For Every Bird A Nest -

     When it came to leap, I didn't hesitate.  I left the home that had been mine since 1991 and moved onto a boat, a space already claimed by someone, his home, which I would have to find a way to also make mine.  It wasn't that I didn't love the boat.  I've loved the boat since I first saw pictures of her last fall.  She spoke to me, with her lovely bones and the soul of her, the soul every boat possesses, worked into the wood and fiberglass, whispered through the cut and span of her sail.  Sailing on her from the Caribbean to Fort Lauderdale, I fell even deeper in love with her, if that was possible.  She hungers to sail.  Under loving hands, she flies.  She's strong and sure, bravery, brains and beauty, a triple threat.  Sail on her once, and I guarantee if there is any sea in your blood, you'll fall in love with her too.


     The thing was, is, that she's Bryan's boat.  He found her, saved her.  He poured sweat, blood, and tears into making her seaworthy.  She is filled with his things, except the spaces I have claimed.  He has decided what has gone where.  She's my home too, a home as chosen as the one I lived in all those years, more my home because it's Bryan's home too, but beneath it all is the feeling they're the couple, and I'm the third wheel.


     For me, people are home more than places, and the boat, Susurru, is this wonderful nexus of person and place, why perhaps I feel so comfortable aboard her.   Still, I found it difficult to make my mark on her without Bryan initiating it and weighing in.  And so things have stayed pretty much the same as we've been at the dock.  We've been getting her decks redone, but the inside has stayed as it was when I first moved onboard.  


     When Bryan left for St. Thomas to take the Antillean to Trinidad for hurricane season, I stayed in Fort Lauderdale to look for a job.  That meant Susurru and I were alone together for the first time, for a long time.  It would almost be a month before Bryan returned.  I was going to have to find something to keep myself busy besides sending out resumes and sopping up leaks (long story).  So I began to slowly make my mark on the sailboat I now call home.  Which put me in mind of the Emily Dickinson poem:


For every Bird a Nest—
Wherefore in timid quest
Some little Wren goes seeking round—

Wherefore when boughs are free—
Households in every tree—
Pilgrim be found?

Perhaps a home too high—
Ah Aristocracy!
The little Wren desires—

Perhaps of twig so fine—
Of twine e'en superfine,
Her pride aspires—

The Lark is not ashamed
To build upon the ground
Her modest house—

Yet who of all the throng
Dancing around the sun
Does so rejoice? 


    I may not be the Wren anymore, with her home amid the boughs.  Frankly, I'm not the lark either, given my new watery abode.  Perhaps a gull or a frigate, or maybe the pelicans that frequent the docks, or even the Grackles which showed up in June and have staked their claim, I'm far more likely one of them.  The thing is, now that I'm a creature of the water, a selkie returned to the sea, I need a different nest from the one I had all my years on land.  And I'm building it, bit by bit, the way nests have always been built, depending on instinct, going with my gut, making this place, my place - home.