storm tides

The largest of the tree trunks on our side of the lagoon used to lie perpendicular to the water. Today I noticed it was parallel. This particular piece of wood - I hesitate to call it a log - is about the size of my Volvo station wagon. I began to notice, on my mid-day walk, how much the landscape had changed.

Certainly this happens every day. Each tide, regardless of how mild it might be, rearranges some of the spit, or brings new detritus, or uncovers yards upon yards of polished stones, or maybe covers them up again with sand. But this latest storm pushed new logs into the lagoon and even up upon the walking trails, flooded much of the interior meadow, and washed enough clay and silt into the bay that in front of the bluffs, the water looked a bit like pea soup. At low tide mid-day, I noticed that the slope of the beach was much gentler, and didn't bother my knee so much.

Here and there sand had cascaded over the lowest of the dunes and washed over the grasses. If the plants don't recover before summer, there could be further erosion. This isn't anything new, of course. I certainly have no idea what this beach looked like long ago or what it's likely to become in the far future. I am certain that it is always changing.

I like the beach just the way it is. I don't want it to change. I don't want the meadow paths to be re-routed to higher ground. I don't want the dunes to erode, and evict the mice and voles that Inti loves to chase and hunt. But the tide will come, and then the storms, and the the whole scene will be repainted into exactly what it must be. It's not benign or malignant forces that make it so. That's just how it all works.

Yesterday hobbitt took the purge for today's colonoscopy. While it's routine, it's also urgent. His family history of cancer is even stronger than mine, and his younger brother succumbed to colon cancer eight years ago at a very young age. This is something we live with and don't think about too much. It is what it is.

But last night he was violently ill from the substances that were cleaning him out. It was shocking to me, since this is the 4th time he's been through this. When hobbitt feels ill, he reels in his attention and focus, doesn't complain, asks for nothing, and interacts very little. I always have a hard time with this, since this is the man who cannot walk by me without touching me lovingly, on my cheek or hair or shoulder. I get a little nervous, and impatient, and even sometimes peeved, and it always takes a while for me to realize that I'm actually quite afraid.

This morning, to see him so incapacitated after the procedure, provoked even stronger feelings of fear. In the past I wasn't able to be with him until he was further along coming out of anesthesia. "Aren't they wonderful when they're sleeping?" the nurse said to me, right after his gurney had been wheeled back to me in the recovery room. Sleeping, yes. But this isn't sleeping. This is Demerol and Versed and this is my man, helpless and vulnerable. This is my partner, my best friend, my companion, my lover, my love. This is the other half of what I have become: not a single being, but a part of us.

Today, while watching him emerge from the drugs, came a sobering possibility. And this is different. This is change. I don't want this change. What I want is that this vital and masculine irresistible being never change, never age, never fall ill. It's cruel, this living, aging, this passage of time. I want everything to be, forever, just what it is now. I don't want to have to navigate a different landscape for us, or for myself.

Of course that's a ridiculous desire. And of course I don't believe that this life is cruel, really. This is just how it works. One day, maybe soon, maybe a long long time from now, one of us won't be here. I'm not afraid to die and I'm fairly certain that someday hobbitt will die, too. There's no getting around that. But I looked at my fear today, in pondering my irritation, and what I saw more clearly than ever was the wicked illusion of security. I forget that I can have this moment indeed, but I can only have it right now. My next breath delivers me to an altered sphere, even if I am not capable or brave enough to acknowledge the change.

Our life together here is precisely like the beach and the tides. It works as it is designed, it has a rhythm, but its evolving nature gets lost in the routines and comforts of one another until some violent mid-winter storm shatters the illusion of permanence. And I'm kidding myself if I say it hasn't happened to us before, so why it should come as a surprise to me today is hardly excusable. And yet once again I find myself in deep sadness at the ephemeral nature of it all, simply because I'm attached to how sweet and rich our life has become. I like this "us" thing and I don't know what comes after it, nor do I want to know.

I took my last walk of the day at twilight. The bay waters were as still as glass. The tide was well in, and the sandy real estate was much reduced. That made it all the more clear how the beach had been rearranged, with those hulking behemoths of tree trunks moved about like so many dominoes. I had to pick a different route approaching the end of the spit, and dammit, I didn't want to have to think about that. I just wanted to walk the regular walk around those logs as I had on Monday. Of course that wasn't an option, and though I had to weave into and out of the dunes, and wend my way around the flooding in the meadow, I eventually came to my favorite place just outside the copse of trees at the very end of the point. I looked up and saw the waxing crescent moon just above the deep silhouettes of the firs and cedars, and it took my breath away. A while later I was back on the beachfront and the heron, startled, raised it massive wings and lifted its body just above the water, flying past me and delivering its hoarse croaking complaint. Both events were lovely moments, and once again I was able to inhabit those moments, fully.

Putting words to my uncomfortable fear doesn't solve anything, of course, but it is a start. I don't want to get to the end of all this and puzzle, with regret and panic, "What was this life?" I love this man. I have him now. And that has to be enough, because that is all there is.