“Well, it’s my last day in Toronto Dad, I wonder what I should do?” said Stella, shortly after her awakening ceremonies had been completed. Her and her brother would be staying at his place tonight then taking an early train back home the next morning.
“Options are unlimited here,” I said. “What would you like to do?”
“Maybe I should find a yoga class.”
“Come help me with the boat projects this morning and I’ll teach you boat yoga – it’s way more effective than a class,” I said as I stretched down into a Warrior Two position with wire strippers in my hand.
“Uh, well maybe I’ll see if I can find a cooking class instead.”
“Easy, why don’t you help us make lunch and supper – you’ll learn far more making boat meals than listening to those Toronto chef-phonies,” I said as I double flipped a spatula and spun a tomato on the tip of my finger.
“I’m going to see if Mom has any ideas.”
Today was the first day in a very long time that I hadn’t woken up to thoughts of boat maintenance. We’d done some significant boat improvement projects this year and I realized this has weighed heavily on me as they had been outside of my comfort level and produced a fair bit of anxiety. Putting the wraps on the solar wiring was a major milestone and I was able to test my completed solar power setup today to excellent results.
We left National shortly after 11am and motored the short distance across the Inner Harbour to Island Yacht Club, another of our favourites on the lake. We checked in with the dockmaster and tried to pay but were told we had paid already. We weren’t sure how that was possible as we they did not have an online payment option, but maybe they had our credit card on file from previous visits. We didn’t see any charges on our card but weren’t going to argue with her as she insisted we were all set.
It was a beautiful, hot day with not a cloud in sight so our second order of business after first tracking down the resident peacocks with their two freshly born peacock babies, was to settle down at the club’s pool. It was glorious. I was one of two men there and the rest were the “ladies who lunch” or, in this case, marinate in the pool all day with fancy cocktails mixed up by the poolside bartender. I imagined all their husbands at work making business calls, doing deals, liquidating assets, investing in projects, and developing sweat stains in the armpits of their high end collared shirts while I was here nodding off in a lounge chair soaking up the sun. Life is good.
We wandered back to the boat around 4pm and I sat on the back of SeaLight for a beer and a Cuban cigar watching the swans floating around in the bay as reggaeton played on the stereo. The girls were downstairs in the AC and I just sat there by myself thinking of little, doing little, and relishing in the luxury of an empty mind.
At 4:30, right on cue to ruin the start of the weekend for the workers, the black clouds rolled in out of nowhere and it started to rain. And it rained hard. This has been a common occurrence this summer with rain appearing regularly on Friday evenings, Saturdays, and Sunday which is the ultimate piss-off after a series of beautiful weekdays.
Ana, Stella and I donned our rainsuits and took the free courtesy tender into the city as we were taking the kids out for dinner on our last night together. We took the long walk east across downtown back to the St. Lawrence Market area and got a table at the Hothouse restaurant, a place we’ve never visited but the menu looked great. Magnus arrived shortly after we were seated and we were served four incredible meals, which we ate slowly as we talked and laughed.
I took a mental photo of us in that restaurant which I will store away as a moment I felt exceptionally proud of my family. We still feel like a team despite the kids now breaking out on their own and Ana and I moving into a different phase of our lives. I relished this moment as I know they will become less frequent in the coming years, which means we just need to appreciate them more when they happen.
After getting swarmed on a street corner by a bridal party mob of Toronto ladies in short red skirts looking for some Friday evening party action, we grabbed Ana a coffee from Timmy’s, said goodbye to the kids, then had a long, slow walk back to the pickup location where we caught the last boat to the island.
We were back to a team of two and the weekend had arrived in the big city.
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