How can I complain?

The sun hastens above the horizon, calling to me, Rise!  Come see this splendor!  And so I have done, and my gratitude consumes me.  Again I ask myself: How can you live in the Midwest? How can you leave this place?

Another resident of Dolphin (second building from the entrance) asked me to make his second in the hot tub yesterday.   I surprised both of us by accepting.  When we presented ourselves at the hostel office to pay our fee and get the key, the young woman on duty, Mackenzie, told us in a gentle voice that she had decided to waive the customary eight dollars per person for our session.  It takes courage to ask a stranger to share the hot tub, she told us.  The rules require a buddy system, and the gentleman had indeed been emboldened by the sea air to approach me.  We thanked her and made our way down the boardwalk to the hot tub at the end of the point.

I shall never again appreciate a hot tub in the Y or at someone’s home in quite the same way.  At nearly nine p.m., with the constellations just showing themselves and a fishing boat far on the low edge of the sea, our view lured us to feel the glory of isolation.  No sound broke the air around us, save my companion’s occasional calling of a star’s name. I closed my eyes and felt a peacefulness descending on me.

I cannot say that I slept any better than I sleep at home.  In a bunk room with five other women, the rustling and murmurs occasionally penetrated my calm.  My tooth still ached; my legs still twitched.  I suffered  a third fall in four days, at the parking lot of the motor inn where I stayed in San Jose, and landed on the exact part of my skinny posterior which the two prior falls had bruised.  The knot on the back of my head has not yet settled. With nothing stronger than Tylenol, I’m feeling the brunt of my difficult days.  And from the top middle bunk, a woman’s sorrow emanated in palpable waves despite her stillness.  I tried to speak to her but she turned away.  As I quieted myself for sleep, I wondered what plagued her.  I felt a bit unsettled by the emotions which she could not help but cast into the room.

And yet — and yet:  The beauty surrounds me.  I stand on the back deck and watch a little blackbird skittering at my feet, foraging the crumbs from so many individual dinners.  Until another resident appears to make her breakfast, I luxuriate in the silence.  This place cradles me.  The very air around me seems medicinal.  Soft sounds drift from the rocks; sweet scents float on the breeze.  How can I complain, when I have this — if only for a little while?  How can I even think of voicing lament, when I know that it will remain here, when I leave, waiting for my return.

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2 thoughts on “How can I complain?

  1. Pat

    I’m so jealous, yet happy for you. Sounds like a serene and beautiful place. Enjoy—and quit falling! See you Saturday night.

    Reply

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