Two Crossings

Not a soul in the state wanted to get out of bed today, and I was no exception. Our Martin Luther King holiday was whumped with snow: heavy, wet, sticking snow, the kind that will break your back if you aren't careful. The snow that could build a million snowpeople and sculptures.

I did not want to get up.

But up I got.

After hitting snooze a couple of times, and perhaps maybe after Dave had rolled out of bed to start the coffee.

I am, once out of bed, a morning person. Which is good, because by the time I was out of the flannel and into the chill air, it was about a quarter to five. Some days, I have to be at work at 7:15- and whether staying with my parents on the mainland, or (occasionally) having Dave bring me uptown in his boat, this necessitates being out the door by 6 a.m. So it was in the last moments of the pitch black night, we arrived at the town landing. Dave's skiff was full of snow, full of water. The outboard was about as excited to get moving as I had been. The easiest task, untying the painter from the float, was mine. Despite Dave's assumptions, the rope had not frozen, so I didn't have to fight the structure of ice.

This easy task was my only task for this first step. Dave bailed out the boat: Dave got the engine running. Makes sense since he's the boat guy and I'm the greenhorn. Unfortunately, Dave recently fell while doing carpentry, and fractured the hell out of his left radius (look it up: he's got the second or third type). So Dave was doing this all one-handed.

Funny thing about your hands and arms- you don't notice 'em until you can't use them. And you don't just use them for obvious things, like oh say... work and chores- you also use them for balance. Which is always helpful when on a boat, right?

He didn't fall in.

I know, that's where it seems like I was going. But he didn't. Every time it seemed like he would topple out, he would shift his weight quick enough to recover because, sling or no sling, he knows what he is doing. In my mind he did fall, of course. I was raised to be a worrier, and after my uncle almost kicked it during dinner last fall, my mind floods with contingency plans whenever I sense any risk, or potential for major injury. So I ran through how I would need to respond- not a terrifying mental exercise when it's low tide, you're at the float and there's not a lot of water under you and only a little more distance to the shore. It gets exponentially horrific as you move away from the float. Having the visuals from the movie Titanic in one's shadow archive really does not help.

But the chances of capsizing in the middle of an iceberg-less thoroughfare on a flat calm morning (as it was this morning) are pretty much zilch. I know when I am being needlessly paranoid. And I was being needlessly paranoid.

Once we were on his lobster boat and well underway, I relaxed. The freezing point isn't actually unpleasant when the wind is not there to throw it in your face. It was still enough that we didn't close up the winterback, and I spent much of my time toward the stern of the boat with my travel mug, just watching the water splay out behind us as the dark slipped slowly to light. Nothing but the wake and the softly waking world. Ocean, islands, and clouds: a display of infinite greys.

The recent snow was piled on trees and shores, acting as snow often does in the world of Hallmark greeting cards- as it can even in the real world. It offered a benediction. The world- for this stretch of time, over this stretch of water- was in a state of grace. The spruce on the islands whispered stories about the wind direction of the night past. They stood in variegated groupings: the trees were blown bare of the snow to the Northward and on higher ground; the trees tucked in hollows, or sheltered to the South were heavily enrobed in white. The effect was a greater visual depth, the woods did not flatten to the eye as so often they do with a little distance.

It was, you might gather, a nice kind of commute. I moved forward, kissed Dave on the cheek and thanked him. He glared, replied "Never again-" dimpled "-until the next time."

And here, there'd be a tidy end to this snapshot of a snowy morning. But life doesn't end tidy, does it? And the working day seldom comes to a full stop at 7 a.m.

I went to my job, and Dave went home, and we passed the day. Life is also bad driving conditions, lost wages, having your vehicle plowed in. By the time I got to the mailboat for my commute home, I was in what I only ever described as "tired" mood. Nothing to do but slog through til you can go to sleep, and wake to scrape the bottom of Pandora's damned box for a little hope.

I'd arrived at the boat landing early and rather than wait in my cooling car, I borrowed a shovel and set to work unearthing Dave's truck. I'd not had a chance to communicate with him much over the course of the day, and what I had heard was not good news. What I hadn't heard was whether or not he was still going to go off to Portland tomorrow morning in the teeth of another winter storm. He needs to see the doctor again, to find out if his arm needs surgery, or if we'd have another week of "wait and see." So I shoveled. And it'll just snow again tonight. But six inches fresh will be better than fourteen accumulated.

Incidentally, shoveling snow does not make a weary person less tired! When I got down to the boat I was hot, out of breath, and my chest hurt in the way peculiar to sucking in a lot of very cold fresh air. Hot was the worst of it, so I stayed out on the stern. And wouldn't you know other people did, too? So I made nice, and I talked about musical theater, and chit chatted. Somehow I got to making snowballs- this happens as a matter of course when it snows in the upper few degrees of the snow making spectrum.

One day I will write a paean to the mailboat captains, but today I will simply state that they are the sort who will indulge in a snowball fight. This afternoon's patrons were somewhat genteel, so we kept it mild and mannerly. We had plenty of time for the high jinx, since we waited 20 minutes past departure for an island resident who proved to be late beyond reason- incidentally this was also the man who is contracted to plow the island roads... When we were finally underway everyone went inside the cabin.

I stayed out. The snow was a little dry for perfect packing, but I began clumping it together on the bench that runs the length of the Mink's stern. Two long hillocks parallel next to each other, perpendicular to the seat. On the back third of those, against the rail that serves as a bench back, I mounded and patted, mounded and patted, until there was a torso. One of the captains came to get my ticket.

"You making a snowman?'

"Yuh, looks like it's gonna to be a parapelegic one."

I shaped its chest, then added arms to each side, sloping in toward the lap, joining in a mound like hands clasped. Breathing against the snow to make it pack harder, I made a small ball, scrounged on the deck for wetter material, made it bigger. Along the rails the snow was wettest- an icy slush, and I used that to set a nose onto the face, pressed my finger in for eyes, used my thumbs to define cheekbones. I smoothed the head onto the shoulders. It was about this time that one of the students commuting on the mailboat nailed my back with a snowball. Taking the interruption as an opportunity to step back and assess my artistic process to this point, I realized I was sculpting a Buddha. His legs, originally cropped at the knees, I modified into a sort of lotus position. Satisfied, I slung my arm around him and watched the scenery pass by for a while, before returning to the cabin, where I was instantly interrogated about whether or not I had a ticket for the frozen passenger. I told them to talk to him.

We were a few minutes from the dock, and I chatted with the kids- one wanted me to be on the panel for his senior exhibition, the other wanted me to look over an essay if we have a snow day tomorrow. By the time I hit the ramp, I was still tired in my body, but my spirits were in better shape.

What events (or "what fresh hell," as Dorothy Parker would put it) tomorrow will bring, I don't pretend to know. Possibly a quiet day on the island, perhaps a trip to Portland, maybe my long awaited first rehearsal for The Sound of Music.

But there will probably be snow. And maybe a boat ride. Best content myself with that.