Oct
27
Storm Before the Calm
Filed Under Baby Book
Friday 1-4-08
Sausalito
Rain
After my parking lot adventure I climbed back into bed beside my ‘35 weeks pregnant and on bedrest’ wife and fell asleep, the storm still raging outside. Within an hour Jodi was shouting from upstairs.
“Daren needs to talk to you!”
Our next door neighbor Daren is a talented architect and industrial designer, handsome and typically calm. He was pretty amped now.
“The piling between our houses just snapped,” he said.
“I’ll be right up,” I answered as I flew down to get dressed for battle. No rest for the weary. The four pilings that secure a houseboat are akin to the foundation on a terra firma home. With 25% of our stability gone both our houses were at the mercy of the angry wind and sea. Game on!
In moments, a host of neighbors showed up out of nowhere, clad in various foul weather get-ups. It takes a village and it took a village. Our home, now untethered from a crucial mooring, shifted and started banging the dock, sending splinters of wood into the drink. Severe destruction to both the boat and the dock are imminent if the banging increases. We fought lines and shouted into enormous gusts, our voices sharp, our faces cold. One neighbor couldn’t feel his hands from the freezing rain. Another rolled up with a chain saw to cut the jagged snapped neck of the piling that was fouling the lines we needed to retie. Together we pushed and pulled and heaved and tied muddy lines for three soaked-to-the-bone hours. Ultimately we managed to reposition the boat and tie it off to Daren’s for temporary stability. And then then wind stopped cold … and a very low tide set our boats in the mud, immobilized as if someone hit a cosmic switch. Mother Nature is a fickle bitch!
A tranquility rarely seen descended upon us. A stillness reserved for poems. Absolute windlessness. Ducks gliding peacefully on the silver lagoon. The adrenaline rush of successful exertion had me buzzing. Jodi and Oliver evacuated to the Holiday Inn when the power failed a few hours earlier, so I was alone with my adventure.
“Would you like some hot chocolate,” Daren asked.
“Wow, that would be perrrrfect,” I said.
We still had some adjustments and line tightening to finish once the tide began to float our boats, but that wasn’t for at least six hours. Nothing to do but put on some dry clothes and try to warm up in the cushions on Daren’s living room floor with some cocoa and a bit of drumming. Daren has great drums.
A heron walked stick legged through the mud as I sipped my cocoa. Outside the window, thick with condensation, every shade of gray lived in the water and sky. We’d beaten back the threat. Jodi and my unborn child were safely ensconced in a hotel room a mile away. Forecasts called for another big storm that evening, so I figured we could relax just so much before we had to suit up and fight again.
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2 Responses to “Storm Before the Calm”
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I am reading with anticipation as if I didn’t know what was coming next—-
Very well written — I’m exhausted just reading about it.