I no longer remember what awaits inside the cardboard and plastic boxes in storage.
Kitchen gadgets, artwork, professional clothes, toys, stuffed animals, games, random knickknacks, all stacked upon each other, like building blocks of a past life, with room for collecting objects, like memories, like proof of participating in a material world.
We are in the process of moving from our 30-foot trailer to a cabin that is not any bigger, but warm and dry, with hot water on demand. We feel both relieved and frustrated as we make yet another move, its nice to be in a place without condensation dripping down the walls, but we are now even more discombobulated as we were before with items split between our trailer and under-construction home as we add a third destination for clothes, food, shoes, and for the dogs to wonder to on their own.
We are living in-between places.
And yet I need to toast my children, with an extra hip-hip-hooray for Elias, as they continue to adjust to all these changes with relative ease.
"I love this cabin," Olive said, as Nick and I glanced at each other with tired eyes and dropped our bags on the ground.
Elias, our boy who covets routine, who loves elevators for their predictable patterns, tells a neighbor, "There was some issues with the framing of our house and so we can't insulate yet and so we are living in a cabin now. Its so small!" He says, as he smiles and claps his hands.
Its smaller than the cabin we lived in last winter, about the size of our living room in the house we're building--but I woke up warm on my first night and didn't need to haul water for dishes. There's a shower and a toilet, that flushes, inside. No more running across the muddy yard to the outhouse in the rain, in the dark. No more shower surfing between family and friends.
We finally met with our contractor last week and he walked through our house shaking his head and apologizing for the mistakes made. He took responsibility for the corrections needed, even though he sub-contracted out the actual work. He says a crew will arrive next week to fix all the issues and get the place ready for insulation.
We want to believe him.
We hope to move in this winter, but chose to rent the cabin in case we can't.
And so in the meantime, we will be packing and unpacking bags to move back and forth between sites, to spend evenings at our house doing what projects we can, driving down the half-mile driveway to the Captain's Cabin at Miller's Landing on Lowell Point below our home.
And yet, I can not wallow when I remember the world around me, the people of Puerto Rico without water or electricity, without a plan to rebuild their broken homes, their destroyed infrastructure, without the ability to navigate between places.
That which feels hard to me, is a mere pebble compared to the obstacles other people face.
I had an opportunity this week to travel to Soldotna, to walk on the south beach of the mouth of the Kenai, where I collected driftwood and stones for my garden on a rare sunny day. I packed an apple, my journal, and a bubbly adult beverage in the backpack I used to haul rocks.
Towards the end of my two hours of beach-combing, a young couple walked in my direction, they stopped more than once, his hands on her hips, her fingers graced his face. I picked up a striped rock and glanced their way just as he turned from her and started to walk briskly in the opposite direction as she continued on towards me.
Some sort of chasm came between them and the distance grew as they marched towards different poles, heads down.
I couldn't help but watch them retreat from each other.
And then, just as suddenly, he stopped, turned, and sprinted down the beach after the girl whose hips he held in his hands only moments before.
When I looked back, caught up in their drama, more riveting than rocks, he reached her and she welcomed him into her soft folds, they stood on the beach intertwined, her head resting against his heart, two bodies united where the Kenai River meets the sea.
I'm not sure how this story connects exactly, except to say that it stayed with me, the sight of him racing back to the girl he deserted, the walking away and running to return, the falling into each other, the sun rays on the water, the volcanoes in the distance, the miles upon miles of sandy beach.
I guess I'm left with the feeling that we can't turn away from each other.
In the US we tend to promote this false idol of individualism, wave it like a flag above this country's head, but we are all tied to each other, to this land, to the weather that changes as we breathe in the September air.
We are never alone in our thoughts, our dreams, our fears, our actions.
I may see nothing but sand and sea before me, but there are islands out there with people who are a lot like me.
We are all in-between places, even if we surround ourselves with seemingly impenetrable walls, with mountains of stuff, with endless defensive layers, we are all just traveling from here to there.
Oh Christie- love your writings- I have on my bucket list to meet you and your incredible family!! Hang in there
XOX
Posted by: Noel G Dennehy | 09/30/2017 at 03:27 PM