After 9 months of plain sailing,
the master and his attendant crew entered the area of storms.
In that vast place,
their tiny wooden craft was sea-tossed,
and thrown from wave peak to wave trough innumerable times.
When, eventually, the craft had miraculously reached beyond,
they found themselves becalmed upon a mirrored ocean,
where there was not even a breeze.
Like the ship of the Ancient Mariner,
there was grave concern amongst the sailors;
and the relief felt from passing through the storm
was replaced by a dread of another kind.
Water rations grew scant, food was turning away from being edible, and all seemed about to be lost.
Until the master’s wife gave birth; which was a bit of a surprise, as no one had known she was pregnant.
“It is a buoy, your grace!”
“I am not, ‘your grace’, I am just the master of this vessel; but, I think that Grace will be a good name for our child.”
“It’s a buoy! You can’t call him Grace.”
“We can call him what we wish – Grace is a name that shall befit his style and grace.
And so it was that Grace was named, and grew to be the son that his father, Muriel, had always wanted.
