Unusual Alchemy

 

“It's a highly unusual May.”  The nature guide repeats this phrase several times during our excursion near Ketchikan. Most of the clothes packed for this trip up Alaska's inner passage have gone unworn - no need for the wool sweaters, down vest, or fleece jacket. It's t-shirt and flip-flop weather.

Bald eagles soar overhead, waterfalls tumble down granite cliffs into the glittering sea, otters and seals scamper wetly, and every shade of green seems represented. The beauty of this balmy day is indisputable. 

Enjoy it while we can. It's a familiar feeling now, this mix of primal joy for the sunny clear day and abstract terror of what it signifies. I live in San Francisco, where the occasional fog keeps up a semblance of green in a state of aching drought.  But the sunny days in San Francisco are increasing. More of our days have become like this one, on the small boat steering along the coast of the Alaskan Tongas Rainforest with the sun shining brightly.

I turned sixty this year and this trip is a gift from the woman I've been dating for two years. Oh, who am I kidding? We are in a relationship. It’s only recently that I cleaned out a drawer for her in my home. To take this amount of time for that is highly unusual for lesbians, where the well-known joke of bringing a U-Haul to a second date is all too true. Oh, who am I kidding? That’s been true for me with both men and women. It’s taken me over 40 years to learn that having good sex and good conversation does not mean you should move in together. You aren’t seeing clearly when you are on the drug of new sex and good conversation. It takes time to ascertain if you both can veer towards kindness in a somewhat consistent fashion while not losing a sense of humor and desire.

So I've tried going slow, warding off my not so abstract terror of where this relationship could lead, (heartbreak, craziness, loss of self, boredom -I've experienced them all) while applying myself to the task of loving and being loved, which does not mean merging bank accounts or merging - period.

That work led to gratefully accepting the gift of a week's vacation together on a lesbian cruise ship.  Which led to this day excursion where there is something in the guide's voice, an awareness and a foreshadowing he's communicating that raises my minor body hair, sets my sixth sense abuzz, and brings about an alchemical reaction. Alchemy as defined as  “a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination.” 

It's such a glorious day, to not feel the joy of it feels like a sacrilege, like dissing the life force herself. There’s so much beauty around me and also such clear awareness of things changing, like the climate, that I feel my heart is going to explode or break, it’s expanding so much with combined feelings.  How can I feel such joy when this day is not only unusual, it's a harbinger of possible doom? At that moment, the terror is no longer abstract and it’s more than fear - it’s grief, rage and sorrow. And it is inexplicably mixed with ecstatic joy.  So, I breathe deeply, try not to sob,scream or laugh uncontrollably and thankfully I manage to discretely quake and let tears flow without notice. Standing against the rail of the boat, I reach for the hand of the woman who gifted me with this adventure and then someone points out yet another Bald Eagle in flight. And I smile.

I don’t need a photo of that moment, it etched in memory and fully embodied.  The combined feelings of awe and gratitude at the enormous gift of the complexity of life forms on this planet, mixed with the keening awareness of moving steadily into this unusual time where all bets are off and I will never be sure what to pack has transformed into one precious verb. It’s alchemy and it’s magic.

Its name is love.