Eastward, and back, and back again

My hitch aboard the RN Weeks ended in the first week of the new year. Largely uneventfully, as the case was, save for a minor incident involving a crew member rummaging through my personal effects under suspiciously thin pretexts. I don't make a habit of complaining about all the little oddities that become a regular part of life on the dredges, and though this was far from the strangest or most egregious thing I've seen or heard out there in five years of working the dredge fleet, it was one of those things I had no intention of putting up with. So, more for reasons of personal stupidity than generalized maliciousness on the part of the crew, I felt compelled to write a letter of complaint against him. My general patience for putting up with working conditions that no other industry would ask any employee (or contractor) to put up with is terminally waning. That unpleasantness was however offset by a rather surprising sighting off the deck of the RN in my last days, which was the ghostly black shape of a tragically rare species: a leatherback turtle, who surfaced and took a couple of salty breaths in the calm shallows near the Pensacola beach before disappearing back toward the depths from which it came.

At end, I returned to London the way I came: aboard a comfy Lufthansa jet, via Frankfurt, and this time in the spacious spot just behind the front bulkhead (which reminds me: next time you're going on a long flight, check out seatguru.com for the layout of any plane you might be boarding and how to get the best seats in the house - or at least the economy section). Half a day after landing at Heathrow, I started two new classes for the five-week winter term, and I was just settling back into the fabulous city I call home when the time came again to board another flight, back toward the horizon where the sun sets: home to California.

And it so happens that in a span of ten days, I took three trans-atlantic flights, leaving my brain with a semi-chronic case of jet lag. Few things could have motivated me to take on that challenge to sanity and sensibility, but there was one thing compelling enough to make me travel those thousands of miles across the same ocean three times - the coming home of my little brother, back from a long year Iraq, and visiting the west coast for the first time in a couple of years. With him came his wife and two young kids, and from the south came my sister and her brood of four. My arrival was kept secret from all but my parents and my sister, and so on the night of my homecoming (after a quick stop in the valley for frosted mochas with Megan), Kathy quietly set an extra plate at the table and held off dinner til I arrived. At home I snuck into one of the downstairs bedrooms and Kathy went upstairs to get CJ; I whispered to my grinning niece to tell her daddy there was a surprise downstairs, and down came the rest of the family. I slipped out of a side room and hugged my grown-up baby brother Kevin for the first time since Kathy & I left Cincinnati in November of 2004, just before he left for Iraq. "No way," he said still no believing that I had come all that way, "no way!" His wife Stephanie, with little Jake next to her, smiled and said she had a hunch that somehow I'd be there, despite the distance between London and California. I wouldn't have missed this reunion for anything, I told them. Not for anything.

The next day I got to surprise the four kids from the other side of the family, Karen's little ones. Not so little anymore, since Kristina is just about as tall as me at age eleven, and the boys, Gilbert and Luciano, not trailing too far behind. And of course the baby of the family, Catalina, with a smile that melts icebergs. I had Kathy send Gilbert upstairs first, popping out of the door of Bruce's den to surprise him, after which I sent him to collect the other kids one by one. In the evening, we gathered along with a small collection of family (cousins Cary and Rendy, and her husband Hans) and friends (Malcolm, Bruce's friend of many years; and Megan, my friend of fewer but still many years) to celebrate Kevin's coming home and my birthday, coincidentally the same weekend. Kevin popped the cork on a bottle of champagne sent by his "former violin teacher" (about 15 years former!), and we drank and ate while the kids ran under our feet, and finished off the night with birthday cake.

The next day, we got a slow start under blue skies, taking two full cars down the curving westward highway to the beach: Kevin & Steph, Karen, all their respective kids, Bruce, Kathy, and myself. The day was unseasonably sunny for January, but a stiff breeze raked over the coast, stirring up some of the roughest seas I've ever seen there outside of the few moments I snuck down to beach during storms to see the high surf. We ate a picnic lunch on the low bluffs at Bean Hollow, but wind-driven tides covered much of the sand and threatened with sneaker waves that wash over the rocks with alarming force. I suggested instead going for a walk into the marshes on the landward side of the highway, where the wind would be blocked and the only water a slow-moving tidal slough where the kids could play without such worry about undertow and ripcurrents. We parked across from the road into Pescadero and crossed under the highway overpass onto the little beach next to the slough. This turned out to be a good solution; in the lee of the dunes, we gathered shells and clambered across driftwood piles, explored a couple of sturdily-built makeshift shelters, raced up and down the short strand, and played in the rare winter sun.

Beneath the chilly winds and the weak warmth of the winter sun, we laughed and ran and played. And with that came one of those moments when you realize that the most beautiful place on earth is home, and the most beautiful people on earth are those with whom you share blood and kinship. And the most beautiful day is the day that we share altogether. It is rare that we all happen to find ourselves in the same place at the same, and even rarer on such a happy occasion as Kevin's return from a long year away. A weekend trip to the beach was something the five of us took many times over the years we all lived at the house on Skylonda Drive, and now we all come back together with a new generation of kids to chase the birds and gather the shells and bury each other in the sand. A beautiful, beautiful day.

Dinner that night was a more casual affair, and it was not too late the next morning that I left home again. Though my flight was not til the evening, I had a fairly full day. Karen, Kathy, Kristina and I had plans to hit up the local thrift store for last-minute gear for the upcoming trip to the mountains, and I also found some ski gear to replace all that boxes I had left in Portland...since I have no intention of missing the entire ski season, even though I had to leave for London before the rest of the family left for the Sierras! In the afternoon I met up with Megan again, and we took a walk around Palo Alto and got one more round of frosted mochas before I finally got on the freeway north to the airport.

My flight took off after the sun went down, from the airport by the bay that I flown out of so many times before to so many destinations. Before I departed from the house that morning, Kathy had gathered everyone in the kitchen and given me a blue journal-size book, which everyone had signed on the night of my birthday. Waiting on the tarmac, I finally caved and opened the book, full of drawings from the kids, well wishes from the adults. I sat back and reflected how every minute of this long journey was worth it for three days among family and friends again. I love London and wouldn't trade this year for anything, but California will always be home, where the weight of family, friends, and home keep me anchored even as I swing wide across the world.

And so the 747 taxied down the runway and up into the night. The plane swung west toward the ocean, banking back once we were atop the Golden Gate bridge - a show just for us lucky ones on the right side of the plane. The city - the highrises of downtown, the perfect parallel and perpendicular mesh of the avenues, the dark spot topped by Sutro tower from which I can trace the streets back to the corner of Scott and Duboce where I spent three good years - and then the bay, and the eastern suburbs. A fairy-land picture of the place I call home. We lost sight of the ground in a high fog over Sacramento, then bumped up over the Sierra and broke out of the clouds into a bath of silver moonlight. The electronic map of our journey showed nighttime curling across the hemisphere, suffusing the Americas in a parabolic dark while dawn crept in on Europe.

Racing eastward against the American night, arcing north just short of the pole, across Baffin Island, and south to the UK, I slept soundly in the empty three-seat row. In the calm of the last leg of this journey, I put one song on a loop, a lullaby of sorts, and drifted off to the sounds of acoustic guitar and Eliza Gilkyson's voice:

Easy does it darlin'
Let the good times roll
Many a mile to go before you close your eyes
And rest your weary soul

Savor all the laughter
Outside the dark clouds form
No one knows what will come after here tonight
In the calm before the storm

And I can't dance this one without you
So stay inside here where it's warm
Gather all friends about you here tonight
In the calm before the storm

And even when the winds assail you
And you're lost out on uncharted seas
The comforts of your heart won't fail you now
Your vessel's made for times like these

So easy does it, darlin'
Let your hair down til the morning
Cause many loved ones are together here tonight
In the calm before the storm
In the calm before the storm

Snapshot moments of the kids

A few moments to remember...


Carly Jean, gathering shells along the tidal strand until the pockets of my vest - already too large on her six year-old frame - were weighed nearly to the ground with mussels and clams and treasures from the sea.

Jake, taking off running at top two year-old speed, toward the flat water of the slough, while the adults were standing around talking. By the time we all looked up, he'd scared up a couple hundred cawing gulls and was grinning happily to himself, feet turning a chilly pink in the ankle-deep water.

Catalina, very disappointed that she didn't get to hug Kathy & Bruce goodnight late one evening, trundling up the stairs toward their loft all alone after all the lights were out but mine. I asked her what she was looking for, and she said, in a plaintive voice, "Bwoooth?"

Luciano, being very excited about finding a wooden "x" in the tidal debris (really a christmas tree stand sans christmas tree), which Bruce then stuck in the sand at Gilbert and Luciano's heads while they were being half-buried in the sand by the other kids.

Gilbert, learning the literal meaning of spitting into the wind when he attempted, twice, to get some sand out of his mouth by spitting, yes, directly into the stiff breeze.

Kristina, asking me how much cash I'd reward her with if she could cartwheel all the way back to a green jacket we'd left at the near end of the beach, after we'd walked to the far end. I laughed and offered a quarter. She started off cartwheeling down the beach, and by the time she reached the green jacket, the pledges were up to four dollars. She made it all the way there, until some sneaky soul grabbed the jacket and ran farther down the beach with it, giggling as she ran out of steam.