Interesting times....

There is that famous phrase attributed to the Chinese as a curse: "May you live in interesting times."  I don't know if it is truly Chinese, but I do know the sense of having lived in "interesting times" in the past months. H has posted the stress tests which we have "passed" with flying colors, and we have both chronicled our challenges in the past 498 days of marriage, but I find myself, this weekend, with a slower, more contemplative path ahead.

There are certainly still tasks to be done in the new/old house we have found to be our home. Last week, I was changing out a screen in one of the old windows, for a storm window, and the old wooden window came down on my head. My skull is sore to the touch, but I am ok. And I am going to get H to help me with the last few windows that need to be changed out. There are some things that make a marriage a pragmatic benefit rather than "merely" the finding of one's romantic partner! 

And the perennial beds need work that has taken a back seat to the work in the house of allocating files to the office, and purging excess, and folding sheets in the cedar closet. I have even taken to ironing the multiple pink napkins that my mother left, and there is something pleasant about being able to do that in a space which accommodates the ironing board and iron without my having to make other things fit around it.

And the status of Fire Island is deeply uncertain. I know only what I see on Facebook - the photos that year rounders and police and firemen have posted.  I have never much liked Facebook, but this has made me a fan. I can at least have a sense of the status of the marina (under water), the downtown in the tiny village (under water), the streets (under water) and the houses (under water). The dunes are gone, and with a nor'easter predicted for next week, the town itself may well be gone. The things that I had packed are likely....under water. But I can't get there, as the ferry has no place to land and the ferry terminal on the mainland is ....under water. They aren't allowing private boats or water taxis to access the island. They aren't allowing cars along the internal stretch of sand road, known as Burma Rd.  It isn't clear that that would be possible anyway as there are new breaches in the island where the bay and the ocean met.  Some may be permanent.

So I can't allocate hours to unpacking. I can''t allocate hours to restoring the hurricane lanterns or placing the books on shelves here. I can't focus on the "what-shall-I-do-with-all this-stuff" of the past months.  So I am left to contemplate the present and what it offers. And that feels quite new.

I know this about the present:
1. we have an election which I am worried about but completely and utterly clear on who I want to have win. I am hoping that if there is another life after this one, my mother is working her powerful ways to be sure that the voting machines count the way the American people want, and not the way of the corporations that have made them.
2. I have a number of friends who are coping with illnesses, and maybe that's a marker of my stage in life, but I am determined to get more physically fit and lose weight. You heard it first here!  I have new orthotics coming next week and expect to be using them to get reacquainted with the out-of-doors.
3. I began this week to refocus on my writing... to say that that is long overdue is a vast understatement, but I have begun reading again, and the writing is emerging like toothpaste from a tube that has been uncapped too long... some of it is a bit brittle, but eventually it will flow more smoothly.
4. And I will be celebrating my 500th anniversary with my husband in two days. And that "h-h-h-h-usband" word is easier to say now. And more important, it is easier to believe. We have come a long way in the past 498 days. And we are still committed to the path ahead....

Interesting times indeed....