My maternal grandparents’ house in Halifax was full of secret nooks and magical spots. To a child seeking escape, they offered sweet refuge. Set on a hill overlooking the Northwest Arm, an inlet that bends off of Halifax Harbour, the house was, and still is, known as Winwick, a name etched in the glass of the red front door.
Down the blackberry bush-lined long driveway, it was a world away from Northern Virginia in the sixties. After a two-day trip in the Malibu wagon, where youngest of four I was consigned, despite constant carsickness, to the far back, I was finally liberated. I knew that in this place the strife of home and politics would be set aside, and perhaps more than anything I felt relief in the joy I saw my mother revert to in her birthplace and native Canada.
There, it was all about the water. A path off the sloping lawn led through a brief scrubby (as all are in Nova Scotia) woods full of teaberry that we chewed, and wild blueberries that we so carefully picked, to a steep wooden stair down to the rocky beach. Just before you came to the top of the stairs you got a glimpse of the water, which of course you’d seen in the wide open view from the lawn, but this was different. It was that first through-the-looking-glass, Lewis and Clark finding the Pacific sort of view that felt the most real, you knew it would be only moments until you were on the beach, finding barnacle and mussel colonies and other treasures, smelling, feeling, tasting the salt water in real time.
The water was like 40 degrees even in high summer so for us Yankees from down south swimming was pretty rare. But the boathouse and dock provided a place to hang out and dangle feet off of, to observe the creatures in the crystal clear water below, especially a giant lobster rumored to be several decades old.
And then there was the rowboat. The rowboat was really my sister Jane’s domain, she who was more of the awesome tomboy than elder Eileen or early-on sickly me. But as I grew and got stronger, increasingly we shared it, and I became pretty adept at the oars. And we all learned to sail, either from one of the clubs or with friends, and the snap of the sail, the salt water wind in your face were a new magic. But the rowboat would always hold a special place in my heart.
A long, hot summer, this summer of 2018. So long and hot and frankly brutal in some ways that I am almost surprised to find myself on the other side, a week beyond the equinox on the last day of September writing in the past tense. The extreme weather, yes for sure. But an emotional firestorm of life events as well continues to tax me to my core, with the lack of a possibility of getting away not helping. Some of the learning opportunities the universe continues to offer me include heart and soul crushing neglect and betrayals, as well as more mundane cost of living challenges. Sorrowfully, perhaps tragically, people I believed to be capable of base decency, and of possibly acceding to grace when the moment presented, turned out capable of neither, not only lacking enough heart, but really any heart at all.
At best, it has felt like I’d barely glimpsed the water and then was thrown back in the Chevy, never to run across the lawn and down the stairs, examine barnacles and mussel colonies and breathe. At worst– well, it does get worse.
In a dream the other night I was back in Winwick, back in the beautiful old house. But even in the dream it was all too finite. It was time to leave, and it was clear for the last time. From the living room I looked toward the entry hall, thinking of how I was going to frame a picture of the front door, and it was then I woke up.
This past summer more than ever I summoned and kept close that glimpse of water. Driving windows down through heat wave after heat wave in faithful Blue, sans AC as what little remains could strain the 290K mile well-traveled engine– down to my bones I feel that glimpse and its soul renewal.
For many years I kept a Calvin & Hobbes one-panel comic up on the frig. It showed the pair bent over, gazing with glee at something snaking over the ground. “A trickle of water!!! We’re going to be here ALL DAY” went the caption. That sweet focus of the young and innocent without distraction– I think it is one of the special joys of being a parent, seeing it in your children, reliving those pure, forgotten moments of childhood. And what is it about water: even a trickle offers endless fascination.
Two summers ago I wrote about a recurring contact with burning, usually myself and/or food in the kitchen, and fire. Now, at the end of this long hot summer of 2018, there’s this sense of needing to get to a healing place of water.
This sweet, sad country song was playing a lot the summer of 2016, “Burning House.”
I had a dream about a burning house
You were stuck inside
I couldn’t get you out
I lay beside you and pulled you close
And the two of us went up in smoke
Last Sunday, I turned the oven on to do some cooking, ahead of another marathon week. While the oven was preheating I happened to walk by just as flames were beginning to leap up inside. Electrical fire– baking soda, water, or something else? I frantically tried to remember what was best, reaching for the off button. Fortunately that was enough to stop it; the coil fizzed, turned white, and slowly broke in two. Too much heat.
I’ve been sleepwalking
Been wandering all night
Trying to take what’s lost and broke and make it right
I’ve been sleepwalking
Too close to the fire
But it’s the only place that I can hold you tight
In this burning house
The coil, I ordered a replacement. I’ll cut the circuit and see if I can manage to replace it myself. My own overloaded circuitry, that’s something else.
Flames are getting bigger now
In this burning house
I can hold on to you somehow
In this burning house
Oh and I don’t wanna wake up
In this burning house
The Daily Om in my inbox this morning was “Living a Life of Grace.”
“When we accept that we always exist in a state of grace, we are able to live our lives more graciously.
To be able to live in a state of grace is not based on worthiness, nor is it earned through good deeds, ritual, or sacrifice. Rather it is an unearned favor, freely bestowed and available to all…Knowing we are graced gives us hope, makes us more generous, and allows us to trust that we are taken care of even when we are going through difficult times. Grace is our benevolence of heart, and our generosity of spirit. Grace is unconditional love and the beauty that is our humanity.
It feels like I continue to walk the edge of fire, ever at risk of falling in, struggling to maintain some aspect of grace. Grace to hold me as I walk the line, grace to protect me from the blistering heat, grace to see me through. Grace to accept I cannot save those who don’t want saving. Grace of seeing through a child’s eyes; grace of a glimpse through the trees of beloved water, patiently waiting down below.