Sea Change

Time has wrought it's wear on me and I have changed. Like most people, Steven thinks the phrase, "Sea Change" refers to a dramatic change. It doesn't. The phrase is drawn from a poem by Shakespeare, written as a song for Ariel in the Tempest, the relevant stanza goes like this: Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong. Hark! now I hear them—Ding-dong, bell. See? He has not changed and yet he has. Where he was flesh and blood and bone, he is now made of treasures of the sea, coral, pearls - nothing faded, he is recognizable but he is now made of different stuff, valuable stuff, stuff wrought not by the man himself but by the sea. His body has become something different altogether and his soul? Who knows where that is, it is not the point. We look at others from the outside in. We see the value in them as people or we don't see. The thing is, nothing from the outside in, can be lost, only altered in perception or value or substance even - changed but not changed. Sometimes I feel as though I am living in a kind of afterlife. Stephanie-then resembles Stephanie-now. Lord knows she's built on the same scaffolding, the same foundation but she is not as she was. I am something new. I am something new that would be strange to those who knew me before. I look like a model of myself with silver hair instead of brown. I lapse into the same faults and foibles often enough but I am altered. Stephanie-then has been eaten away by a soft yet persistent tide and in her place is Stephanie-now. Made of the stuff of this place, no longer from the places that came before. I loved before, as I could love. My capacity for it was different than it is now. I wanted escape, wanted some ease and some beauty to take in and indulge myself with its wonders. Now, I want something else - connection, endurance, belonging. I want to know a person and a place completely. And I want to live in the midst of it, even when I find it ugly, alien or cold. I want to be clear, transparent, I want to be known and seen - no longer only an observer. And I am married. My husband's life is my own. He is, whether he likes it or not, the center of my world and I know he will remain in that place for the rest of my life. I have changed. Changed from angry, solitary, defensive and impulsive to a reflective, responsive, if strong willed, wife. I am Steven's wife. And I feel as though it is what I always yearned to be. (even when I didn't know he was there.) I have undergone a sea change. Single woman, daughter, maiden, friend and sometime lover to Wife. Anyone who has been there understands exactly what I mean. Meaning has come into my life and now, I am made of different stuff, pearls and coral, honey and amber, perfume and detergent - I am no longer only Stephanie, I am Steven's wife.