January 4: Get Rid of Him, Sky Turn, Rose Morning

Santiago makes some difficult decisions . . . 

After it is light, he thought, I will work back to the forty-fathom bait and cut it away too and link up the reserve coils. I will have lost two hundred fathoms of good Catalan cordel and the hooks and leaders. That can be replaced. But who replaces this fish if I hook some fish and it cuts him off? I don't know what that fish was that took the bait just now. It could have been a marlin or a broadbill or a shark. I never felt him. I had to get rid of him too fast.

Aloud he said, "I wish I had the boy."

But you haven't got the boy, he thought. You have only yourself and you had better work back to the last line now, in the dark or not in the dark, and cut it away and hook up the two reserve coils.

The old man knows what he has to do to make sure he lands this big fish.  He has to make some sacrifices.  

This morning, as I was driving to work at around 8 a.m., I noticed the sun rising above Lake Superior.  A thin, pink scar of light along the horizon.  I could tell it was going to be spectacular.

As soon as I got to the library, I dropped my bookbag in my office and climbed the steps to the roof of the building.  It was cold and clear.  And I stood near the edge of the roof, watched the sky turn into a Monet painting.

A friend of mine sent me a photo of the sunrise the morning that my sister died.  My friend said it was a rose morning.  Today was another rose morning.

Saint Marty is so glad he sacrificed a few minutes to see his sister in the sky.