Sun and moon wrist tattoos with script

The ice went off the cut on Tuesday, all at once, the way Dad always said it would. I was up at five with the tiller lashed and the kettle on the little stove, watching the sun clear the lock-keeper's cottage while the moon still hung pale above the poplars. Dad would have said that was the whole argument in one sky. Day takes its turn, night takes its turn, and neither of them hangs on.

You'll remember the winter he sold the Ada to pay the yard bills. He stood on the towpath with his hands deep in his coat and said nothing for an hour. Then he said the line about this too shall pass, and you told him to stop being a Bible in a flat cap. We both laughed. He didn't.

Last night I found his old chalk board behind the coal box, the one he used for lock times. Under the list of gates in his squared-off capitals someone had scratched a crescent moon and a sun, badly, the way a child would draw them. I think it was him, the night after Mum's funeral, trying to draw something that would hold still.

I'm not selling the boat. I'm going to paint the sun on the port side and the moon on the starboard, the way he had them, and leave the chalk where it is. Come up in June. Bring the good tea and your ugly dog, and we'll take her through the locks together, one slow gate at a time. Love, Jen