The Furious Spinner

First, Mario had his MRI, and he is fine. Knock wood.

Second, I wish people would stop saying how lucky we are. I don't think having a car crash is lucky. Unless it's bad lucky. Being horribly hurt or killed would have been very unlucky, indeed. I'm not complaining about the outcome. I am sincerely grateful and glad and hopeful and kissing the Earth with gratitude. I am grateful to all the stars. Grateful to the grassy median that grabbed hold of our wheels and kept us from flipping over. I am highly grateful no other car was involved. I am very very very tremendously grateful we are presently OK. I don't think it has much to do with luck, however. Shit happens. Shit happened to us. But it wasn't major shit. It was an inconvenience, as Mario keeps telling people.

I've stopped shaking. I think. We'll see tonight. My bones ache from shaking with fear. I'd wake up trembling and move closer to Mario, and he would wrap his arms around me, still asleep, and say, "Are you cold or scared?" And I'd whisper, "Shhhh, sleep, sweetheart, sleep." Eventually I would stop shaking and move inches away from Mario to fall into another dream. Eagles and helicopters. My car filling up with water and snow. Someone outside the window wanting to get in; me running around to make certain I had locked everything up, knowing that I must have missed something, somewhere, and it was going to get inside one way or t'other...

On Solstice, I took Mario to the Columbia Gorge Hotel. We drove there in the dark to walk amongst the trees dressed in white lights. The hotel sits on the edge of the gorge, overlooking the Columbia River, with a waterfall just on the other side of a stone wall that keeps the hotel's guests from plunging hundreds of feet down to the river. Mario and I walked up slippery rocks to look at the waterfall. We could hear it before we could see it, and then it was there, strangely luminescent white in places where it hit the rocks down below.

Then, amongst the mostly smaller deciduous trees, we walked. We talked about how we would describe this scene to someone else.

"How would you do it?" I asked. "I bet you would look at this all and see it as it is now. I look at it and I'm remembering the trees without the lights and how they normally have leaves. That’s just my memory of what it was."

"The lines of the lights are like the skeletons of trees and bushes," Mario said. "A boneyard."

I nodded. "It's as though stars have fallen from the sky and they've gotten caught on these bare branches," I said. "Look!"

We leaned over the walled creek that runs through the property. In the nearly still water were reflections from the lights. We couldn't see the trees or bushes, only the lights strung together.

"They look like constellations," I whispered.

"Yes, exactly," he said. "That one looks like a butterfly."

"Or an angel with a trumpet. These are lost constellations, fallen to Earth!" They're only found if we stand still long enough to think of looking into the water. They're only found if we stop long enough to wonder what has happened to all the stars.

We moved slowly along the path and the water. Who knew the vastness of the universe could be reflected in such a small body of water? We only had to move this way and that—like holding a mirror up to the Milky Way—to see more of the lost constellations. Infinite.

When we got home, we put up our Solstice tree, our two foot tall 20-year old artificial tree. Our tiny lights were colored and draped the tree like a star-studded boa.

Before we had to go back to the hospital on Wednesday, we walked Panther Creek. Up and up the Pacific Crest Trail we climbed. Mist rose from the river, and we breathed in her exhales while looking for bear marks. We could see to the end of the old growth, where they had clearcut a hillside, but we did not walk that far. We had our own wounds to lick. I hadn't the appetite for any other grief this day.

Not sure how I got through this morning before we saw the doctor. Mario wasn't afraid. My oldest sister doesn't like to fly, but she does. I don't like to fly, and I don't. I've asked her how she is able to do it.

"You're not supposed to distract yourself from the fear," she said, "or drink or do anything like that."

"What then?"

"You just feel the fear."

"And then what?"

"And then you get to the other side of it," she said. "You walk through it. I still don't like flying, but I can do it."

For these past six days, I have tried to walk through my fear. I've also tried to ignore it, shed it, dissect it, shred it, feed it, get rid of it. I have tried to walk through my fear to the other side of it. My fear must go a long way, because I haven't found the other side yet. If I could give a gold star to myself for something I do really well, I would have to say I do fear really well.

Today after the doc said the results of the MRI looked good, I hugged the doctor. He said, “Yep, I had a lot to do with it.” Then I embraced Mario. He smiled and put his hand under my chin and looked into my eyes to see if I was OK.

Later Mario and I drove out to Trapper Creek and walked in the woods. It was dark and cold and getting darker and colder as we walked deeper into the woods.

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep," Mario said as we walked back toward the car.

"What's that from? It sounds familiar."

"That's Frost's poem," Mario said, "’and I have miles to go before I sleep.’"

"Isn't that poem about death?"

"That's what some say," Mario said, "and he repeats the line 'I have miles to go before I sleep.' So they're always discussing that, too. I thought he was just going home, seeing his family."

“Plus he said he had miles to go,” I said. “So that sleeping wasn’t happening any time soon.”

“That’s right,” Mario said.

The path we walked was cinnamon-colored from composting leaves. The dark and deep woods were black with green. On the way home in the car, moonlight pooled at my feet. I laughed and pointed.

“What is it?” Mario asked.

“Moonlight,” I answered. “It’s lighting up the Kleenex box.”

What could that possibly mean?

We looked up the poem once we were home, and discovered we had forgotten a line: "...and I have promises to keep."

My promise is to try to live in joy. With joy.

Now, the nearly full moon lights up the darkness, accompanied by the street light outside my window. Music plays on the stereo. I can't remember which CD it is. Mario sits on the couch reading. He is part of my constellation, and I am a part of his. Technically a constellation is a group of stars. Can two be a group? I say yes.

As I sit here listening to the sounds of this house, my husband, and my life, while the adrenalin levels in my body slowly go back to normal, I think there is more to each of us than what is first seen. Like looking in a mirror, if we move this way and that, we eventually find an entire world. We are all more than our failings, more than our fears and failures.

Even stars fall...If they didn't, who would light our way in the lovely woods, dark and deep, when we have promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep?

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