The Gales of November
Hello friend,
Writing to you from the time warp that is the first week of potty training. This is to say, I don’t know what day it is. Not positive my head is, in fact, atop the neck.
But I am positive the baby bum is, in fact, on the potty. My work here is done.
Today is the day I honor the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and drag my family along with me. She sunk in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975 with all twenty-nine of her men. It’s one of the most tragic shipwrecks in Great Lakes history. The bell will toll twenty-nine times at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point tonight to honor each man, and a musician will sing The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot.
I’m unsure why this ship calls to me from the depths of Lake Superior but I honor her without question. Ritual assuages grief.
What is it about death and decay I am finding so heartrenchingly beautiful?
Mirror to my grief for so many things lost that bolstered me in my life until now. It is poetic to wax on about the metaphors of Winter’s compost leading to Spring’s blooming but many of us seek only the petals climax, ignoring the necessary precursor entirely.
The question is not how quickly and easily you can get what you want, but whether or not you’re ready to stick by it for years, even decades, until you arrive. The life of your dreams is not something you achieve, it’s something you build through your habits. To get there, you don’t need a temporary change in circumstances, you need a permanent change in your behavior. — via @wordsofwomen
Even Daylight Savings is a fickle human attempt to slow down the impending darkness. If all we ever celebrate is light, how will we know how to support one another through the shadows?
It’s a new behavior I’m trying on, this sitting in the shadows. So often do I seek solace in instant gratification but alas I’ve spent hours upon hours this week sitting on a stool in the washroom instead. She sits next to me. An instant later she stands claiming she’s done despite an empty bowl.
“Let’s wait,” I suggest.
Neither of us really wants to but for some reason she listens and sits back down; both guide and novice honoring the unseen. And that’s all we do, we wait without knowing the outcome.
Natural forces will kick in eventually.
They say the wave that took down the Edmund Fitzgerald was as tall as a three-story building. This was an unsinkable ship in a freshwater lake that is more truly a sea.
In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the maritime sailors' cathedral
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald— The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot
I am just an onlooker, surrendering to the wave, thinking of Lake Gitchee Gumee.
Originally sent to newsletter subscribers in November 2022.
