When the Wind Blows, the Fence Comes
Down
You can look and look at something
in your life daily and not really see any changes, any meaning or growth then
bam an event happens that either gets your attention or you shrug it off. I am happy without big calamities in our
lives. Both my husband and I like calm
and quiet in our life. Our great
adventure today was going to the beach for our daily walk. We haven’t been on the beach for over a year
and while this may sound tragic to some people since we only live five minutes
away but we did not move here to be going to the beach a lot. We moved here because I was pregnant with our
son, my husband did not have a job and his mom and dad thought that moving into
their house was a good idea all around until the baby was here and their son
had a job. Needlessly to say, we have
never moved away from the coast. We have
put down roots we bought a house and after many years of working at various
jobs we now have permanent jobs with retirement benefits. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Ah, but it is on days like we are
having today with sunshine, a warm temperature and no wind on a February day
that causes small undefined events to happen in my heart, my mind and
soul. I long for the days when I can get
up in the morning when my body awakens from its slumber in a leisurely manner
and after taking time for petting the cat who believes that a great deal of
attention is warranted after a night of deprivation, helping myself to a nice
cup of green tea, a bit of time reading while sipping my tea with a walk added
in after some consideration of whether or not the page turning can be
interrupted by such a foolish notion as preparing something to eat before
heading out the door.
My husband is currently in rehearsal
for another play and I have to admit despite the great comfort I received from
his presence in the house, I am still somewhat happy to see him head out the
door to do something other than catering to my needs, desires and
projects. I am trying to broaden my
horizons, putting together a new puzzle, working on learning how to do
crossword puzzle (I pick up a book on the easiest crossword puzzles for
beginners, I am pleased to announce that I am smarter that I thought I was in
working on the puzzles, I just wish that I had more time).
Really, it all comes down to
time. When you work at an eight to five
job, your morning is quite busy with paying attention to the alarm clock (mine
sleeps under a heavy towel, the tick, ticking annoys me). After the clock’s alarm rings, it is a routine
of checking to see if we can go walking for our daily mile walk depending on
the weather until returning home for my morning tonic drink of hot lemon water,
honey, cayenne pepper, ginger and turmeric.
My husband starts running water for doing the dishes, making his tea
while I peel the banana, orange to begin our breakfast. I won’t bore you with the rest of making
breakfast, taking our baths, and getting dressed just be assured that somehow
we make it out the door to work.
In between all of this routine, is
the reading of the many books that I have placed on the dining room table as
well as my tablet with a kindle book on it.
It seems that it is the only time that I get to read in a day is at mealtime. Five minutes here and there with lots of
regrets as I head out the door to work leaving various characters to rest on
the unturned pages until I returned. Ah,
being retired is somewhat wasted on the older generation and the young, well,
so many now have their eyes glued to their cell phones, texting as they walk
down the streets, listening to I-pods without realizing that the trees that
they passing are waking up with new buds on their bare branches or the simple
beauty of white clouds passing in the sky. I have my doubts that they read or have any
deep philosophical thoughts.
I realized that I was part of the
group that was ignoring the magic of what was happening around me when we were
walking on the beach this lovely February morning. I was caught up in worrying about sneaker
waves coming in through the tide was heading out, my husband reassured me about
the tide before we got on the sandy beach.
I was timid on climbing on the rocks as I watched the waves partially
surrounded us. On the return walk back to the car, I found
myself relaxing more and more as I breathe the salty tinged air of ocean
spray. I was lulled by the waves coming
onto the shore. They bought memories of
growing up on the main Salmon river in Idaho where the rush of water was
constant, tumbling loudly in the spring when swollen with the run off of
melting snow, twisting and turning along the banks in the summer with a slowness
that comes with a river that had been partially drained off for irrigation of the
various farmers’ fields that line the sides of the river. There were orchards
of plums, apricots, cherries, peaches and vast plantings of the famous Idaho
potatoes along the river, all which drink up the water of the Salmon River as
it runs to join the Columbia.
The ocean has moods
just as the river with the seasons, varying with the time of day and the
temperature of the air that surrounds it. I have been constantly amazed by the
ocean’s colors, power and changes of its surface and waves. I have always had an overpowering sense of
what my father called the God Almighty that seems to fill my soul whenever I
walk on the shore. I know that happened
today while we walking on the shoreline.
Once again, why don’t I do it more
often? Work, exhaustion, for sometimes
when I get home, I know that if I sit down for a moment I am lost, completely. There have been days when I just want to go
to bed and I do. I don’t care if it is
five thirty or seven o’clock. My mind
shuts down, my eyes refuse to function, my stomach tells me that breakfast in
the morning is good enough and I skip dinner as I tumble to bed. My husband worries enough that there are
times that he does work on making me something to eat to encourage me to do so,
at those times, I become an automatic thing that lifts morsels of sustenance to
my mouth for processing.
Back to unexpected events happening
in our lives. I watched the leaning of
the corner of our backyard fence during one of our rain and wind storms, I
pointed it out to my dear husband who took advantage of a break in between
storms to try and prop up the fence with boards pushed against it. While doing so, he decided to check out the
sump pump under the house which did not seem to be running. After crawling in 8 inches of chilly water,
he determined that the sump pump had a great crack in it and we needed a new
one. I helped him by running him a hot
tub, getting him a hot cup of tea and letting him know that I was calling
around to find a new one. I located one
in Corvallis, an hour’s drive from our home.
While he was soaking in the warmth of the hot water to chase away the
chill of his adventure beneath the house, I told my husband that we were
driving to the valley to a Home Depot to pick up the sump pump and whatever
else he needed. He did not argue.
The next day was a holiday and my
husband spent it getting the sump pump out of the box, reading the instructions
and planning out his attack. I went for
a lovely hour massage. He had worked a
bit on gluing fittings the night before and while I was gone (he informed me
when I got home) he decided to make sure that the pump worked so in the comfort
of our kitchen, he placed the pump in a clean bucket of water and turned it
on. He explained to me that the pump had
worked, perhaps too well. While I was
suffering under the hands of my masseuse,
my sweet man was busy drying off the ceiling, cupboards, floor and walls of the
kitchen where the bursts of water from the sump pump had landed. I was thankful that I had missed the event
and was only present for the telling of the tale.
On a cold January day, I stood in
the doorway of the garage watching my man strip down to his underwear,
shivering when he put on the cold icy wet clothes of pants, sweatshirt, socks
and shoes from the day before that he had taken off after crawling under the
house in the cold water. I asked why he didn’t put on dry clothes, he answered
because he was just going to get them wet again. After he was dressed, I went back into the
house, put on two more sweaters and turned up the heat in sympathy. I am all
about sympathy and I was trying my best to be warm while he crept back into the
cold water under the house. I checked on
his progress periodically with my hands gripping my hot cup of green tea as I
peered toward the access way under the house where the comforting sounds of
banging came.
After he had installed the new sump
pump we both enjoyed watching the water stream into the gutter of our street. We
turned to look at the propped up fence, sigh and called our contractor. The
highlight of this project was a nifty flashlight that could wear on his head
while he worked. Some people get all the
luck.
Things come in three,
right? As I look back on it all, the warning
light coming on in the car was not part of the pack of three. It was the
washing machine that was starting to scream when it was spinning that started
the ball rolling, followed by the fence being blowing down completely in a heavy rain storm that
sported gale force winds and the sump pump that was cracked and had to be
replaced so our house would remain dry. You can look at it all philosophically as the
outward manifestation of an internal turmoil in our hearts and minds but I
think that you would be a long time looking for an internal source in either my
husband or myself as both of us are pretty even minded and are luckily are
generally filled with calm and peace.
I am not waiting for the next time
the wind blows and the fence falls down to gather as much peace and happiness
in my heart and mind. It exists. Not at the edge of my fingertips, or outside
my door but in my heart where the divine spirit of everything dwells without
any effort on my part, I just have to be.
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