It Stays With You

“It stays with you.” I had just tried the sauce he had been working on all day. It’s all I could think to say. “Right, it stays with you,” he repeated. A friend for thirty-five years, now long passed on, he was cooking his specialty in the kitchen of my home on the shore in the world of my subconscious. “What you are learning now will stay with you,” he said, then invited me to sit. We had our lasagna, then went for a sail. He used to love to sit on the low side of the narrow classic yacht he owned as it heeled and dipped it’s rail into the water. He was always just out of reach of the spray, only feeling a mist on his face, as the crew, of which I was a part of this day, stood at the coffee grinder winches, one foot each propped on the leeward rail, one grinder perched against the machine and looking forward, another in a like position looking aft. “Grind, Grind!,” my friend would yell. So we turned that winch as fast as we could, green water rushing over our feet, soon finding ourselves almost knee deep in it all. The energy generated in those moments cannot be duplicated in any other way. The crystal blue sky above, the wind bristling past, the churn of a raging green and white sea near us, on us, engulfing us. “This will stay with you,” he said to me in a still, calm voice, and I heard him, as all that just faded in the background of my mind and froze, becoming a snapshot of a wonderful moment. It will stay with me.