Swimming all day. Coming in exhausted. Eat dinner. Sleep. Repeat. Swim. With no particular destination. Just swim. Dive off the dock, into the murkey salty green water. Look at the little holes on the bottom. What's in the holes? I never found out. I swam. On my back, on my side, underwater, through the pilings of the docks. We got brave and took out the little sailboat. It was dangerous beyond description. No one had a clue how to sail. "Just pull up the sail, let the wind take you out, then turn around and come back in."  I didn't wear a life vest. Neither did anyone else. The boat turned over in the middle of the bayou. We laughed, jumped on the bottom of the boat and celebrated the upside down craft. Just enjoyed the day. The sunshine. We waved at shrimp boats, ski boats, deep sea fishing boats. We righted the boat and headed back to shore. I don't remember any of the conversation, just the feel of the wind, the sun and the houses on the shoreline. They looked so small. We couldn't see one human figure. I was eleven years old, and free. Fearless. Adventuresome. Life would never end. So I lived it fully. Came in sunburned. Tired. Hungry. Smiling. Laughing. Planning to sail out again tomorrow. And we did.