The storm, the dogs, the books and me

When you have been with one person for a LONG time, there comes a moment when the insulation wears just a little thin. Particularly when a situation has taxed the patience of both of us.

That happened to me last week. Let me say up front that my overall grumpiness wasn’t Pete’s fault, who is still hobbling with his leg in an immobilizing boot after breaking it on New Years Eve. He is just now getting around with a cane, happy to have set a walker aside. But the healing process is slow, and I’m still dog-walker, cook, and bottle washer. In the next four weeks things should edge back to normal.

In the meantime, our two large golden retrievers need to be walked several times a day, and every night around 9. Five nights ago that meant walking outside in a hellish rainstorm. Umbrellas were of no used in the bitter gale that pummeled the house and made me wonder if the wind would rip off the shutters. I hooked up Bella to the leash, zipped up my coat, put on a hood, and said to Pete, with no grace at all, “You can’t get out of that boot one minute too soon.”

Then I opened the door and winced. It was like walking into a hose, or several of them. To make it worse, there was a large box on the outside stairs, a heavy one, too. I wasn’t in the mood. “Now what?” I muttered, exasperated. “More farming equipment? Seeds? Too heavy. Soil? What the hell?” I didn’t bother looking at the address label; Pete gets a steady stream of packages with the approach of planting season. My coat was already soaking through as I picked up the box, the cardboard softening in the damp, pushed it in the mudroom and closed the door.

The sides sloughed off the cardboard box. Could the books possibly have survived the storm?

I walked Bella, then dried her with a towel when I brought her back in and repeated the process with Zoey. Rivulets ran from long fur of both dogs and left puddles on the floor, their wagging tails making droplets fly everywhere. They were clearly delighted with the weather. Me? Not so much.

But Pete was waiting for me, his face wreathed in smiles. Somehow, with his leg still immobile, he managed to pick up the heavy box and lug it to the kitchen table. “Your books are here,” he said. The box was not from Johnny’s Seeds, the Maine Potato Lady or any of the other organic agriculture companies that are signs of spring in our house. It was from Simon & Schuster.

I forgot the wind, the rain, and the dogs as I reached for the box. The cardboard was so soaked the sides sloughed off, the tape holding them together unraveling. Could the books possibly have survived? But there were layers of paper on top, the last bastion of defense against the storm, and the books, somehow, were fine. Pete smiled and hugged me and I lifted my book, “Saving Ellen: Memoir of Hope and Recovery,” with its lovely blue cover, out of the now ragged box. The book will be published April 1, but here was an initial 10 copies, just for me.

That’s when I realized: If I didn’t need to do a chore that left me so short-tempered, it’s a safe bet that all the books would have been ruined. Another 15 minutes is all that it would have taken. Then I realized, chastened, what a privilege it is to have someone to care for, someone I can rely upon to cheer me up, and cheer me on, no matter what the weather, outside or in.

It was a good reminder.

And the books? I felt oddly numb holding a copy, suddenly realizing that the journey that began almost exactly five years ago this week, was over and another had begun. Here was my life, my memoir about my family and the bewildered young person I once was trying to find my way in a chaotic household. But does any of it matter? It feels like America is going to hell in a hand basket. We have a megalomaniac in the White House and the world will soon hate us, if it doesn’t already. And when it comes down to it, my story is just one of millions.

Yet, it’s mine. Thanks to the storm, the dogs, and my sweet husband, the books survived. On to the next phase.