10.24.2002 - 11:25 a.m.

If life is a journey across a sea, in fragile, faltering ships that drift farther and farther away from each other and from their home, their common place of origin, and if life is also a storm that rides us into the waves, tears at the rigging, and splinters away those people and places and times that we love, then there is little to be done about our situation. In crisis, you do whatever you can manage, and no more. Perhaps you cling to the remnants of your mast, watching someone, cast overboard, find a bit of flotsam and strike out for a mast on the horizon, or even for nothing at all, just in a different direction.

Maybe you wish you were brave enough to jump in after them, to save them, or follow, or choose your own direction, but it is all you can do to keep hold of the mast, even though your boat is leaking and not headed anywhere near where you wanted to go. You dig your fingers into the damp wood until they bleed, because even if this mast has failed you, it is still the sum of what you know.

A long time ago, my brother and I were playing on the beach. A wave knocked me over, rolling my elbows and hips into the hard grit at the bottom, then swirling me back from the shore. I couldn�t see, I couldn�t find the bottom anymore, it was all I could do to stay afloat. I thought it was a riptide. I had a moment where I wondered if they would ever even find me, but then I heard my brother�s voice: �Stand up!�

It turns out that the water was just over my waist.

And that�s how you find the other boats, the other shores. The ones who seem so impossibly strong were lost, too, until one thrashing toe scraped bottom.

-stonebridge

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