The Life That I Now Live

“We’re always getting ready to live, but never living.” was said by Winston Churchill and was the caption to my sister’s Instagram post this past week. I hate to admit how true this is for me. And I would like to say that from now on I shall live. I aim to be present in this and every minute for all it’s worth.

This week we prepared a new-to-us travel trailer for living in the woods on the job for the next several weeks. We washed windows and screens till they looked like new. Elv had to replace the floor of the water tank closet and I had to scrub the carpet. We shined and waxed and fixed and fussed. Then Brad, using his pickup washing brush and scrubby and special soap and wax, washed every inch of the outside. It’s clean and ready for woods living now.

All because Elv and I decided to stop being traitors to our sacred marriage and our beloved “togetherness”. Enough of living separately! I’ll spare you the sadness we encountered. In the end, we found a way to live together all but one night per week, we hope. The solution is this travel trailer and some commuting for him and for me. St Croix is a long way from Hayward on a busy weekday morning with the sun coming up over the cornfields as I pull up out the valley. But by dint of coffee and pressing deadline I can eat up those miles smiling. I sure wonder sometimes how I am supposed to “live” and home make and keep up. At any rate, we did a lot of getting ready to live, and lived, too. So there, Mr. Churchill!

Oh then there’s sailing! Now that’s a piece of living that we are intending to enjoy often. I had my first sail this week. Brad and I agreed that I would go with him Tuesday evening (my pleasure, of course) and he would wash the camper on Thursday evening. So with the wind on our faces at the landing we stepped up the mast, rigged the sail, and launched. I have always wondered how you can sail into the wind. I am still amazed. Our teacher Bill explained to us that the sail is really a wing and we are flying on the water. It was Brad’s second time out and so we took our time getting the ropes.

By and by we were further and further from shore and playing with the wind. We collected enough speed to create a wake. It was pretty thrilling for me. I think Brad was pretty impressed, too.  Coming back into landing was even easier and we discovered that with that handy tiller one can steer precisely to the proper place beside the dock for pulling it back out.

So while the work waited all evening at home, we “lived”.  The sunset from a sailboat cannot be compared to any amount of accomplishment I might have felt over a clean kitchen at home.

Nor can you compare spending time with a grown son who doesn’t mind taking me along on his adventures with any amount of being caught up with my housework.