The Sailing Ship

Growing up on a small Island on the east coast of Canada was like wonderland for kids. As children, most of the toys we played with were homemade. Believe me when I say they were very crudely made. We made our bows from a green branch off a tree, and the arrows were just the straightest sticks we could find. Bottle caps hammered around the one end served as our arrow heads and worked fairly well. Clearly, as kids, we didn’t stop to think about the danger of shooting these arrows. I don’t think Danger was in our vocabulary back then. We were Vikings and hunters off on our next, great adventure!

Some of our sailing ships where made from pieces of junk wood and our sails from scrap pieces of flour or sugar bags (which my mother would use to make pillow cases from or I would use to make my embroidered aprons). Now this was serious ship building on our part because you had to make sure it would float and not tip to one side.

Oh, the stress we had to endure as junior ship builders! With only a rusty hammer (because we would forget to bring it inside after our hard day’s work) and some old rusty nails that were hammered out straight so we could reuse them. Not to mention the many sore pink nails (that would later black) due to this process. I just remembered how holy I was back then; how many times I would call out to Jesus and tell him how sweet he was. Or how the Lord should love- a-duck. Not to mention all those saints I once was able to list off so easily.

So you can understand why I’ve had to learn to build my ships a little different today.