Refuge Re-dux

It used to be that every summer afternoon in Santa Fe, New Mexico was cleansed by a monsoon. As a child, I spent many summers in Santa Fe with my grandmother, my Nana. Those summer monsoons came like clockwork—hard rain with thunder and lightening for about an hour—cooling and cleansing everything in the high desert.

Until the storms rolled in, my brother and I would play outside creating forts, running races, building little villages out of sticks and leaves peopled by rocks with painted faces: imagination unfettered. When the rain thundered in we’d head inside for tea and cinnamon toast.

My grandmother’s mother was English, so tea with milk and sugar was a staple in her life. Admittedly the tea my Nana made us was a little milkier and sweeter then, but still it instilled in me the sense of tea and toast as refuge—from the storm.

Last week was a particularly hard week. A lot of was going on, family was visiting (which by the way was a good thing though still added challenges to each day) and, on the same day that I wiped out twice on an ice field while skiing, my gal ended up in the emergency room with a severe hand injury. I’m not saying one thing lead to another and I am sure it was bound to happen anyway, but last week was also the occasion of The Fight—the first big fight of new love.

Even though I know disagreement is inevitable and some would say healthy, I was still surprised and completely deflated by The Fight. With conflicting demands and missed cues we did what couples do everywhere, and proceeded to devolve right before our very eyes.

As children, my brother and I fought frequently. Great physical, name-calling fights. He’d lock me out of the house, chase me with horsehair worms and taunt me mercilessly. In turn, “I gave as good as I got.” Still, no matter who was victorious, the triumph always felt empty. With such negligible results, why then, bother to fight at all, especially as a “fiftysomething” adult?

I’d like to think that last week, spirits or aliens swooped in and possessed us such that we were acting under the influence. Only after someone or some thing came along to give us the metaphorical “Get a hold of yourselves!” movie slap, did we come to our senses. Getting slapped to our senses didn’t provide the last word on anything, but it did serve to mitigate the emotional toiling on stormy seas and tossed us back onto the beach so to speak.

When I came to, after our epic fight, I found myself standing at the counter brewing tea and eating cinnamon toast. I’ve been back to that counter several times in the days since, for refills of both tea and toast. I’m thinking my grandmother didn’t really know what she was giving us all those summers ago. I imagine she thought tea and cinnamon toast amounted to a simple and sweet grandmotherly gesture of love. But what do I really know? My grandmother was a woman of few words. Perhaps she knew from her own experience that summers of tea and cinnamon toast during the rain would provide refuge later in life during different kinds of storms, not to mention sustenance for the journey.