Hydroplane Landing

An abrupt engine blat announced the neighbor’s yellow hydroplane landing on the river, startling not only me, but a bunch of geese. The obvious end of a flight from somewhere else to here. Much like my own sudden leap from somewhere else exactly a year ago, ending a twenty-one year relationship that shouldn’t have gone beyond the first ten. That the ending took exactly eleven years is a tribute to my stubbornness. My unwillingness to give up.

I’ll probably continue talking with her in my head forever, as if she were dead. Like the relationship.

It was as if we had been trying to communicate with one another with buckets over our head. Neither of us understood the other, though we yelled loudly and spoke with passion. Each inside her own bucket, in her own unique language. There was no interpreter. None was needed to acknowledge that the precious affection and respect which had once existed between us had been long dead. Had coasted to a blatting stop like the hydroplane. The partnership over.

What little zest for life that remained in me came drooping, almost lifelessly, to the shore on the opposite side of the river a year ago.

At the Hoedown last night I felt that familiar sense of aliveness I had known in myself years ago. Not only did I let go and slide into the two step and two other new dances we were taught, I was able to harmoniously lose my sense of aloneness and unfamiliarity blend in the bliss of dance throughout the evening. A redemption of spirit for me. My hydroplane has finally landed and has begun gliding over the waves. To the welcoming haven of calmer shores.