Hatches Battened

W.S. Merwin

Evening

I am strange here and often I am still trying
To finish something as the light is going
Occasionally as just now I think I see
Off to one side something passing at that time
Along the herded walls under the walnut trees
And I look up but it is only
Evening again the old hat without a head
How long will it be till he speaks when he passes?

It was a surprise of a storm.  Looking at the sky, it was hard to imagine the possibility of tornadoes.  I dropped Bryan off to work on a boat and headed back to our girl to get her ready for what might come.  As things often seem to, one bad thing follows another and the car air con went out, not just went out, but started blowing hot air.  I made it back to the marina but I will be going to the repair shop tomorrow instead of work.  Such are the trials and tribulations of sharing a car in a world set up for a car per person.  

In the lull before the storm I stowed and checked.  I battened the hatches.  It took a couple hours but the storm found its way south as it headed out to sea. Wet but not drenched, I found my way into the cabin and prepared to wait out the weather with our cat Milo, but otherwise alone.  This was not my first bit of weather on my own.  I'm pretty sure it won't be my last.  I am coming to learn about togetherness and apart in ways I never have before.  Sometimes it's harder than others.  Sometimes it leaves me a little melancholy, although I'm not sure why.  I figure it will unfold when the time is right, as things do.  So I worry a little, but leave it at that.  I may not be as evolved as I would like to be, but I'm trying and sometimes, I'm even succeeding.  

The Merwin poem is one of my favorites.  It captures this gloaming sense as the twilight tonight descends.

Each Man Delights in the Work That Suits Him Best

The Odyssey has been my oracle and guide, my hope and inspiration for most of my life.  I came to it early, through one of those abridged, illustrated classics that filled elementary school libraries back in the sixties.  Being a librarian's daughter, I had to search for the unabridged version which I found and read, over and over, year after year.  Something new would would always strike me with each new reading.  Sometimes there would be years between the reading; like Odysseus I found myself exiled far from home, longing for it, unsure I would ever find it again.  And somehow, someway, I'd find my way back, read it, and feel the kind of peace that comes with the hope of someday.

     It's a been a year or so since I last read the Odyssey.  I actually picked it up again when Bryan first read it, those last couple of months before I joined him in the Virgin Islands.  Bryan has finally gotten his Captain's Ticket after years without it.  What a battle.  I had guessed at what it meant to him, but the reality is so much more.  This is who he's been, even beyond music.  Boats have been his life since our childhood; being a Waterman is what he is, and has always been, and will always be.

So now comes the hunt for jobs, both of us working, delighting in the work that suits us best, one on land and one on sea.  Our life shifts again with the ebb and flow of water and sail and present tense, and we learn to balance anew.  It strikes me, that this is exactly what life on the boat is teaching me, how to seek over and over, and find, my own particular equinox.  That I have found someone to ebb and flow with me, someone who possesses a natural equilibrium that has taken me years to even begin to achieve, well, that seems nothing short of the kind of miracles life is full of if we just pay attention.

Most days I remember to be grateful.  Some days though, I freak out, panic, tip and sway, nearly topple, forgetting the delicate balance I have learned these past months.  What can I say?  I'm human.  That most days are spent in relative equilibrium seems enough for now.