Thresholds
Our anniversary is coming up tomorrow. 34 years. No, not our wedding anniversary, the day the mizzus rolled onto the South End and into our love shack. Love shack. Put the emphasis where you want, but my god, it really was just an old dilapidated shack, warped floors, swaybacked roof, dryrot and cracked linoleum, standing on stumps and pier blocks at the end of the road. At the tail end of an island on the shore of a continent. You don’t believe in romance or the power of love, you should listen up, stories like this’ll melt your cynicism, maybe give you faith that life can always get better.
Thirty four years ago we were dirt poor, both of us. I had a part time job as graveyard orderly in a hospital 40 miles away with nothing in the bank. Karen had just finished a Masters degree in librarying. No job. Some student loan debt. She rolled in with $40, a suitcase and a set of skis. Maybe she thought we had winters here on the coast. Our $225 a month mortgage was hard to meet and it felt like the wolves were waiting outside the back door. You want to find out if your relationship is strong, live in poverty awhile, you’ll find out. Pretty quick.
But those were great years, those love-struck, hardscrabble years back in the early 1980’s. The South End was pretty remote back then, not many neighbors, not many friends. We spent most of our time together, working in the yard and the gardens, patching up the shack, adding a few additions. Family and friends who came out to visit us probably felt sorry for us living that close to the edge in a rundown hovel hard to keep warm. But me, I never was happier than those early years. Love will make you forget a lot of troubles the same way money won’t make you forget you’re lonely.
A lot of women wouldn’t have stuck it out. Okay, most women wouldn’t have stuck it out. Not only was I no prize, the shack wasn’t exactly a honeymooner’s dream home either. Couple of strikes right there. And any career possibilities for a prospective librarian … well, they were few and far between and a miserably long drive away. Staying meant some serious sacrifices.
Looking back, we’ve done okay. Karen found some library work, even ran a department at the University of Washington’s prestigious library. Long commute though. Too long. She’s become the area historian by dint of 30 years of research and writing and she still is a librarian. Me, I quit my orderly job after 10 years and spent a couple building a house to replace the shack she lived in with me for 13 years. Folks who see the place now can scarcely believe it. Here? they ask. This dump? Yeah, I say, this old shack.
It makes me smile to think back on her arrival 34 years ago. Stormy night, power blown out, the old homestead lit by lanterns and oil lamps, the wind howling against the paned windows we could see our reflection in. We ate fresh crabs and drank champagne in the flickering golden light. The woodstove crackled and we started our future together. I think maybe we’ll do that again this year. The windstorm is already here.
Hits: 56
I remember the first time I pulled up your driveway, took one look at your home, the property all around, the Sound, the Olympics in the distance, and thought, “Jack and Karen didn’t stop at gittin’ back to the land, they found their themselves all the way back to the garden.”
As far as I was concerned, your shack was Paradise. Built with real wood from the earth itself, it could have been in any handmade house book so popular back in the day. Hey, it even had electricity to see around the nooks and crannies at night. A step up from a few of the windy crates where I hung my hat for a time across the rural stretches and yawns of Wisconsin. One house I lived in had kitchen curtains that fluttered and swayed when the breeze out of the west hit 15 mph. Partial weather forecast included in the rent.
Your home on Camano Island though, Paradise, Paradise found. An Eden where you could even eat the apples.
Aw, you and me, we thought any old dilapidated house was Shackri-La, who needs a suburban manse when you can feel the breeze come in fresh from all outdoors? Kinda still feel the same way. My first winter up a hurricane force wind blew in. Winds in the house must’ve been 20 mph upstairs where the window blew out. The plastic windows, well, they breathed a little too. Still, shelter from the storm…. You mighta been the only old friend who would see that island place the way I did, thru very tinted rose colored glasses….
I remember visiting your shack–rosy glow of warmth, conversation, glowing yellow light in a small space of–yes, family, a family of friends.
I had just met you and Karen, and I remember looking up to the “big house” being built and wondered–who could be rich enough to live there. Riches come in all sizes and shapes.
What are doing up at 3 a.m.??
Well, it was my favorite house of all time, better even than the one that Jack built. But … the winter where both stoves couldn’t keep us warm and the outer rooms froze water convinced us to move on before we turned into popsickle people. Plus the house and us all three were getting older and tilting more.