November came and went. It's better to describe it this way than to go into particular detail. It's not really true that there is nothing to say about the month, but rather that there is too much to say.
I was planting seeds. Getting things ready to bloom. I will tell you about them now, as they begin to flower. Finally, December.
One thing that happened was that I sublet an apartment. I will spend my time both here and there.
HERE = the apartment I share with my husband
THERE = the friends' apartment I've leased while she travels
This little realization is what I learned on my first night alone at my new apartment:
Being yourself fully is the only satisfying way to be yourself. You know when you're being yourself fully because you can feel your soul singing. It is always good to pursue directions your life could go in that seem as if they might keep things interesting and evolving. It's OK to be scared and not know what's going to happen next. None of us knows what's going to happen next. Ever. As a result: Plunge, jump, into life. Don't be reckless, but be free. Find freedom, the place where your soul is excited just by the prospect of being.
When we are in this place, the universe speaks to us.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Notes From a Vacation
Here are some things to know about traveling with someone you love, and have loved for many years, who you are trying to find the strength to leave.
1. Vacations, even beach vacations where it rains every day or one of you gets some painful form of dysentery, fall into a mental folder marked special. When we were away has a kind of magic, no matter what happened. Maybe trips are an echo of a time when things were new.
So even when you are in the thought process of un-coupling, much of the time spent on vacation ends up (perhaps by mental default) in the special folder. You will probably decide on vacation that none of the conclusions you'd reached about your relationship before your departure are true, after all. You actually are happy. This is how things are supposed to be. Your heart is full, and sweet, and greateful. You don't feel empty; you just needed this vacation.
When you come home, the realization that this is not reality will hurt.
2. A couple traveling together speaks the private language of couple. After years in a relationship, you just know how to do stuff, away, together. You each unconsciously know whose job it is to gather the passports, book the rental car, pack the toothpaste. If you're flying, you know which of you gets the aisle; who has to sit at a window. There is lazy comfort in this. If you are part of a couple that is happy or at least intact and surviving the world, I urge you to try to enjoy these rituals. They are dear and spectacularly unique. See them as one of life's little gifts.
3. While traveling, you will begin to interpret celestial pointers, signs from the universe, in irrelevant actions. I found it prophetic on a recent trip, for example, that I only wanted two bites of my chicken taco, generously giving the rest to my husband. Did this mean my heart was opening somehow to him, in a new way? When he began driving more aggressively through green lights, instead of slowing down to a crawl on the chance they were going to turn yellow, I took it as sign that he was becoming aware of his own passive aggression. And so on.
I don't know why this is. Maybe the changed perspective of being in a new place makes us yearn to see everything in a fresh way, including the mess inside our own hearts.
4. At some point on the trip, you will experience irrational rage towards your partner. This is completely normal, and will come at an unexpected moment. Here's what: it has nothing to do with the fact that he forgot to pack his bathing suit.
5. Once you're back home, have fallen back to your normal routine and the aching malaise starts creeping in, pictures of you and your partner together on the trip may shock you.
When I was a very little girl, my sister and I had a pact: Whenever forced to pose for a picture, we would do some funny little physical quirk-- crinkle a pinky or move a foot in a funny way -- that the photographer (we thought) wouldn't notice, but that my sister and I would recognize when the pictures were developed as our secret code. For all time, that photo would bear the stamp of our rebellious yet unspoken truth.
Something similar happens, unconsciously, in your vacation photos. When the picture is being taken, you will feel like your face is in its correct position, that you are standing together the way you always stand together, smiling the way you always smile. It will feel utterly usual.
But when you finally see the photo in detail, on Facebook or as a print or in a frame after the vacation has ended, you will spot it: the rebellious unspoken truth. It's always somewhere--your smile or his; the slightly awkward way in which you are standing; a glint of something in your eye. I will not. Captured forever.
The vacation is over. It is time to move on.
1. Vacations, even beach vacations where it rains every day or one of you gets some painful form of dysentery, fall into a mental folder marked special. When we were away has a kind of magic, no matter what happened. Maybe trips are an echo of a time when things were new.
So even when you are in the thought process of un-coupling, much of the time spent on vacation ends up (perhaps by mental default) in the special folder. You will probably decide on vacation that none of the conclusions you'd reached about your relationship before your departure are true, after all. You actually are happy. This is how things are supposed to be. Your heart is full, and sweet, and greateful. You don't feel empty; you just needed this vacation.
When you come home, the realization that this is not reality will hurt.
2. A couple traveling together speaks the private language of couple. After years in a relationship, you just know how to do stuff, away, together. You each unconsciously know whose job it is to gather the passports, book the rental car, pack the toothpaste. If you're flying, you know which of you gets the aisle; who has to sit at a window. There is lazy comfort in this. If you are part of a couple that is happy or at least intact and surviving the world, I urge you to try to enjoy these rituals. They are dear and spectacularly unique. See them as one of life's little gifts.
3. While traveling, you will begin to interpret celestial pointers, signs from the universe, in irrelevant actions. I found it prophetic on a recent trip, for example, that I only wanted two bites of my chicken taco, generously giving the rest to my husband. Did this mean my heart was opening somehow to him, in a new way? When he began driving more aggressively through green lights, instead of slowing down to a crawl on the chance they were going to turn yellow, I took it as sign that he was becoming aware of his own passive aggression. And so on.
I don't know why this is. Maybe the changed perspective of being in a new place makes us yearn to see everything in a fresh way, including the mess inside our own hearts.
4. At some point on the trip, you will experience irrational rage towards your partner. This is completely normal, and will come at an unexpected moment. Here's what: it has nothing to do with the fact that he forgot to pack his bathing suit.
5. Once you're back home, have fallen back to your normal routine and the aching malaise starts creeping in, pictures of you and your partner together on the trip may shock you.
When I was a very little girl, my sister and I had a pact: Whenever forced to pose for a picture, we would do some funny little physical quirk-- crinkle a pinky or move a foot in a funny way -- that the photographer (we thought) wouldn't notice, but that my sister and I would recognize when the pictures were developed as our secret code. For all time, that photo would bear the stamp of our rebellious yet unspoken truth.
Something similar happens, unconsciously, in your vacation photos. When the picture is being taken, you will feel like your face is in its correct position, that you are standing together the way you always stand together, smiling the way you always smile. It will feel utterly usual.
But when you finally see the photo in detail, on Facebook or as a print or in a frame after the vacation has ended, you will spot it: the rebellious unspoken truth. It's always somewhere--your smile or his; the slightly awkward way in which you are standing; a glint of something in your eye. I will not. Captured forever.
The vacation is over. It is time to move on.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Skipping My First Marriage
I used to say, when people asked why I had waited so long to get married, that I had simply decided to skip my first marriage and go right to the happy one.
Who knew?
My family grew up renting a cottage every summer in a small beach town that most of the world still has yet to discover. My sister and I grew like trees over long, luscious summers there; I still think of those years as the happy ones . When I was 37 I eloped, and my husband and I (of one day) bought a house in the same town, on a whim, inspired, each unsure the other wouldn't call all of it off at some point. A weekend-long game of chicken.
Much of my living has taken place in this beach town. When I was twelve and my parents were divorcing, my father had a nervous breakdown. After spending a few years downward-spiraling, he was ultimately diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. He has been out of my life, thankfully, since I was in my early teens.
Before any of this happened, though, there was the beach. As such, there was a day every summer that was the Last Day at the beach. We would pack up two cars with pets and sheets and the accumulations of a summer, and drive home to the suburb where I grew up. Spent cold winters waiting impatiently for the time around the Fourth of July (firecrackers, barbecues). Then the suitcases would get pulled out and the packing would begin, and it would be time to go back to the beach.
When my father lost it all, my mother didn't so much lose her center as become her center. The dark hole of rage and frustration that she had quieted in the business of raising a suburban family 1970's-style disintegrated. She fell into a well of rageful, bitter despair that lasts to this day. Our lives--hers, my sister's and mine--became chaos. For example: In the kitchen ceiling of our house, we had a leak. What started as a leaking upstairs bathtub pipe had, over years, enlarged into a gaping hole. Plaster dripped from ragged exposed pipes. If you ran a bath or, eventually, took longer than a 15-minute shower, white water would run onto the kitchen floor, forming a pool on the linoleum next to the stove.
My mother kept order by keeping the floor mopped.
But before this there was this beach, and peaceful long summers, and growing up.
Because this suummer place meant so much, when my sister and I were old enough to drive the first overnight trips we planned were with each other, back to the beach. We'd recruit another girlfriend, rent a motel room in a bunch of pine trees on Route 1 and spend a short weekend soaking up a place we loved that had loved us back. I remember these weekends as being more painful than anything, but we both felt the powerful urge to return, return.
Through all of these visits, it never failed, still there was always a Last Day at the beach.
I should point out that the Last Day has a distinctive look. The sky is always impeccably blue. The water matches. It is very dry. Though there is a cool wind, it is not strong. The sunlight makes everything glow. It is late, late in summer. It is all so beautiful, and you are leaving for another dose of forever. Your heart aches.
So here I am in my first marriage, which isn't really my first marriage because I'm skipping my first marriage by going right to the happy one, and fast-forward 25 years.
Last weekend, my husband and I went surfing for what turned out to be the last ride of the season. It was obvious when we stepped off our boards into the shoreline froth that by as soon as the next day, the water beneath us would be too cold to fall into. I should mention that we are pulling apart, my husband and I. Coming carefully, gently, hardly at all chaotically, unglued. Undone at the hinges. For that reason especially, last weekend really felt like The Last Day at the beach.
At the end of a long rides I crossed the hazy, sunny, Last Day parking lot with my surf board balnced on my head. A thought srruck me suddenly: Please, I thought: On my last day on earth, may I please remember this moment.
Heat on my face, wind starting to chill on my thighs. Rough pebbly parking lot under my feet, sun going down on the horizon. He is at my side. Husband. Wife. We.
There is so much to be let go of, yet the heart wants to cling.
Please, let me remember forever that one day, I was here like this with him.
This is what I'm here to tell you: I don't believe there is such a thing as skipping your first marriage. Your first is always your first. You have things to learn about yourself--terrible, wonderful, disappointing things--that will make you who you are going to be for the rest of your life. Your first marriage is the only way you can learn them.
I hope I remember that day until my last day on this earth.
Who knew?
My family grew up renting a cottage every summer in a small beach town that most of the world still has yet to discover. My sister and I grew like trees over long, luscious summers there; I still think of those years as the happy ones . When I was 37 I eloped, and my husband and I (of one day) bought a house in the same town, on a whim, inspired, each unsure the other wouldn't call all of it off at some point. A weekend-long game of chicken.
Much of my living has taken place in this beach town. When I was twelve and my parents were divorcing, my father had a nervous breakdown. After spending a few years downward-spiraling, he was ultimately diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. He has been out of my life, thankfully, since I was in my early teens.
Before any of this happened, though, there was the beach. As such, there was a day every summer that was the Last Day at the beach. We would pack up two cars with pets and sheets and the accumulations of a summer, and drive home to the suburb where I grew up. Spent cold winters waiting impatiently for the time around the Fourth of July (firecrackers, barbecues). Then the suitcases would get pulled out and the packing would begin, and it would be time to go back to the beach.
When my father lost it all, my mother didn't so much lose her center as become her center. The dark hole of rage and frustration that she had quieted in the business of raising a suburban family 1970's-style disintegrated. She fell into a well of rageful, bitter despair that lasts to this day. Our lives--hers, my sister's and mine--became chaos. For example: In the kitchen ceiling of our house, we had a leak. What started as a leaking upstairs bathtub pipe had, over years, enlarged into a gaping hole. Plaster dripped from ragged exposed pipes. If you ran a bath or, eventually, took longer than a 15-minute shower, white water would run onto the kitchen floor, forming a pool on the linoleum next to the stove.
My mother kept order by keeping the floor mopped.
But before this there was this beach, and peaceful long summers, and growing up.
Because this suummer place meant so much, when my sister and I were old enough to drive the first overnight trips we planned were with each other, back to the beach. We'd recruit another girlfriend, rent a motel room in a bunch of pine trees on Route 1 and spend a short weekend soaking up a place we loved that had loved us back. I remember these weekends as being more painful than anything, but we both felt the powerful urge to return, return.
Through all of these visits, it never failed, still there was always a Last Day at the beach.
I should point out that the Last Day has a distinctive look. The sky is always impeccably blue. The water matches. It is very dry. Though there is a cool wind, it is not strong. The sunlight makes everything glow. It is late, late in summer. It is all so beautiful, and you are leaving for another dose of forever. Your heart aches.
So here I am in my first marriage, which isn't really my first marriage because I'm skipping my first marriage by going right to the happy one, and fast-forward 25 years.
Last weekend, my husband and I went surfing for what turned out to be the last ride of the season. It was obvious when we stepped off our boards into the shoreline froth that by as soon as the next day, the water beneath us would be too cold to fall into. I should mention that we are pulling apart, my husband and I. Coming carefully, gently, hardly at all chaotically, unglued. Undone at the hinges. For that reason especially, last weekend really felt like The Last Day at the beach.
At the end of a long rides I crossed the hazy, sunny, Last Day parking lot with my surf board balnced on my head. A thought srruck me suddenly: Please, I thought: On my last day on earth, may I please remember this moment.
Heat on my face, wind starting to chill on my thighs. Rough pebbly parking lot under my feet, sun going down on the horizon. He is at my side. Husband. Wife. We.
There is so much to be let go of, yet the heart wants to cling.
Please, let me remember forever that one day, I was here like this with him.
This is what I'm here to tell you: I don't believe there is such a thing as skipping your first marriage. Your first is always your first. You have things to learn about yourself--terrible, wonderful, disappointing things--that will make you who you are going to be for the rest of your life. Your first marriage is the only way you can learn them.
I hope I remember that day until my last day on this earth.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Marriage in the Time of Facebook
I was looking just now at my friends' pictures and postings on Facebook.
Many of them who are married, I realized, have a certain kind of Facebook marriage. They have a child or children. They have been together for a long time. They have been friends, it seems, forever. Their pictures are very family, very smiling, very aging-gracefully.
My marriage is not like that.
Others on Facebook appear to be single, though they are married. Their profiles do not list a partner, or have a link to their page. If you didn't know that they were married, behind the scenes, you would never know it from cruising around Facebook.
My marriage is also not like that.
My husband and I are both on Facebook. I list him as my spouse and have a link on my page to his page.
He has about 15 friends, I have about 100. I have 20 photo albums. I'm not sure he knows that. He must, though, wouldn't you think? Isn't that something you would do if you were him, after I'd gone to sleep one Sunday night? Check out your wife's Facebook page?
I fear he doesn't. I fear that he doesn't even wonder.
That is what it is like in my marriage.
Many of them who are married, I realized, have a certain kind of Facebook marriage. They have a child or children. They have been together for a long time. They have been friends, it seems, forever. Their pictures are very family, very smiling, very aging-gracefully.
My marriage is not like that.
Others on Facebook appear to be single, though they are married. Their profiles do not list a partner, or have a link to their page. If you didn't know that they were married, behind the scenes, you would never know it from cruising around Facebook.
My marriage is also not like that.
My husband and I are both on Facebook. I list him as my spouse and have a link on my page to his page.
He has about 15 friends, I have about 100. I have 20 photo albums. I'm not sure he knows that. He must, though, wouldn't you think? Isn't that something you would do if you were him, after I'd gone to sleep one Sunday night? Check out your wife's Facebook page?
I fear he doesn't. I fear that he doesn't even wonder.
That is what it is like in my marriage.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The Surfing Diary
My husband and I like to surf. I have a longboard that I named Bluey, but she mostly sits in our dank cellar. Rather, we are paddle-surfers. We stand upright on the water on boards longer and wider and thus more bouyant than traditional longboards and, using a paddle, navigate through all kinds of adventure--around islands or rocks or along a coastline. You can ride waves like a traditional longboarder, letting the sea carry you in the direction its going, or power headlong into the waves, letting the balance of your vertical body to the horizontal board slice through the high water for a very different, but equally amazing, ride.
Paddle-surfing is similar to longboarding in a few elemental ways. Most basic, you're moving with the rhythm of the water. A paddle-surfer who understands the wind and current can position herself to FLY. [I imagine downhill skiing feels something like this, though I am not a skiier--the cold and the snow being disqualifiers.] Also like longboarding, the power is in balancing, in the rhythm of feeling when to lean this way, when that.
On a deeper level, as I become a more experienced paddle-surfer, I am learning that all surfers also make a decision--consciously or unconsciously--about how to be in this relationship with the water. Will it be a continual battle of wills, I'm-stronger-and-smarter-than-you-think-I-am? Will it be one of reverence mixed with a little fear--what I imagine happens in most houses worship of Western religions? Thank you for allowing me share your bounty, I will proceed with respect and awe.
I'm discovering, in surfing as in my other intimate relationships, that I straddle the two. Usually with some discomfort.
Yesterday was a clear September day, utterly cloudless. Though it was windy at the house, the Sound was flat and blue. I'd brought both my husband's and my surf boards to the beach, though his joining me didn't look promising -- he'd slept past noon when the night before we'd vowed to be on the water by 11 and I'd left him in the kitchen, dozily preparing toaster waffles.
I rowed out into a perfect, clear high tide -- another glory of September is that most of the motor-boaters and godforsaken jetskiiers are gone. With the changing season, the sun was in a noticeably different place on the horizon than it had been all summer, and the change in light was melancholy, glowing, delicious.
My favorite ride this summer has been out to and around an island a couple of miles from our beach. It is long, shaped something like Florida, covered with pine trees and rocks. I start by paddling toward the bottom tip--right around Key West. Make my way up the eastern shore, past Miami. At the northern tip of the island, two strong currents meet. Earlier in the summer, when a hurricane was entering the mid-Atlantic, I kept getting tossed from my board at this intersection, unable to make the connection between the hurricane that was still days away and why the currents were so strong, the water so high. I learn to make these connections gradually, in pieces.
The entire island is maybe two miles in circumference. Once past the northern tip and its challenging currents, a paddler can usually catch the strong south-bound current and coast the couple of miles back to shore, letting the wind and water do most of the work of taking you home.
It started out beautifully. As I entered the deep gulley at the foot of the island, I noticed with a little relief how quickly I was moving--this is another spot where I've had trouble; a deep hole where the bottom drops off sharply and two currents meet. On a calm day, you ride the choppiness. On a hard day, you can be stuck in suspended animation: Your hardest efforts at pulling yourself forward are counteracted by a stronger current, simultaneously pushing you back.
But yesterday I glided through, singing. Singing and surfing, for me, go hand-in-hand. I am not usually conscious of the singing until something makes me stop.
I had made it up the far side of the island. On the horizon just beyond the northern tip I could just make out the silhouettes of two fishing boats; past them, a regalia of sailboats. The closer of the fishing boats had several people in it. It sat low in the water--a small boat with an outboard motor, maybe a few kids out fishing, or a dad giving mom the morning off. The further boat was bigger, sleeker. A lone silhouette was barely detectable on board. I noticed both boats with a corner of my attention -- part of the scenery, they were further out at sea than I had any intention of going.
It snuck up me, as it usually does. I did not see this trouble coming. Looking back, it seemed like one minute was perfection -- pure blythe enjoyment. Then, quickly, it changed.
I was at the hook of the top curve of the island. Trying to cut left, leaning into what had become a strong wind, and turn my board toward the shore. I was facing the right direction, but I wasn't moving. I tried harder, measuring my progress against the rocks to my left. I was making no progress. I got down on my knees--easier on the body, though harder on the back--pushing my whole self into every stroke. My singing had become cursing. I was GODDAMNED going to get through this, this water was NOT stronger than me. Muscling, muscling, efforting through. This is how I move through much of life.
It did no good. I wasn't moving, and now I was exhausted. I looked behind me, at the path that had gotten me here. I hate admitting defeat, but I had to acknowledge that the only way forward seemed to be the way I had come. I had to turn around and go back the long way, if I wanted to get back at all.
I turned around. Started paddling. I could hear the fishing boat with the small group of people passing me, anchoring down in a further spot. I wondered if my distant thrashing was chasing their fish.
Several minutes into my retreat, I had what I have come to think of as my Blair Witch Project moment: I still wasn't going anywhere. I was lined up exactly with the same rock that had been my gauge earlier, showing me that I was standing still.
I had managed to turn my board around, but the tide was pulling me out. The current and the wind were strong. My arms, tingling from exertion, were no match.
I stood for awhile and paddled in place, but gently, trying to use little energy but anxious, now, not to lose more ground to the pull of the tide. Shore suddenly looked very far away.
The decision I finally came to seemed like the safest. I would head for the fishing boat with the lone figure. I knew the tide would carry me out anyway, and while he was further out than I wanted to be, I didn't seem to be able to change the course of that direction. I could head toward the other boat, but I didn't know if it could pull me -- it was already sitting low in the water, and towing me back over the current, closer to shore, seemed like the only answer.
I started towards him. I was on my knees, paddling. I felt uniquely idiotic. When I got close enough to make out his person, I read him as young-ish, local--the reddish-blonde hair under the baseball cap, the ruddy fisherman's complexion, the orange rubber waders he wore, held by suspenders over his shoulders.
I waved. He waved back. He was pulling up anchor. I started to wave more frantically. He paused, stopped, watched.
I made a dash for him. With the last of my energy, I rowed out to within fifteen feet of his boat. I saw that he was handsome underneath dark sunglasses, in a boyish way. His sunburned arms were muscular, strong.
When I was within hearing distance, I called out to him. I explained my predicament. I laughed at my own stupidity. He was shy, awkward, very Yankee, but seemed willing to help. I don't know how we're going to get your board on the boat, he said as we circled each other, doing this odd dance of rescue and introduction. We're not, I replied -- can I pass you my paddle, and can you toss me a tow line?
That's what we did. He took off slowly, me clinging to a seaweedy rope tied to a big white buoy.
I realized, maybe ten minutes into the ride, that 1) this was sort of fun, and 2) it was taking this large motor boat just as long to round the northern tip of the island as it had taken me to realize I wasn't moving. What had I been thinking?
The fisherman kept glancing back at me to make sure I was still holding on. I kept giving him the thumbs-up. He picked up a little speed. I sat on the board, legs now stretched in front of me, one hand gripping the edge of the board, one hand holding the seaweedy buoy line. I realized how far at sea we actually were, and felt the first real discomfort of actual fear. Water was splashing me in the face and I was cold, but it felt like the end was close.
I don't remember the exact moment when I realized this next part, but at some point of the journey I realized that the fisherman's left hand--the one not steering the boat--had disappeared into his waders. One hand steering the boat. The other hand...wait, I thought. Wait. What?
I watched, trying not to watch. I could see part of his left side and back. I kept watching the arm in the waders. I could see the muscles in his forearm flex slightly, then relax. Flex again.
We were out in open water. He had my paddle. I had very little strength left. He was towing me...where?
My adrenaline started pumping. I shifted on my board, got onto my knees. I felt the primal urge to make my presence bigger--as if I was trying to frighten off a barking dog. He glanced back towards me--did he have a rear-view mirror? I don't know that much about boats. Scanning the horizon, I registed that the water was still deep, and that I didn't have the strength to swim to shore, with or without my paddle, with or without my board. I breathed. His arm kept moving.
Then, suddenly, magically, I saw a dot on the horizon. My husband. My waffle-eating husband had come out to surf after all. I may have never been happier to see him.
Oddly, I also felt a pang of guilt. Here I was being towed somewhere by some handsome young fisherman. Going for a ride. I had chosen him, hadn't I? I could have aimed for the other boat, but I didn't. I aimed for the man alone.
As we got closer, I started waving frantically. I couldn't tell if he saw me. The fisherman, on the other hand, turned sharply as I started waving. He followed my gaze, saw my husband maybe a mile away on his board, almost seemed to point him out to me. I smiled and nodded enthusiastically. Yes, he's with me, I pantomimed.
Finally, at some point, I noticed my husband notice me. He had stopped almost still, as if trying to decide what to do. I waved harder. He started paddling in our direction.
It was over then. The moment changed. I waited until the sound of the motor passed on a breeze, and called out to the fisherman. His arm came out from inside his bright orange waders. He turned around. Thank you, I said--this is where I get off. Thank you. Will you pass me my paddle?
We did, exchanging paddle for buoy. I thanked him again and from the short distance I saw a rush of things pass over his face--embarassment, confusion, something else?? I'm not sure. He nodded and sped off, fast.
I lay belly-down on my board, propped on my elbows, and waited for my husband to reach me. When he arrived, I was too tired to explain. I passed him my paddle, tucked my head against the spray from his wake and grabbed hold of the back of his board.
He rowed us home.
Paddle-surfing is similar to longboarding in a few elemental ways. Most basic, you're moving with the rhythm of the water. A paddle-surfer who understands the wind and current can position herself to FLY. [I imagine downhill skiing feels something like this, though I am not a skiier--the cold and the snow being disqualifiers.] Also like longboarding, the power is in balancing, in the rhythm of feeling when to lean this way, when that.
On a deeper level, as I become a more experienced paddle-surfer, I am learning that all surfers also make a decision--consciously or unconsciously--about how to be in this relationship with the water. Will it be a continual battle of wills, I'm-stronger-and-smarter-than-you-think-I-am? Will it be one of reverence mixed with a little fear--what I imagine happens in most houses worship of Western religions? Thank you for allowing me share your bounty, I will proceed with respect and awe.
I'm discovering, in surfing as in my other intimate relationships, that I straddle the two. Usually with some discomfort.
Yesterday was a clear September day, utterly cloudless. Though it was windy at the house, the Sound was flat and blue. I'd brought both my husband's and my surf boards to the beach, though his joining me didn't look promising -- he'd slept past noon when the night before we'd vowed to be on the water by 11 and I'd left him in the kitchen, dozily preparing toaster waffles.
I rowed out into a perfect, clear high tide -- another glory of September is that most of the motor-boaters and godforsaken jetskiiers are gone. With the changing season, the sun was in a noticeably different place on the horizon than it had been all summer, and the change in light was melancholy, glowing, delicious.
My favorite ride this summer has been out to and around an island a couple of miles from our beach. It is long, shaped something like Florida, covered with pine trees and rocks. I start by paddling toward the bottom tip--right around Key West. Make my way up the eastern shore, past Miami. At the northern tip of the island, two strong currents meet. Earlier in the summer, when a hurricane was entering the mid-Atlantic, I kept getting tossed from my board at this intersection, unable to make the connection between the hurricane that was still days away and why the currents were so strong, the water so high. I learn to make these connections gradually, in pieces.
The entire island is maybe two miles in circumference. Once past the northern tip and its challenging currents, a paddler can usually catch the strong south-bound current and coast the couple of miles back to shore, letting the wind and water do most of the work of taking you home.
It started out beautifully. As I entered the deep gulley at the foot of the island, I noticed with a little relief how quickly I was moving--this is another spot where I've had trouble; a deep hole where the bottom drops off sharply and two currents meet. On a calm day, you ride the choppiness. On a hard day, you can be stuck in suspended animation: Your hardest efforts at pulling yourself forward are counteracted by a stronger current, simultaneously pushing you back.
But yesterday I glided through, singing. Singing and surfing, for me, go hand-in-hand. I am not usually conscious of the singing until something makes me stop.
I had made it up the far side of the island. On the horizon just beyond the northern tip I could just make out the silhouettes of two fishing boats; past them, a regalia of sailboats. The closer of the fishing boats had several people in it. It sat low in the water--a small boat with an outboard motor, maybe a few kids out fishing, or a dad giving mom the morning off. The further boat was bigger, sleeker. A lone silhouette was barely detectable on board. I noticed both boats with a corner of my attention -- part of the scenery, they were further out at sea than I had any intention of going.
It snuck up me, as it usually does. I did not see this trouble coming. Looking back, it seemed like one minute was perfection -- pure blythe enjoyment. Then, quickly, it changed.
I was at the hook of the top curve of the island. Trying to cut left, leaning into what had become a strong wind, and turn my board toward the shore. I was facing the right direction, but I wasn't moving. I tried harder, measuring my progress against the rocks to my left. I was making no progress. I got down on my knees--easier on the body, though harder on the back--pushing my whole self into every stroke. My singing had become cursing. I was GODDAMNED going to get through this, this water was NOT stronger than me. Muscling, muscling, efforting through. This is how I move through much of life.
It did no good. I wasn't moving, and now I was exhausted. I looked behind me, at the path that had gotten me here. I hate admitting defeat, but I had to acknowledge that the only way forward seemed to be the way I had come. I had to turn around and go back the long way, if I wanted to get back at all.
I turned around. Started paddling. I could hear the fishing boat with the small group of people passing me, anchoring down in a further spot. I wondered if my distant thrashing was chasing their fish.
Several minutes into my retreat, I had what I have come to think of as my Blair Witch Project moment: I still wasn't going anywhere. I was lined up exactly with the same rock that had been my gauge earlier, showing me that I was standing still.
I had managed to turn my board around, but the tide was pulling me out. The current and the wind were strong. My arms, tingling from exertion, were no match.
I stood for awhile and paddled in place, but gently, trying to use little energy but anxious, now, not to lose more ground to the pull of the tide. Shore suddenly looked very far away.
The decision I finally came to seemed like the safest. I would head for the fishing boat with the lone figure. I knew the tide would carry me out anyway, and while he was further out than I wanted to be, I didn't seem to be able to change the course of that direction. I could head toward the other boat, but I didn't know if it could pull me -- it was already sitting low in the water, and towing me back over the current, closer to shore, seemed like the only answer.
I started towards him. I was on my knees, paddling. I felt uniquely idiotic. When I got close enough to make out his person, I read him as young-ish, local--the reddish-blonde hair under the baseball cap, the ruddy fisherman's complexion, the orange rubber waders he wore, held by suspenders over his shoulders.
I waved. He waved back. He was pulling up anchor. I started to wave more frantically. He paused, stopped, watched.
I made a dash for him. With the last of my energy, I rowed out to within fifteen feet of his boat. I saw that he was handsome underneath dark sunglasses, in a boyish way. His sunburned arms were muscular, strong.
When I was within hearing distance, I called out to him. I explained my predicament. I laughed at my own stupidity. He was shy, awkward, very Yankee, but seemed willing to help. I don't know how we're going to get your board on the boat, he said as we circled each other, doing this odd dance of rescue and introduction. We're not, I replied -- can I pass you my paddle, and can you toss me a tow line?
That's what we did. He took off slowly, me clinging to a seaweedy rope tied to a big white buoy.
I realized, maybe ten minutes into the ride, that 1) this was sort of fun, and 2) it was taking this large motor boat just as long to round the northern tip of the island as it had taken me to realize I wasn't moving. What had I been thinking?
The fisherman kept glancing back at me to make sure I was still holding on. I kept giving him the thumbs-up. He picked up a little speed. I sat on the board, legs now stretched in front of me, one hand gripping the edge of the board, one hand holding the seaweedy buoy line. I realized how far at sea we actually were, and felt the first real discomfort of actual fear. Water was splashing me in the face and I was cold, but it felt like the end was close.
I don't remember the exact moment when I realized this next part, but at some point of the journey I realized that the fisherman's left hand--the one not steering the boat--had disappeared into his waders. One hand steering the boat. The other hand...wait, I thought. Wait. What?
I watched, trying not to watch. I could see part of his left side and back. I kept watching the arm in the waders. I could see the muscles in his forearm flex slightly, then relax. Flex again.
We were out in open water. He had my paddle. I had very little strength left. He was towing me...where?
My adrenaline started pumping. I shifted on my board, got onto my knees. I felt the primal urge to make my presence bigger--as if I was trying to frighten off a barking dog. He glanced back towards me--did he have a rear-view mirror? I don't know that much about boats. Scanning the horizon, I registed that the water was still deep, and that I didn't have the strength to swim to shore, with or without my paddle, with or without my board. I breathed. His arm kept moving.
Then, suddenly, magically, I saw a dot on the horizon. My husband. My waffle-eating husband had come out to surf after all. I may have never been happier to see him.
Oddly, I also felt a pang of guilt. Here I was being towed somewhere by some handsome young fisherman. Going for a ride. I had chosen him, hadn't I? I could have aimed for the other boat, but I didn't. I aimed for the man alone.
As we got closer, I started waving frantically. I couldn't tell if he saw me. The fisherman, on the other hand, turned sharply as I started waving. He followed my gaze, saw my husband maybe a mile away on his board, almost seemed to point him out to me. I smiled and nodded enthusiastically. Yes, he's with me, I pantomimed.
Finally, at some point, I noticed my husband notice me. He had stopped almost still, as if trying to decide what to do. I waved harder. He started paddling in our direction.
It was over then. The moment changed. I waited until the sound of the motor passed on a breeze, and called out to the fisherman. His arm came out from inside his bright orange waders. He turned around. Thank you, I said--this is where I get off. Thank you. Will you pass me my paddle?
We did, exchanging paddle for buoy. I thanked him again and from the short distance I saw a rush of things pass over his face--embarassment, confusion, something else?? I'm not sure. He nodded and sped off, fast.
I lay belly-down on my board, propped on my elbows, and waited for my husband to reach me. When he arrived, I was too tired to explain. I passed him my paddle, tucked my head against the spray from his wake and grabbed hold of the back of his board.
He rowed us home.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Things to love
This is a list of things as I remember them.
1.) Back in the years before my husband was my husband, we had a short, rageful argument about travel. Somehow we go into a theoretical debate about what percentage of our lives we wanted to spend traveling, and his conclusion was that he wanted to travel very little. I, who still get excited on small aircraft bound anywhere (I loved Lexington, Kentucky) thought a life without travel insane.
Anyway, I remember having a short, bitter argument. I remember feeling so strongly that this was an issue I would question staying in the relationship over -- actual time in therapy was spent discussing what travel meant to us.
A few months later, for my birthday, my to-be gave me the best birthday gift anyone had ever given me, or has since: a handmade Ticket to Anywhere coupon, for the vacation of my choice. I'd like to think it was an apology, but in truth I think he'd forgotten. This is something I love.
2.) When my husband and I first met, we rented a house together for a few weekends over a summer at the beach. We'd take a blanket to the beach at night to get away from everyone else and look at stars and talk and sleep. They were long, hazy summer days. One afternoon, groggy from a beach nap, I tucked my sunglasses into the cleavage of my bathing suit (the perfect place, I find, for most spectacles). Walking the short distance from our blanket to the ocean, I splashed cold water on my face and watched my favorite sunglasses slip from between my breasts to the frothing ocean at my feet.
I stood up sharply and burst into hysterical tears. These glasses, these tortoise shell perfect brown prescription sunglasses, had been my last physical remnant of Him.
He was the guy I loved before my husband, who had hurt me badly. Our relationship had ended quickly and painfully, but I had learned a lot about myself. Which in my experience is how it goes.
The last time any part of me had seen him, felt him, smelled him, been near him, I had been wearing these sunglasses. And I had just watched them swirl to their death at my feet.
The man not yet my husband, yards away, saw this and ran over, frantically asking to know what had happened. I lost my sunglasses, I think I choked out.
I sobbed into his chest for maybe five minutes before he asked, as much as observed, "This isn't about sunglasses, is it?"
I said no, and he held me for as long as I needed to cry. This is something I love.
3) Interestingly, another memory of an argument. I don't remember what, but I remember where: We were in my apartment. I was righteously indignant at him for not knowing to provide something for me that I hadn't been able to articulate needing--support in some physical or emotional way, I don't remember which. In the heat of argument, I must have asked him, DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU EXACTLY WHAT I WANT?????
He looked me straight in the eye, his piercing green, and to paraphrase, he said:
Yes, dear. You may be required to ask for what you want.
This is something I love.
1.) Back in the years before my husband was my husband, we had a short, rageful argument about travel. Somehow we go into a theoretical debate about what percentage of our lives we wanted to spend traveling, and his conclusion was that he wanted to travel very little. I, who still get excited on small aircraft bound anywhere (I loved Lexington, Kentucky) thought a life without travel insane.
Anyway, I remember having a short, bitter argument. I remember feeling so strongly that this was an issue I would question staying in the relationship over -- actual time in therapy was spent discussing what travel meant to us.
A few months later, for my birthday, my to-be gave me the best birthday gift anyone had ever given me, or has since: a handmade Ticket to Anywhere coupon, for the vacation of my choice. I'd like to think it was an apology, but in truth I think he'd forgotten. This is something I love.
2.) When my husband and I first met, we rented a house together for a few weekends over a summer at the beach. We'd take a blanket to the beach at night to get away from everyone else and look at stars and talk and sleep. They were long, hazy summer days. One afternoon, groggy from a beach nap, I tucked my sunglasses into the cleavage of my bathing suit (the perfect place, I find, for most spectacles). Walking the short distance from our blanket to the ocean, I splashed cold water on my face and watched my favorite sunglasses slip from between my breasts to the frothing ocean at my feet.
I stood up sharply and burst into hysterical tears. These glasses, these tortoise shell perfect brown prescription sunglasses, had been my last physical remnant of Him.
He was the guy I loved before my husband, who had hurt me badly. Our relationship had ended quickly and painfully, but I had learned a lot about myself. Which in my experience is how it goes.
The last time any part of me had seen him, felt him, smelled him, been near him, I had been wearing these sunglasses. And I had just watched them swirl to their death at my feet.
The man not yet my husband, yards away, saw this and ran over, frantically asking to know what had happened. I lost my sunglasses, I think I choked out.
I sobbed into his chest for maybe five minutes before he asked, as much as observed, "This isn't about sunglasses, is it?"
I said no, and he held me for as long as I needed to cry. This is something I love.
3) Interestingly, another memory of an argument. I don't remember what, but I remember where: We were in my apartment. I was righteously indignant at him for not knowing to provide something for me that I hadn't been able to articulate needing--support in some physical or emotional way, I don't remember which. In the heat of argument, I must have asked him, DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU EXACTLY WHAT I WANT?????
He looked me straight in the eye, his piercing green, and to paraphrase, he said:
Yes, dear. You may be required to ask for what you want.
This is something I love.
Monday, September 7, 2009
A reason, a season or a lifetime
This is going to be about New York City. If you don't love New York City, read no further; this might bore you to tears.
I believe that I fell in love with the city in stages. It came fleetingly.
I grew up just outside of New York, my parents both native New Yorkers -- first-generation Americans of immigrant parents. There are pictures of me taken in Central Park from before I can remember. Sunny picnics, me a baby. I was born in Manhattan, in a hospital that no longer exists.
Months before I was born, my parents, my 11-month old sister and my maternal grandparents moved, together, to a suburb just outside the city. I like to think they were awaiting my arrival. The year was was 1965. Women wore girdles.
I arrived that hot summer. I spent my first twenty or so years on a sort-of-urban, sort-of-suburban street, high on a hill overlooking the Hudson River.
As a younger child growing up a mere twenty-minute drive from the Upper West Side, New York was mostly a hassle. The city was a place adults always, annoyingly, wanted to travel to. This seemed to involve extensively detailed planning, parking and taxis and walking in uncomfortable shoes.
By high school, New York had become a place to come on weekends--if you were lucky enough to have a friend with a drivers' license and a car. We'd drive straight down Broadway into Manhattan, park near Washington Square Park and spend the day dipping our toes into the danger and the intrigue and the millions of lives taking place around us. We'd leave in the late afternoon, exhausted and giddy, and not come back for months.
When I got home from college, I moved back into the house I grew up in for a few years. This is a story for another time. I knew of nowhere else to turn to plan my escape, so I turned to New York. I found a job -- the first interview I went on that didn't require a typing test. At 22, with a B.A. from a good school and solo travel abroad under my belt, my first career decision came down to my typing skills (or lack thereof).
I started working in Manhattan as a commuter, miserably still living in the house overlooking the Hudson. Through my work, I started dating a man who was a few years older than me. He had relocated from the South specifically to live and work in New York -- he didn't much care wat he was doing, as long as he was doing it here. He adored the city, and pulled me into it with a kind of determinaton that had never occurred to me. For th first time I saw Manhattan as he did: a deep, dark river of possibility that one could dive into for its underside, its vibrant strangeness.
Several years into the relationship -- with the boyfriend and New York -- I started working on Wall Street. I think I started appreciating the physical beauty of Manhattan for the first time then. Being surrounded by water has always felt right, to me.
I finally moved into Manhattan about 15 years ago, in an argument with that same boyfriend. We wanted to live together, but he refused to leave New York and I refused to leave Brooklyn, where I'd finally happily planted seeds and started spreading roots. He won the stalemate. I moved into Manhatan. We broke up. I kept the apartment. I've never left it. My husband and I have lived here for almost a decade.
This morning when I woke, I realized the date: September 12. Yesterday was grey and drizzly and unseasonably cold -- the first not-piercingly-blue September 11th since the one that changed us all. It was here in this apartment that my husband, not yet my husband, came home to me on that other September 11th. Covered in ash and soot, stinking of smoke and sweat. Dirty and silent and a different man. I wondered if he, if we, if this city, if the world, would ever be the same. I don't know if we are.
With this rushing through my mind this morning, something I read recently dropped into my mind. It was about love. On first skim I'd thought, oh no, this is too schmaltzy. But when I tried to prove it false, it withstood my own internal arguments.
It was a passage based on the premise that love is always brought into one's life for one of three purposes: a reason, a season or a lifetime.
This is my interpretation.
If love has entered your life for a reason, it has come to teach you something. It will likely be painful. It might be brief. There is something you need to learn, you will learn it, and the love will move on.
At other times, love will arrive for a season. Like the winter of your discontent, or the springtime of your marriage. Whatever the details, it happens like a season blooming--coming slowly into abundant life, becoming gloriously full, then slowly fading when its natural course has run.
Happily, there are also times when love comes ino one's life for a lifetime. This is love that will always be with you. It will stand every test of time.
It feels strange to say this, but I don't know which category my marriage falls into. On different days, I hope that time will categorize it differently. I don't know what category my current extracurricular crush falls into, either. Will it even amount to a category?
With New York, on the other hand, the relationship is clear. No matter where life leads me, I will forever love this city. I find comfort in this. We are tied together forever -- she was here before me and she'll be here after me; my experience of life has been woven inextricably into New York. The crowds and the frustrations and the slivers of magic she offers up with sudden reckless abandon; the bounty of New York, for me, is the promise of always having at least one more chance at choosing a completely different kind of life. Or sometimes, maybe not equally good but sometimes just enough, a completely different kind of day. I will love her forever. For this alone, I am truly rich.
I believe that I fell in love with the city in stages. It came fleetingly.
I grew up just outside of New York, my parents both native New Yorkers -- first-generation Americans of immigrant parents. There are pictures of me taken in Central Park from before I can remember. Sunny picnics, me a baby. I was born in Manhattan, in a hospital that no longer exists.
Months before I was born, my parents, my 11-month old sister and my maternal grandparents moved, together, to a suburb just outside the city. I like to think they were awaiting my arrival. The year was was 1965. Women wore girdles.
I arrived that hot summer. I spent my first twenty or so years on a sort-of-urban, sort-of-suburban street, high on a hill overlooking the Hudson River.
As a younger child growing up a mere twenty-minute drive from the Upper West Side, New York was mostly a hassle. The city was a place adults always, annoyingly, wanted to travel to. This seemed to involve extensively detailed planning, parking and taxis and walking in uncomfortable shoes.
By high school, New York had become a place to come on weekends--if you were lucky enough to have a friend with a drivers' license and a car. We'd drive straight down Broadway into Manhattan, park near Washington Square Park and spend the day dipping our toes into the danger and the intrigue and the millions of lives taking place around us. We'd leave in the late afternoon, exhausted and giddy, and not come back for months.
When I got home from college, I moved back into the house I grew up in for a few years. This is a story for another time. I knew of nowhere else to turn to plan my escape, so I turned to New York. I found a job -- the first interview I went on that didn't require a typing test. At 22, with a B.A. from a good school and solo travel abroad under my belt, my first career decision came down to my typing skills (or lack thereof).
I started working in Manhattan as a commuter, miserably still living in the house overlooking the Hudson. Through my work, I started dating a man who was a few years older than me. He had relocated from the South specifically to live and work in New York -- he didn't much care wat he was doing, as long as he was doing it here. He adored the city, and pulled me into it with a kind of determinaton that had never occurred to me. For th first time I saw Manhattan as he did: a deep, dark river of possibility that one could dive into for its underside, its vibrant strangeness.
Several years into the relationship -- with the boyfriend and New York -- I started working on Wall Street. I think I started appreciating the physical beauty of Manhattan for the first time then. Being surrounded by water has always felt right, to me.
I finally moved into Manhattan about 15 years ago, in an argument with that same boyfriend. We wanted to live together, but he refused to leave New York and I refused to leave Brooklyn, where I'd finally happily planted seeds and started spreading roots. He won the stalemate. I moved into Manhatan. We broke up. I kept the apartment. I've never left it. My husband and I have lived here for almost a decade.
This morning when I woke, I realized the date: September 12. Yesterday was grey and drizzly and unseasonably cold -- the first not-piercingly-blue September 11th since the one that changed us all. It was here in this apartment that my husband, not yet my husband, came home to me on that other September 11th. Covered in ash and soot, stinking of smoke and sweat. Dirty and silent and a different man. I wondered if he, if we, if this city, if the world, would ever be the same. I don't know if we are.
With this rushing through my mind this morning, something I read recently dropped into my mind. It was about love. On first skim I'd thought, oh no, this is too schmaltzy. But when I tried to prove it false, it withstood my own internal arguments.
It was a passage based on the premise that love is always brought into one's life for one of three purposes: a reason, a season or a lifetime.
This is my interpretation.
If love has entered your life for a reason, it has come to teach you something. It will likely be painful. It might be brief. There is something you need to learn, you will learn it, and the love will move on.
At other times, love will arrive for a season. Like the winter of your discontent, or the springtime of your marriage. Whatever the details, it happens like a season blooming--coming slowly into abundant life, becoming gloriously full, then slowly fading when its natural course has run.
Happily, there are also times when love comes ino one's life for a lifetime. This is love that will always be with you. It will stand every test of time.
It feels strange to say this, but I don't know which category my marriage falls into. On different days, I hope that time will categorize it differently. I don't know what category my current extracurricular crush falls into, either. Will it even amount to a category?
With New York, on the other hand, the relationship is clear. No matter where life leads me, I will forever love this city. I find comfort in this. We are tied together forever -- she was here before me and she'll be here after me; my experience of life has been woven inextricably into New York. The crowds and the frustrations and the slivers of magic she offers up with sudden reckless abandon; the bounty of New York, for me, is the promise of always having at least one more chance at choosing a completely different kind of life. Or sometimes, maybe not equally good but sometimes just enough, a completely different kind of day. I will love her forever. For this alone, I am truly rich.
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