The 16 days since Joel blew out his knee have been a bit of a blur.

Right away, our liv­ing room expand­ed. It became din­ing room, with steam­ing bowls of com­fort foods like home­made mac & cheese and rhubarb crisp crowd­ing the cof­fee table, and bed­room, where I draped a light fleece blan­ket over Joel on the couch and rolled a Ther­maRest out on the car­pet. Bear seemed con­fused at first, but quick­ly adapt­ed to our family’s new stu­dio set­ting, occu­py­ing the foot of my sleep­ing bag just as she would the foot of our bed.

On Day 10, Joel saw a new doc­tor. We learned that every­thing we’d been doing had been wrong – the angle of ele­va­tion, the length of time icing, the inac­tiv­i­ty – and that he need­ed to regain full range of motion before this doc­tor would even dis­cuss surgery. Straight into phys­i­cal ther­a­py he hob­bled, with home­work to per­form five ses­sions every day. Though he won’t be fish­ing this sea­son, Cap’n J’s gained new, painful enlight­en­ment of just how hard he’ll be working.

Astute friends stud­ied me with know­ing eyes: the explo­sion of zits, heavy eye pouch­es, con­ver­sa­tions lost mid-sen­tence. Last week, with a cou­ple hours to catch up on errands, I armed myself with a list. Mail let­ters, deposit checks, return books, gro­ceries; okay, I can do all that. 

Burst­ing into my first stop, let­ters in hand, I skid­ded to a baf­fled stop. What the hell is the cred­it union doing in the post office lobby? 

As some­one who lives by lists under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, I’m now cling­ing to them as life­lines. Our din­ing room table, lined with butch­er paper and Sharpies, resem­bles a war room. Real­iz­ing that my brain had scram­bled beyond a list’s régime wasn’t comforting.

My most major lapse, how­ev­er, has been in respond­ing to your kind­ness. Long­time Hooked friends and new friends who’d been qui­et lurk­ers until now, sin­cere thanks for your encour­ag­ing com­ments. I’m moved by your will­ing­ness to share your expe­ri­ence, grate­ful for your sup­port, and embar­rassed that I can’t seem to sum­mon the ener­gy to reply direct­ly to your com­ments and thank you indi­vid­u­al­ly.  It’s not you, sweet­ie – it’s me. I’m drop­ping balls all over the place. Phone calls and emails go unre­turned. Ridicu­lous as it is, any­thing more involved than click­ing a “like” or “re-tweet” has felt mountainous.

I’m a child of open water – I don’t want to hunch at the base of tow­er­ing walls, trapped, strug­gling to catch a glimpse of light between peaks. But how do you break chal­lenges that feel moun­tain­ous down into man­age­able tasks?

You ask for – and accept – help.

With me ship­ping out next month and Joel mov­ing in with his folks’ house for the summer’s recov­ery, it became clear that our love­ly house will need alter­nate res­i­dents. We’ve put the word out; details are avail­able here. Sure­ly there’s an artist/writer out there who’d like to spend the sum­mer (or longer) in a beau­ti­ful Pacif­ic North­west retreat? If you know that per­son, please send them our way.

 

 

Declar­ing our house up for rent put things into motion. Fam­i­ly and friends leapt into action, bring­ing mov­ing box­es over, rolling up their sleeves for the kind of deep-clean­ing that a poten­tial ten­ant war­rants, yet some­how we nev­er do for our­selves. They coör­di­nat­ed sched­ules to pro­vide relief care, allow­ing me to still go to writ­ing groups and the KPTZ inter­view last Fri­day. (Which was super-fun, by the way. Big thanks to host Phil Andrus for the invi­ta­tion; sounds like we’ll do a series of long-dis­tance con­ver­sa­tions through­out the fish­ing sea­son. I’ll keep you post­ed on air times.)

My mem­oir teacher, author Lau­ra Kalpakian, pre­sent­ed us with a steam­ing pan of enchi­ladas one after­noon. She even includ­ed dessert: sea salt caramels, Joel’s favorite. He mar­veled, “She doesn’t even know me!” and I thought of all of the chap­ter drafts she’s read. Oh yes, she does, bud­dy – bet­ter than you think!

And remem­ber Bet­sy, she of the soul made for moun­tains, who made such a valiant effort to tri­umph over sea­sick­ness last sum­mer? I came home one day to this note on the counter:

 

And a freez­er packed with heat-and-serve meals like this:

 

 

What words are pos­si­bly enough, faced with a friend who will spend the entire week­end work­ing to elim­i­nate one time-con­sum­ing task from a chaot­ic peri­od in your life?

With the Ner­ka out of com­mis­sion for this sea­son, we re-eval­u­at­ed our bud­gets. For­tu­nate­ly, Joel has health­care – cat­a­stroph­ic cov­er­age, for sit­u­a­tions exact­ly like this. (Exam­ple of what’s not cov­ered: the $635 knee brace he’s wear­ing.) So his par­ents des­ig­nat­ed the remain­der of their small coho inven­to­ry as the Cap’n J Med­ical Relief Fund. These under‑6 pound salmon are noto­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to sell: restau­rants and gro­cers don’t want this small size. But they’re per­fect for indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies. We put the word out, and folks passed it along. I’ve nev­er been more grate­ful for social media, or more impressed by its pow­er for good: requests flood­ed in. Unable to make per­son­al deliv­er­ies, we decid­ed to host an open house fish pick-up over the weekend.

 

A con­se­quence of our tran­sient, sea­son­al lives is that, wher­ev­er we are, Joel and I often feel not-quite-of-“here” and slightly-outside-the-bounds-of-belonging-“there”. This win­ter, with Cap’n J prac­ti­cal­ly a res­i­dent of the Port Townsend Boat Yard, we felt even more divid­ed than usu­al. So we real­ly didn’t know what to expect. Who would come by? Would anyone?

Car after car filled the dri­ve­way. One of Joel’s clos­est friends from his days as a ski lift oper­a­tor, a decade ago. The moth­er of his best friend from high school. The Red Wheel­bar­row Writ­ers were gen­er­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ed. A cousin I’d nev­er met drove up from Seat­tle. A fish­ing friend orga­nized neigh­bors and cowork­ers to place a group order, vol­un­teer­ing his own freez­er as a cen­tral pick-up. Anoth­er, with more than enough seafood of his own, sent a check for us to “pay fish for­ward” to some­one else. Salmon flew out of the freezer.

 

 

The kind­ness didn’t end with the weekend.

Four years ago, Joel and I bought our house under the guid­ance of a dream real estate agent, Sean Hack­ney. We didn’t know any­thing, but Sean took care to under­stand who we were and what was impor­tant to us. Patient, fun, and kind, he “got” us. Even bet­ter, he con­tin­ued to be avail­able as a resource long after the papers were signed.

Yes­ter­day I opened my email to this sub­ject line: “Alas­ka Coho Any­one?” The link went to a per­son­al video mes­sage, record­ed by Sean, shar­ing our sit­u­a­tion with his con­tacts. Watch­ing it, both Joel and I got a lit­tle choked-up. If you’re ever look­ing to buy or sell a house in What­com Coun­ty, friends, you can’t find a more gen­uine, stand-up guy than this one.

All of this is to say that, despite peri­ods of pain, fear, exhaus­tion, and a daunt­ing recov­ery for Cap’n J, his injury has gift­ed us with a dawn­ing real­iza­tion. This is what com­mu­ni­ty means. Belong­ing to a place is not how many years you’ve lived there, or that you’re a full-time root­ed res­i­dent. Com­mu­ni­ty is in how we rec­og­nize con­nect­ed­ness with the peo­ple around us — not only already-known friends, but those occu­py­ing the next cir­cles out, friends of friends, acquain­tances, strangers. It’s in see­ing some­one else’s strug­gle and suc­cess as linked to our own.

“Thank you” does­n’t mea­sure up to the depth of our grat­i­tude, friends. Rest assured, we’ll pay it forward.

 

For those of you in the Whatcom/Skagit/King Coun­ty area: Last weekend’s open house was such a fun expe­ri­ence, we’re going to do it again. We’ll keep the freez­er stocked and the door open over the next two week­ends. (If the week­ends aren’t good for you, let me know and we’ll work some­thing out; Cap’n J will han­dle these sales through the sum­mer.) Vis­it the Nerka’s Face­book page for more infor­ma­tion, or con­tact me here. ♥