My three-year-old grandson visited the houseboat yesterday.  Though he had no idea what a houseboat was before he arrived, he had created one at home with chairs, a table, and a blanket.  He’s definitely impressed with the “real thing”, as am I.  

We’ve had rain and wind so it’s been interesting to be here, with the creaking rhythm of the dock adjusting to the tides, and the variety of birds who seem to handle the weather with such ease. I watch them, wanting to do the same.

Today the dock was so slippery with ice I felt I was ice-skating even though I was wearing rubber-soled shoes.  I met a woman who had just fallen.  Perhaps because of the weather, I rarely see anyone though I know from the number of cars that people are here.

The boat goes up and down and rocks as do I.   I never realized how much the ducks bob down into the water and disappear and then pop back up in a new place.  Perhaps I do the same.  For now, a gentle rocking as I balance land and sea, doing and being, in and out.

I wake in the night.  What is that sound?  I’m on a houseboat so there are many new sounds but this sound is rhythmic  – rain.  What a gift to be in a tiny houseboat with three skylights.  I rise with the sound – fluidity –  cleansing – renewal.

Last night I read in the book Houseboats: Aquatic Architecture of Sausalito, that Richardson Bay, where I am, a part of San Francisco Bay, is host to 55 species of fish and a number of others migrate through including striped bass and steelhead trout. “Bait fish like herring, anchovy, and smelt attract mammals, such as harbor seals, and birds. Even whales have been seen entering the bay.”  We older folk remember Humphrey, a Humpback whale, who, in 1985,  swam into San Francisco Bay and then up the Sacramento River towards Rio Vista, Ca.  He returned in 1990. The Marine Mammal Center, U.S. Coast Guard, and volunteers helped guide him back to the ocean.

I’m here on the water because we’re remodeling our kitchen and I felt inspired to seek a respite.  The woman in charge of the project said couples often divorce with remodeling, and I thought why not turn it into something special, rather than risk conflict, and here I am, entranced with the magic, with the gift of tides, and now rain on the roof.

I open Frank Bruni’s book The Beauty of Dusk, to words I wrote in my own book, Breast Strokes. Not “Why me?” but “Why not me?” I made that discovery as I went through surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, or as my acupuncturist called it, being cut, poisoned, and burned, and yet, I was entranced, like others I met, with the gifts. Frank Bruni came to the same realization in his journey to possible blindness. What do we learn in this journey we share?  How do we meet what comes our way, what floats in and out with the tides?

Bruni goes on to share that we’re all dealing with something, with even more than we may let others know or see.  He writes about the retirement from football of Andrew Luck, the star quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts.  Why did Luck retire at the top of what others perceived of as “success”? 

He said: “For the last four years or so, I’ve been in this cycle of injury, pain, rehab, injury, pain, rehab, and it’s been unceasing.”  Bruni then lists the injuries this man had endured and would continue to endure as these injuries don’t go away.

Many of us enjoy watching football, but like Bruni, I, too, have to step away from watching, and now again my focus goes to the sound of rain pounding down.  Fluidity.

Two quotes came my way yesterday.

Norman Lear: 

Two little words I don’t think we can pay enough attention to: over and next. When something is over, it is over, and next is next. And there’s a hammock in the middle. That is the best description, that I know of, of living in the moment.

Michelle Obama:  The unknown is where possibility glitters. 

And of course, I must again include Charlotte Selver:

If you have these two things – the willingness to change, and the acceptance of everything as it comes, you will have all you need to work with.