in bed). I could hear Joshua humming and figured he wouldn’t be going back to sleep either. I told Matt I was thinking of sneaking out with him to see the sunrise since he has never seen one before. I whispered to Joshua to get dressed and grab his life jacket. Matt boosted him out of the boat through our hatch and I followed so we wouldn’t wake up Malachi by opening up the boat. He kept whispering, “Where are we going?” in his still muppet-like 5-year-old voice. I didn’t say anything because we were on deck above Malachi’s berth. We got off the boat and walked 15 feet to where the kayak is tied to the dock. I handed him a flashlight and climbed down the ladder to get in. I could see how excited he was when he saw what we were doing. I paddled us through all of the marinas and out towards the bay. After about 15-20 minutes, we were out into the open water and could see the bridge in the distance. The sky was lightening and there was a pinkish-purple haze on the eastern horizon. We just floated in silence for a while, my arms around him, watching the seagulls. I knew the sun would be up any minute so kept us facing east. The very first sliver of fiery red began to appear on the horizon. Joshua started to say, “What is that red …?” and then was shocked into silence as he realized it was the sun. His conception of the sun is round and yellow and high in the sky. To see it huge and flaming up in multi-hued molten red and take shape in a matter of minutes directly ahead of us, with nothing but the water between us, was like nothing he had experienced before. I could hear his deep intake of breath as we watched it together. This was a good decision.