Kindling and Old Flame
This article was written in the Newsday newspaper on Long island NY on Sunday July 23, 1972 by Chapin Day. Chapin currently works for Signature Yachts in Seattle and deals Hunter sailboats, among other brands. I thought it might be appropriate for this topic. Kindling an Old Flame My wife, who keeps track of such things, reported the other day that our forthcoming anniversary will be our sixth. This unsolicited statistic would have passed acknowledged only by my gratuitous grunt if she had left it at that - but she went on. "I wonder," she continued carefully, "if the seven-year itch begins in the seventh year or after the seventh anniversary." What, I wondered, had sparked my wife's musing? Certainly she couldn't be bored with her life in our two bedroom American Dream - not with daytime television to keep her four-year university experience to the household chores. No, I concluded, she is satisfied. She must be worried that I might be itching. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have been disgustingly faithful ever since the day I found her reading the U.S. Department of Agriculture pamphlet on do-it-yourself methods of controlling sheep procreation. Forwarned is forearmed. Consequently cautious and circumspect with all women, how could I have prompted my wife's concern? Then I remembered. Lilith. Long, lean, sleek Lilith. Lovely Lilith. Fast Lilith. More than once in the last few months, I recalled, my wife had found me in the garage stripping Lilith and running my hands over her smooth bottom. Telltake check stubs recorded extravagant purchases of cosmetics and baubles - all for Lilith. And most of my spare time had been spent pampering Lilith. A year ago, when I first saw Lilith, she seemed forlorn and abandoned. She belonged to another married man. Although she bore scars left when their affair had gone on the rocks several years ago, he still clung to her, promising to resurrect their affair but too preoccupied with his wife and children to do her justice. Sheer, mad ecstasy when he offered Lilith to me. Seventeen feet of peeling paint and varnish. Under it all, that fabulous shape, the promise of exciting, fast action beneath her wardrobe of white sails. My hours of infidelity began, erasing the scars of Lilith's past, restoring her beauty, and updating her fashions. Our garage became a Pygmalion workshop where I lovingly labored to turn my erstwhile Hesperus into a proper yacht capable of hiding her origins from the class-conscious denizens of North Shore harbors. Now, the affair is ending. The launching is this week, and even my wife is looking forward to the event. It will give her an opportunity to smack her competition across the bow with a bottle, an overtly hostile act sanctioned by seafaring tradition. When the glass breaks and the bubbly liquid (Schweppes) splashes against the hull, Lilith with be no more. Partly because my wife has tired of playing Side A to my hypotenuse in our marital triange, Lilith with sport a new, sexless name on her transom. I don't mind. I have the memories of my romance. And I want to be more attentive to my wife. For instance, I've already picked out an anniversary gift for her - a gimballed compass and 75-feet of dacron line.
