Bones & Love

Every night when I come home the first thing I see is the river. Or, what I ought to say: every night when I come home, the first thing I see through my windshield is the expanse of black above my head and the crazy mat of stars through the trees in the driveway. And I get out of the car, and the first thing I feel is the river.

No matter what my day's been like, no matter what is otherwise on my mind or bogging up my head. I pull into my driveway, ease the Versa far back near to the old boat that hasn't been used in more than a couple seasons, park and have the door open before I have time to think. And then, on impulse, as a matter of muscle memory and also, of something deeper programmed in me, some part ancient and respondent to firesmoke and the hush of trees, I breathe. I take a deep breath and let it all out and what happens is from inside me I get a soft smile, and I go still. And then, I can feel the river. I can feel her moving, can feel her in that place in my belly and on the back of my neck--same place where you feel when, say, a storm's coming on.

And for that brief moment, all is well. I know peace.

I moved here, to the town of Choptank with it's 20 or so houses, on the Choptank River, last November. I rent a room in an old house two up from the river. This house has modern painted gray-taupe siding but still looks old because it is. It was originally built in the 1830's. At night you can feel the life in its walls, all that it has breathed and seen. In the morning, where I come to the front porch to write, you can see the river out the window to my left.

At the time of my decision to move here to Chop, I lived in a six-bedroom farmhouse on a 400-acre-farm that grew soybeans and feed corn. That's a lot of land, a lot of space, a lot of air to breathe. I basically lived there on a deal with the owners to tend their property and upkeep the old place, the owners were distant inlaws of the magnificent man I was living with and was in love with and enjoying life with since the fall that I got out of college, in 2002. Brandon was my best friend, he was who and how I processed one of those strange times of transition that makes us humans so sketchy and uncertain: time of what-next or in-between. I loved him with every last blood inside my heart, I loved him so it was how my bones moved. A sweet, adoring love that saw nothing other than him, nothing else outside of us. He was all I knew, and all I ever hoped to know.

That same year my dad came back in to my life in a hands-on way because of a sad and serious depression at mid-life. And my mom sold our house, the one that me and my brother and her had always known, the one in the county between Annapolis and B-more. And she moved back in with my dad, first time in 15 years, to the beach.

Last night I was out late in the county. We met Brian, my brother Sean's best friend since they were five, and his little brother Little Sean, and their folks and our folks for dinner at our old favorite spot for crabcakes, Hellas. Their mom, Ms. Louise, helped raise my brother and me. It was her birthday last night, first time all of us have been together seriously since I dont know when. When we were growing up ma would drop Sean and I off at their place 6 in the morning on her way to work in the city. Ms. Lou would get us ready for school, breakfast, uniforms, carpool. Me and the boys would scream and fight or laugh and play. Nintendo and VCR movies on tv for hours. We were lucky, blessed, charmed-life kids. BMX bikes and kickball in the deadend when we'd come home from school. Anymore when I am home, like last night, I am so, so grateful. I am so aware of how good it was, and wistful in the most tender of grateful ways. And I miss it so much.

I was born in Baltimore City. I remember the market at Cross Street when I was only old enough to stand level with people's knees. I remember what Old Bay smells like on the salty Harbour air. I remember imagining how close the big boats were to the sea. I remember what it feels like, to have a river of living move under you, and that river be no more visible than the concrete at your feet.

It is hard to put this in to words. The bones of me, the true substantial life-time blood. I can say only that when the time comes to know you again, when the time comes to reclaim the flesh of who you are, you know it. You know it in a way that you will fight and pray not to recognize. You know it in a way that feels awful, like fear and hate and pain. In the most secret, darkest places in your brain, in the stomach tight breath that draws you awake at night, in the weight that sits just above your neck, you know it. And when you know something as distinct as Time, there is simply nothing else to know.

Choptank, you healed my soul. I am the river of me again. It was a fucking hard and awful fight and I hated how many times I had to let go. But here I am, on the shore again. How can I ever thank you? How can I ever thank you, Life? How can I ever thank you enuff...?

~~~

The song that helped birth this post: Wharf Rat, The Grateful Dead. O, Jerry. I love you. I love your guitar. You touch the myth inside of me.