Weathering

     On Tuesday morning the last few feeder bands from Isaac came through Fort Lauderdale.  Rain filled the early morning dark as I prepared for school.  Rain accompanied me to work but stopped somewhere in the faculty parking lot just before school started.  The rest of day was sun and clouds, peace at last after three days of inclement weather.  

     It was my first hurricane.  Early last week they knew it was probably headed this way.  Since we live on a boat, we began the work of getting her ready for the coming storm.  Bryan had been fighting the flu.  I had to go to work.  We did what we could in the afternoons and evenings, and when Saturday came, we spent several hours finishing up and then went to a hotel to hunker down and wait out the storm.  

     That's the thing about weathering.  Shit happens.  You do what you can to get ready.  You understand the limits - the boat's, yours, time, money, skill.  Luck of course, plays its part.  The gods always have their hands in our affairs.  At some point though, there's no more time for preparation.  At some point, the storm hits and all you can do is see just how well you weather it.  

     It struck me sitting in the hotel as waves of wind and rain pummeled Fort Lauderdale, that we all of us find ourselves weathering storms, literally and metaphorically.  And we learn a lot about ourselves about our relationships as we do so.  Oh the risk is high.  We may make it through in one piece but our home can be destroyed, we can be left with nothing.  We can lose people and things that are precious to us.  We can lose our lives.  But we can learn so much, although the lessons may not always be pleasant.

     I learned a lot about the ship I'm calling home during Isaac -- her strengths and the rough, hurt places she needs healed.  I learned about my new relationship -- our strengths and the rough hurt places we need healed.  I realized yet again that the call to know thyself is a life long task.  No matter how enlightened I think I am, how much I've grown, how deeply I've looked into my heart, there's so much more.  A lifetime won't be enough.  And as prepared as I am for whatever storms come my way, and the storms are going to come, at some point I just have to weather them and see how I fare.  I'm alive.  My "house" is still standing, although I'm not sure how sound it is.  Time will tell how I weather this storm, and the next one, and the next.

     Isaac brought to mind a different kind of weathering, the kind that comes with time and elements and wears us away.  This morning, in a startling moment of clarity, this poem by Fleur Adcock came to mind:

Weathering

My face catches the wind
from the snow line
and flushes with a flush
that will never wholly settle.
Well, that was a metropolitan vanity,
wanting to look young forever, to pass.
I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty
and only pretty enough to be seen
with a man who wanted to be seen
with a passable woman.
But now that I am in love
with a place that doesn’t care
how I look and if I am happy,
happy is how I look and that’s all.
My hair will grow grey in any case,
my nails chip and flake,
my waist thicken, and the years
work all their usual changes.
If my face is to be weather beaten as well,
it’s little enough lost
for a year among the lakes and vales
where simply to look out my window
at the high pass
makes me indifferent to mirrors
and to what my soul may wear
over its new complexion.

–Fleur Adcock

I'm not sure yet when or whether I'll share what clarity came.  In the meantime, think about how prepared you are for storms, the literal ones and the metaphorical ones.  How will you weather them?  May you be safe and sound and strong.