Spring Tide

For a time growing up, I lived on Sunset Island in Sunset Beach.  I had no idea it even had a name, that island.  Every year, in spring and in autumn, the spring tides would come and the streets would flood a few inches sometimes, sometimes a few feet.  Spring tides have nothing to do with the season and everything to do with the equinox and the moon and the nearness of our only natural satellite to earth.

It's been a long time since I lived in a place with spring tides.  I hadn't even thought Fort Lauderdale was that kind of place.  And then October comes and the new moon, and I head out to work one morning and the water is over the docks.  I'm walking in four inches of water, fish darting around my ankles, and it comes back to me, those mornings when the spring tide rose over the bulkheads and flooded the streets.  I feel young again, which may be this new love, this new life, certainly is all this possibility that stretches before me.

It's strange at 54 I find myself in place that is in some ways so much like where I lived when I was in junior high and high school.  Strange too that I find myself with a man who knew me during that time, loving him as I might have back then, the future stretching out before us, as if we have all the time in the world, even at our age.  I wonder if all of us need inundation now and then, if spring tides have a purpose not just for a land, but for the people who live there.  What's the message in these seasonal floods.  And is there a message in the timing, the full circle of childhood spring tides to these of middle age?  I know there is, so the question is what is that message for me?  I don't know, but I'm thinking I might at last find out.  Until I do, though, here's a bit of a poem by Emily Dickinson about the Spring Inundation:

THE INUNDATION of the Spring
Submerges every soul,
It sweeps the tenement away
But leaves the water whole.

In which the Soul, at first alarmed,       
Seeks furtive for its shore,
But acclimated, gropes no more
For that Peninsular.

Knowing My Place

The day it became the vaguest possibility I might leave Sacramento, I started to walk the place I had called home for twenty years.  For almost ten years, six days a week, sometimes seven, I circumambulated my neighborhood and learned it as intimately as a woman can learn something she loves.  I saw it in every season.  I saw it at different hours.  I knew how it grew peopled with the weekends and the cooler weather, how cold and heat made it silent as a graveyard.  I knew what birds came when.  I knew my place even as I was questioning my place, wondering if it had ever been my place, wondering if places could change, if we could change.

I will admit there were times I thought I was walking myself so deeply into that land and life that there would never be any escape.  And there were just as many times when I wondered if I was walking every bit of that place out of me so I could be free to find my self and my place now, not as I was when I settled in Sacramento, on Sacramento, back in the late seventies, but as I was now.  In fact I will tell you that I wasn't at all sure which it was until one day, I knew almost without a doubt I was unraveling myself so I could go.

Those of you who know me, know I had a dream in the hospital after my heart attack, a long dream that came with every sleep cycle, lingered even when I was awake, walking the halls as they make you walk, to set the return to life they've given back to you.  In that dream I walked the desert for days until I came to a ring of stones, white as chalk, oddly shaped like blocks on thin stalks.  I passed at the ring for long time before I understood what I was to do.  And then I began walking counterclockwise, past each stone, past each marker of my life so far, back to my beginnings, so I could walk it again, as if a life was truly a labyrinth and we walking the same path, finding ourselves back where we started, knowing ourselves, as T.S. Eliot wrote, for the first time.  I had many interpretations for that dream, and like all great dreams, powerful visions, it continues to advise and inform me still, years after my heart attack.  I see that I could not have made the leap to love, to a new life, to do it as fresh as 54 can be fresh, new enough, malleable enough to come to love willing to do things differently this time.

So now I am learning a new place, a place that is mine for now and maybe for a year from now, or two, or three, but then another place will be mine, and maybe another after that.  Perhaps I have come to a turtle place where I carry enough of home with me so that everywhere can be home and no place must be walked into the very bones and breath of me before I can feel safe and sound.  Perhaps I no longer have to know my place, set my life and myself in stone.  It sure would be nice to think so.  And just newly turned 54, I think that's what I'm going to believe.



 

The Lockless Door

The Lockless Door by Robert Frost

It went many years,
But at last came a knock,
And I thought of the door
With no lock to lock.

I blew out the light,
I tip-toed the floor,
And raised both hands
In prayer to the door.

But the knock came again.
My window was wide;
I climbed on the sill
And descended outside.

Back over the sill
I bade a 'Come in'
To whatever the knock
At the door may have been.

So at a knock
I emptied my cage
To hide in the world
And alter with age.

I've always been called by halls and doors.  This one called to me in New Orleans, not the most beautiful or ornate, but oddly compelling.  I stumbled on this Frost poem the other day, and remembered this picture.  I finally understand the poem -- the narrator's isolation and fear, how he would rather brave the New England winter than see whatever is knocking.  Forced into the world he leaves his cage and goes into the world.  We never do know what it was knocking on that door.  It can't have been too bad because the door was unlocked and yet it knocked.  Maybe it doesn't matter what gets us out of our isolation and back into the world,  Maybe it only matters that we do.

Saturday's Child

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child must work for a living,
But the child that's born on the Sabbath day,
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

(Monday's Child, Nursery Rhyme,
     Author Unknown)


    I remember the first time I heard this nursery rhyme in elementary school. I was almost fearful to find out the day of my birth, as if it might explain everything. My parents had just divorced and Wednesday's child seemed my destiny. Of course I'm a creature of mind as much as heart and want to know the worse while hoping for the best. This is how I have handled everything from my beginnings through my heart attack and after. I can't remember if I counted back the years to find the day of my birth or found some chart during one of my journeys of exploration in the local public library. It doesn't matter, I suppose, each method telling you something rather essential about me, even the fact that I waited so long to figure it, tells you the fear that rules and the courage that fights to overcome it. I am not an impulsive woman although at times it might seem so to those that know me. There are months, sometimes years behind every decision. It's a bit like that Anais Nin quote: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." That's how it is with me, the fearful seed, the fierce blossoming.

I am Saturday's child; I work hard for a living.  As much as I would love to be fair of face, full of grace,  loving and giving, I'm the dutiful one that finds comfort and joy in daily routine, in duty, in putting in time, doing the work, and a job well done.  There are times I forget myself, though.  When I moved to the boat and decided to make my home here, I worried that I wouldn't be able to navigate the decks, to keep my feet when we were underway.  And, beyond a rather spectacular slip as the boat heeled in the Bahamas, spilling me and my hot coffee, I've done pretty well.  I'm no ballerina, but

So I suppose I could be forgiven then, if I almost believed myself, after months onboard with nary a fall, with this newly discovered grace, as Tuesday's child.  From floating docks to finger piers, I disembarked and came onboard as if I had been living on a boat for all my life.  Even as we prepared for Isaac, downgraded from hurricane to tropical storm, rain and wind and days of squall, I never fell, I never stumbled.  This day would be like any other day, every other day.  Only it wasn't.  The tide was a little high; my hands were full, but no different from any other return from work.  I was carrying a box that was a little heavy, a bit over-sized, but again not so different from any other day.  I suspect I was over-confident, feeling a bit like the world was truly my oyster.  So when I lost my footing, there was a moment of disbelief, as if the fairytale was discovered to be just that, a fairytale, a story, and not the truth of me at all.

I hit the stairs with breast and thigh, the dock with knees and hands.  I dropped the box into the water, my birthday gift, and remembering how quickly things sink and damned if I was going to lose it, I lunged despite the shock and pain and grabbed the box before it sank beneath the water's surface.  Mad and hurt, sorrowful at the loss of my illusion of dexterity and grace, I kept thinking to myself, "Saturday's Child," "Saturday's Child," beating myself up with what I am, no Sleeping Beauty, no Snow White, no Cinderella.  I'm the plucky sidekick, the faithful servant, the hard working handmaiden.  I get the servant, the butler, the companion, the faithful friend, but not the prince, never the prince.

Bryan is out on a deck in a moment, helping me up, taking the box, performing the delicate dance of soothing me while letting me seem strong, my burgeoning opening to dependance countered by my fear-based insistence on independence.  I want to be coddled and cuddled but I'm so damn afraid to depend on someone, to trust in 'til death do us part.  They may stay, but does the love burn as fiercely that last year as it did the first, not to mention all those years between.  Just because I haven't known that does it mean it doesn't exist?  The first leap to this new life was huge, but there are a hundred leaps after and hundreds, thousands more after that.  Some of these seemingly small leaps are far greater than I ever thought they would be, could be.

A few hours later, sitting watching T.V. with Bryan, dinner done, the weekend stretching before us, we laugh about something, I don't remember what, some bit of wonderful silliness.  Laughing is so much a part of us, even when I'm battered and bruised, worse for wear.  And I look at him and it hits me, my own blindness, that yes I'm Saturday's child, but I'm Tuesday's child too, at least in this man's eyes.  I'm fair of face and loving and giving, all the good things promised in this nursery rhyme, and so much more.  Sure, I'm the plucky sidekick, but I am the princess too, for the first time in 54 years, and it's partly because of this man I moved across the country for, but it's partly because of me as well.  It's a strange, wondrous thing to find yourself truly happy, the day in and day out kind, maybe even the happily ever after kind.

When I come to those places in my life that seem to defy words, I turn to poems.  Jane Kenyon's poem, Happiness came to mind as I pondered this new state of being of mine, happiness.


There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Loteria Cards And Fortune Poems: A Book of Lives

A few weeks ago I discovered this artist and this book.  The artist is Artemio Rodriguez and his astonishing illustrations accompany fierce, spare poems written by Juan Felipe Herrera.  The illustrations and poems are inspired by the Mexican Loteria Cards, archetypal images that have spoken to me from the moment I first saw them.

I'm getting ready for my solar return.  I'm during 54.  For the first time in years I'm comparing where I was my last birthday and where I am this one, and the difference is so vast it could be another life, a parallel world.  And while such a change was never a goal of mine, was feared in fact as much as hungered for, it doesn't feel wrong, or extreme, or anything other than right. I feel reborn, more so than even after my heart attack.  Then I moved through death to life, but it was my old life, the one that nearly killed me, and so it was a triumph, but a minor one.  This was a leap made in hope and hunger, and healthy dose of desperation. And the resulting change is so huge that it seems small, as if I'm merely more myself than anything else.

Coming close as I am, to my birthday, I found this illustration compelling.  There is something young and tender about her, as young and tender as I feel now, green in the way growing things are green, soft in the way those growing things are soft in their beginnings before they grow stronger, more rigid and unyielding, change harder and harder until it's almost impossible.  There's no explaining it, really, how I can be this old and feel so young and hopeful.  And I love how she stands, naked and unsell-conscious, in the world and of the world, magic all around her.  I think I feel that way too, sort of, despite my 54 year-old body and battered heart.  I feel the pulse of the earth in this picture and feel that same pulse coursing through me.  I'm not sure this isn't just where I should be; it's certainly where I want to be.  I can't imagine a better way to start the next half of my life.