Possibilities

Word is that Stoney Whitelock and the skipjack Helen Virginia reached Deal Island safely yesterday evening, after more than twelve hours of what had to have been a rough passage down the Bay from Cambridge. Snug in my recliner with a cup of tea—finishing a book I was not enjoying—I spent the evening much warmer, drier and safer than he must have been.

Neither of us is willing to give up on possibilities.

Most others would have deemed the Helen Virginia as a lost cause long ago. The holes in her transom where the wood has rotted away are painful to see. The deck feels more cushiony than my new carpeting, thanks to time spent under water that crept through and separated the layers of the plywood decking. When she was raised, the crane lifted her by her rollers—not meant for such duty—and pulled out the one on the port side, leaving an ugly gap and fractured wood. The mast and bowsprit are in good shape, but Stoney had to sheath her in plywood at the waterline and pound masses of caulking rope into open hull seams to keep her from sinking again when they put her over the other day.

I’m sure he doesn’t see any of that when he looks at her with soft focus and eyes almost closed. He sees Helen Virginia restored and under sail, working the Bay once again. He sees her possibilities.

Those possibilities are why I rarely seem to be able to give up on a book. No matter how much I am struggling through turgid prose or boring details, I keep thinking that it’s going to get better in the next chapter. Something remarkable is going to happen to pull all this together and grab at my heart, pulling me through to the grand ending.

I soldier on partly out of respect for the authors who must have worked so hard to get their stories down on paper and published. Once I start, I feel I owe it to them to finish reading to the end, appreciating the vision of their work. Often, I am just looking for the reason I was drawn to pick up the book in the first place, because there always seems to be a reason.

As I turned the final page last night, there had been no blockbuster finale, although a corpse coming back to life at his own wake was rather dramatic, now that I think about it. Ultimately, the book itself was about possibilities, made clear in the last paragraph of the last page. I read those words and was reminded how my own journey as Crazy Chiquita began with a belief that there were possibilities out there for me, and maybe it was time I recalled that vision, which ended up bringing me new life just as Stoney’s may give Helen Virginia.

It’s too easy to get lost in the rotting wood and turgid prose of life, forgetting those possibilities. None of us are lost causes as long as we believe in them.