The levee road skirts the island, our island, the mass of land formed by the spilling of waters over the banks of the San Joaquin. I drive the same route, day in, day out, watching the shimmer of sun on the silent river.
In the distance, turbines rise from another shore and frame the sailboats moving through our channel. The trick of the earth’s curve deceives me into believing that I can draw closer to their power. But they stand far away from this place, outside of a nearby town, west of me on the Sacramento.
I pause to watch the bright sails flutter. I’m on the edge of something. It might be just the shore; but it feels wilder, more daring. Beyond this precarious spot to which I cling, the boats race, propelled by the dancing summer breeze. My body strains against the confines of the steel box in which I travel. I long for freedom, for the strength to step into the breach. I close my eyes, hovering, but then someone taps their horn and I continue my fruitless journey from nowhere to nowhere else.
Later I drive over to the state park and watch a big ship seemingly crawl across dry land. The river’s banks lie below my line of sight. The ship glides forward, heavy yet agile. I feel the ocean’s draw. I watch until the vessel disappears from view. I wonder if she might have had a spare berth in which a small, clumsy woman could have rested. I would have laid myself down on the narrow bed; and slept until the morning sun awakened me. Then I would have gone out onto the deck and watched as the endless blue unfolded. On the edge of the world, I would have breathed in the song of the sea and been, at last, content.
It’s the fourteenth day of the one-hundred and fourteenth month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
In loving memory of my brother, Stephen Patrick Corley
“Your friend and mine, Stevie Pat”
12/25/1959 – 06/14/1997
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