THE POWER OF A SINGLE PHONE CALL

Juggling Our Baggage

Last Tuesday morning we were walking out the door, lunch bags and foul weather gear in hand, stepping back in (as often happens…) for the to-go coffees, juggling our loads to accommodate those essentials, when a phone rang. We let it. And then the other phone rang and we let that go too, balancing our baggage in the steep stairwell that leads from our temporary apartment on land to our under-repair floating home, also on land. SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE takes a substantial amount of organization, especially when it’s an unnatural state you’re enveloped in. We might have been groaning a little, stretching those lactic-laced muscles from yesterday’s overhead repairing-a -big-wooden-boat exercises.

The long planks are a tremendous challenge.

As we started the car and cleared the cold, wet windows, I glanced at the caller ID, my eyes squinting at the unexpectedness of it, ANTARES. My secret number-saving code is used in times when I am incapable of remembering numbers or surnames, a boat name is inserted, the familiarity of it works, triggers, connects.

ANTARES is a well-known, well-worn, well-loved vessel on the well-trod cruiser’s path from her home port of Annapolis, Maryland, down the Intracoastal Waterway to a mooring ball in intimate, stunning Hopetown Harbor, Abaco, Bahamas, for the winter. This fall, despite the inevitability and challenges of the aging process, the iconic couple aboard made the twelve-hundred mile journey and we cheered them on until they made it safely for their eighteenth season. The gruff-sounding but big-hearted gentleman resumed his morning informational broadcasts on the VHF radio; that distinctive voice resonated each winter over a candy-cane striped lighthouse in the ‘Hub of the Abacos’, the water is clear and the community close.

ANTARES. Facebook

On Tuesday evening we returned that call to a long-known but little-seen friend, speaker-phone style, starting, as society somehow ridiculously dictates, with a little small talk. Her (remarkably) calm voice interrupted, “So you don’t know, do you? Willy died.” The silence was absolute while wits were gathered. How would we know? The inquisitive, knowledgeable, genial, actual rocket scientist and ambassador of Hopetown Harbor was gone. He left this world weeks ago doing what he loved in a place he cherished.

Ah, THE BEST LAID PLANS. We are flying down, handling the logistics of getting a forty-foot sailboat, a sixty-seven year old eighty-pounder and a fuzzy little dog back from a third world country. That’s what people should do, and it made juggling our own baggage seem lots easier. We’ve asked Mother Nature for a weather window….and what’s another couple of weeks to help a friend so clearly in need? I’m a strong believer in karma, let’s just say that. Our month was interrupted, but ANTARES will never be the same again.

Just last year in West Virginia, USA. Honest. JA Wheeler

Another call kept flashing through my mind as I wrote this story. On an early spring day in 1996 my mother was awaiting lab test results from her oncologist. She was on edge, so wandered away to find a phone booth (right? …thirty years ago), make her call. I cautiously watched her return, and as our eyes met the face I knew so well simply crumpled. Tears flooded over as she gripped me and whispered the Breast Cancer diagnosis.

But then yesterday, the modern form of a phone call, text, from my nephew, announcing that they were expecting their first child, a son, in September. Tears again, but this time, joy.

Oh, THE POWER OF A SINGLE PHONE CALL. Which ones stand out for you?

~J

My mother loved lighthouses; they are regal beacons for finding our way, and she instilled that love in me long ago. Hope Town, Abaco. JA Wheeler

*** Not into small talk either? Think it’s too small? If so, for the pure joy of her writing and her message, I recommend Marya Hornbacher’s universal cut-to-the-chase work.

Etiquette for End Times

Next time SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE will most certainly return to STEADFAST and the projects thereupon, which are going along just as well as could be imagined, jousting notwithstanding.

Rain, rain, go away.

Readers please stay for another day!! I so appreciate sending these stories out and having the world absorb them. THANK YOU! ~J