Every new beginning
comes from some other beginning’s end – Seneca
I’m a writer. I pride
myself on being able to take another’s viewpoint, to put myself in another’s
shoes. If I am guilty of hubris, and
what human being isn’t, this is where I challenge the gods and where my lessons
in humility come. Even as I consider
Bryan’s experience of this great leap to a life together, my focus has been my
own transition and adjustments. As I
have worked with a craftsman’s dedication to mold my old life into this new
one, I have seen the hard work of my own journey while seeing his as easier,
somehow. What was he ending but a single
life? I was the one with home and
family. I was the one moving from land
to sea, from three to two, from California to Florida. The fact that Bryan so often supported this
view of my big leap and his relatively small one, only added to my
blindness. He was beginning too, which
meant, as Seneca so wisely said, he had his own endings to endure and while
they might be occurring in the beauty of the Caribbean, they were still endings
and therefor, still painful. That he
would be brave enough to endure that end of whatever dream drove him to buy the
boat in Savannah, ready her, and sail her down to the Virgin Islands, for our
new beginning, rarely crossed my mind. I
was so focused on all my losses, too focused to consider his in the way they
deserved.
Falling in love at a distance and coming together at last is
a bit like an arranged marriage. Once
you finally share the same space, all the things you would have done had you
begun the relationship in close proximity must now be experienced – cooking for
each other, sussing out each other’s rhythms and preferences, learning how you
each like to watch movies, read, love, etc.
Apart, all your energy goes toward bridging the distance, maintaining
the connection, each helping the other hold on to the thread of love you’ve
found. Together, the mechanics of
actually sharing the same space become paramount. I’ve had years of habits, an ease in the old
life which I have yet to establish in this new.
Edges are rougher than I’m used to, rougher than I might like, although
those rough edges are also powerful opportunities for growth. I am learning after all these years to take
some responsibility for my relationships, to allow for magic but also for good,
old-fashioned conversation and negotiation.
Instead of saying, “this must be bourn,” I’m thinking nothing is set in
stone. Changes can be made. If I need a goodnight kiss every night, then
I can ask. If he needs to be cared for
when he’s low so he can be strong when he is not, then he can ask. We can pick our way through this reef and any
others we come across, for good navigation is as much by eye as by chart, as
much by hands on the wheel as auto-pilot.
You need to know your ship, your parameters, and then you need to have
faith that you can find your way to safe harbor.
We both of us are learning this new life. We chose to do this on the water for many
reasons, mostly I think because be both have come to be elemental in our older
years and both have been stripped to our essentials, the place we want to live,
honest and open. There’s no place to
hide on the high seas. And, more
importantly, you are urged toward, and sometimes forced into, a bit of
perspective, the ocean vast and you so small.
Things that on land would have grown monstrous and overblown with
importance, seem more human-sized when you’re out of sight of land and
underway, the boat racing beneath you, the sea meeting and matching it. And the days off shore feel precious and
temporary, like life itself, and the nights endless and full of you and more
than you, boundaries thin, non-existent really.
This seems the perfect way to find our way, to be made strong and whole
by the sea.
À Suivre …. To be continued.
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