40 years yesterday

I am sitting in my husband’s bedroom, so near and above the sea. The only sound is a nearby refrigerator, one of many whirring, trembling machines in this high mirage of a house. But I cannot hear the sea from here right now – the roar like distant trucks on a highway, the way I would listen in Vermont to the nocturnal traffic out the window – tire upon tire upon frozen asphalt, dead snow, new ice – and wish that it were the ocean. Now, at home, at my children’s home, not here – perhaps 3 kilometres away (or 1.86 miles) – I can hear it at night with my head next to the window, and also all the other sounds of the valley: sirens, singing, dogs. In the morning, I know the weather like a secret on my face before anybody else. I can feel when it has been wet, when it has been windy. I hear the sea like a dream come true. In the book “Housekeeping” by Marilynne Robinson, there was one heartbreaker of a line that stayed with me, though I will probably get it wrong here: “Children do their best to love what they’ve been given.” But what if they can’t? What if they won’t? The roar of white lions will drown in a jingle of freon.