Essay
- I liked Day One so much that I transcribed my old journals to have a complete digital archive. ↩
- If you’re curious about the features and characteristics that make a great notebook, I highly recommend Mark Fig’s Hobbyist Hangout podcast on notebooks. ↩
- I followed Ryder Carroll’s advice on how to break in a new notebook, which I’m sure helped the notebook lay flat and keep the spine from wearing. ↩
Celebrating Three Years of Sobriety
I passed my third anniversary of giving up alcohol today. I thought I would share some background on this milestone and why I decided to stop drinking.
I have a long history with alcohol. Maybe it’s the genetics mapped deep in my Irish blood or an inheritance from longstanding tradition, but alcoholism runs in the family, near and far. I can’t think of a time in my life that wasn’t steeped in the rituals of drinking.
I met the love of my life in a dive bar. Most of my proudest accomplishments and favorite moments were punctuated with a celebration beer or glass of wine. An early love of Hemingway surely contributed to an interweaving of my very identity with alcohol. If I closed my eyes and pictured my true self in my natural element, it was cozied up to a dimly lit bar with a whiskey on the rocks in a brown, brown study.
I was never what you’d call a problem drinker. I never hit that proverbial rock bottom. But I saw in myself the potential to become one. Retiring early brings many joys, but it also provides the means and opportunity to easily tip over into alcoholism. I left my profession for a pirate’s life of boats and docks and drinking buddies, which, in hindsight, feels like a trifecta of trouble for the would-be alcoholic. I think many people enjoy time on the water as an excuse to drink with friends. I know I surely did.
Over a stretch of twenty-five years, I gave up drinking an astonishing twenty-two times. I know this because of an obsessive need to keep track of my life through a daily journal.
When I gave up alcohol on this day three years ago, I looked through these old journals for clues. I analyzed the data and found troubling patterns — empirical evidence my logical, fact-based mind could not refute.
I discovered that most attempts lasted a week or less. On four occasions, I managed more than a month without drinking—the longest, six months. I often complained of headaches and insomnia in the first few days. After two weeks, I slept better and had more energy. On longer stretches of sobriety, I lost weight, my blood pressure improved, and I felt more optimistic.
I asked myself, as I flipped through those scribbled snapshots of my past, why in the world did I ever start drinking again?
Here’s what happened, time after time after time: I enjoyed such a rebound in health and outlook that I considered myself “cured.” There’s a name for this in sobriety literature: the Pink Cloud. Feeling so good, I couldn’t possibly be addicted to alcohol any longer, so I concluded it was perfectly fine to drink again, just in moderation like everyone else. After all, who would want to quit the stuff forever?
As you might have guessed, the dabbling soon turned to the occasional few too many until I eventually returned to my old ways. I gained weight, slept poorly, and fibbed about my alcohol consumption on medical questionnaires.
It took reading this boom-and-bust history in my own words, repeated and repeated and repeated, to fully comprehend the situation. Self-knowledge is a real-life superpower. My journals delivered a message that I could not have accepted so completely any other way.
For most people, controlling alcohol consumption is natural and easy. For others, it’s more complicated. My journals taught me the hard truth that I’m one of those rare cases where moderation simply doesn’t work.
I was still hoping for a third door: another option besides door number one (drinking) and door number two (sobriety). I simply could not fathom that there wasn’t a fucking third door. — We Are the Luckiest by Laura Mckowen
The thing is, I now know remaining a non-drinker is essential to my health and happiness. At 59, I’m back to my college weight and waist size. I have more energy than I had at 49 and sometimes even 39. I feel very comfortable in my own skin.
Yet my journals have ground into me an inescapable truth: I am not cured. I cannot dabble. I cannot drink even one single beer. I must remain vigilant, which, even after three years, isn’t always easy.
After all, there is a lot of encouragement in our society to drink alcohol. Drinking, plans for drinking, casual references to drinking, jokes about drinking, memes about drinking, and advertisements for drinking are everywhere. Being a non-drinker, at least in my experience, runs against the very grain of societal norms. Alcohol, which is responsible for more deaths each year than cocaine, heroin, and meth combined, is the only drug you have to explain not using.
We sold the boat last year and now live in a 55+ retirement community in Arizona. We’ve made dear, dear friends, all of whom drink. Like boaters, young retirees do like to tip back a pint or two. Sometimes, it feels like we’re all back at college, only this time with nice houses and money. I pack along a little cooler of non-alcoholic beer to parties, though you’ll see me slip away early. A room is never drunker than when you’re the only sober person.
I’ve never gone to an AA meeting, though sometimes I think it would be nice to have even one sober friend who understands my reluctance to hang out when alcohol is flowing so freely. I’m not the most social person, so introducing one more mental barrier to attending these get-togethers isn’t helpful.
A few months back, I smoked some pot at one of these parties to try to enjoy myself more. The last time must have been thirty years ago. As it hit me, I felt that familiar glossy curtain sway between me and my surroundings, that muting of the sharp and bright realities of life. With alcohol, I enjoyed that pleasant release. But, as I sat there with my lungs burning and my mind not entirely my own, I felt uneasy and, well, drugged.
With addiction, there’s always something deeper that keeps you drinking from the poisoned well. The legendary Joe Louis once said of a wily opponent, “he can run, but he can’t hide.” It can be difficult to look too closely at the harder parts of life, the miseries so interlinked with the joys, the seeming pointlessness and terrors of existence. Alcohol hides all that away for a time, but it’s a cop-out. These are the things we all need to face. We can’t run. We can’t hide.
No matter how fast I run, I can never seem to get away from me. — Your Bright Baby Blues by Jackson Browne
When my son was killed in a motorcycle accident almost two years ago, I was desperate for anything that could soften the pain I felt. If I were still drinking, it would have been an easy thing to drown myself in alcohol. Maybe it’s a small blessing that I had a year of sobriety to weather that awful storm. But, if anything, my resolve now is stronger. Connor told me in the last year of his life that he was proud of me for not drinking. My eyes well up with tears as I remember this. How could I even think of tarnishing that memory?
Lisa, the same love of my life this young accountant met playing pool in a bar so long ago, who’s stuck with me for twenty-eight years and drinks so sporadically that I hardly even notice, has been a huge supporter of my sobriety. The following morning, she asked me what I thought of smoking pot. She was a little worried it might have triggered something and cause me to fall off the wagon.
“I didn’t like it. It felt a little too much like being buzzed from alcohol,” I said over coffee. “It feels weird to say it, but I just like being me.”
She smiled and said, “Darlin’, me too.”
Thank Your Teachers
I came across a journal entry I wrote on this day ten years ago. I was reflecting on the people in my life that made a difference on how things have turned out for me. I realized that many of these people couldn’t possibly know the impact they had on me and the countless others they helped.
I kept thinking about this one community college professor who did more than anyone to inspire me to pursue a college degree. I thought how sad it would be if he never knew the difference he made. So after a quick search on the internet, I found him. I wrote him an email. I introduced myself and told him a few stories about how he had challenged and inspired me, how he had helped me forge a path to the person I am today.
And he wrote back:
I wish I could tell you what a joy it was to receive your message today. I had been to a “Lives of Commitment” breakfast, and - since I’m just about to retire from teaching - I was in my office thinking about how a person ‘makes a difference.’ Then - voila! - your message comes up on my screen. Thank you.
I went to class and told my students to write to their teachers. I told them that a letter like that can really make an impact in a person’s life. I told them about your letter.
If you have someone that’s made a difference in your life, like a special teacher, write them an email. Tell them a story about how they helped you. It doesn’t have to be long. Just say thank you. And then do everything you can to pay that help forward.
The End of Private Libraries
There seem to be two kinds of people on this earth—those who love books and everyone else. The bookish have always been far outnumbered, and the gap must be widening in this age of endless digital entertainment. I count myself among the proud minority, but a book, of all things, has brought into question my lifelong practice of keeping a private library.
A recent acquisition illustrates the issue.
“Didn’t you just read this on your Kindle,” Lisa asks me as she flips through the book I’ve brought home.
I dislike direct questioning about my book-buying habits. It feels like the pointed inquiries on medical questionnaires about alcohol consumption.
“Yeah, but I liked it so much I wanted the hard copy,” I tell her.
The fact is, I will likely never read this book, even though I did enjoy it. I bought the book because I like having a visual, tangible record of the time this book and I spent together. I like scanning my shelves and seeing proof of a rich reading life. I like the way a roomful of books makes me feel about myself. Besides, I tell myself, there are worse ways to spend money.
Like most fixations, the origin can often be traced to our youngest days. Pine bookcases flanked the living room fireplace of my childhood home. I can picture the red and black spines of the encyclopedias that filled half those shelves. I spent hours poring over those portals of knowledge at an unnaturally young age. What an odd duck I must have been, this quiet young boy with his nose stuck in an encyclopedia.
A public library beckoned four blocks away, a magical place for a shy little kid. When a kind librarian led me to a shelf of thirty or forty Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators mystery books, I knelt in almost religious piety, awestruck.
I must have viewed that library as a refuge from the troubles my eight-year-old brain struggled to process at home. I felt safer exploring a haunted citadel in Istanbul with Jupiter Jones than I did around my own family. Later, when the divorce was final, and I moved with my mom and new stepdad to a trailer park in Forks, I dreamed of the calm order of that library — the hush and quiet — amidst the babble and grunge of a beaten-down logging town, our family the poorest in a landfill of white trash.
Living hand to mouth at a young age forever shaped my views on the importance of having enough money, but I’ve always spent freely on books. If I look up from where I write this, I can spot my earliest purchases. A Sentimental Education. Look Homeward, Angel. The Sun Also Rises. These old friends have stuck with me my entire life. Eight apartments and three houses, always near.
If I widen my gaze to take in the walls of shelves surrounding me — a collection of some two thousand volumes now — I can trace the outline of my life’s obsessions: boxing, gardening, philosophy, strategy, bird watching, statistics, history, poetry. Shelves and shelves of sailing and tall ships and the sea, books that even here in the desert can launch me miles and miles offshore. And so much great literature: the French, the Russians, the English, the Americans. These last shelved by era, early to late.
Each spine has meaning to me. I recall at a glance where and who I was when I read it. Pulling a book down from the shelves, I feel transported. The heft of the book in my hands, the smell, particularly from my oldest books, wafting up as I thumb through the pages, letting a random passage catch my eye. I read and remember.
In every other part of my life, I am downsizing, simplifying. Most unhappiness stems from a desire for material things. I fantasize about renting a flat in Madrid for three months with just a few clothes, a journal, and my Kindle. And yet, here I sit in this roomful of material things, these books of comfort and consolation, in complete denial of what I know to be true.
I admire those grand Country Manors with their massive libraries passed down for generations. Until recently, I imagined a distant future when my grandchildren and their grandchildren would cherish my library. Yet, times have changed. I have no Country Manor, and books, once the pinnacle of knowledge and wisdom, are no longer quite so prized.
Shaun Bythell, in his memoir, The Diary of a Bookseller, tells the awful truth. In his business, he buys personal libraries from estates. The heir, often the son or daughter of the deceased, shows little emotion toward the collection of dusty books they’ve inherited. “What would I want with all these?” They look around, bewildered. What must have cost a fortune and a lifetime to assemble is sold, gratefully, for $500. My shock when I read about this first encounter turned to numb despair as the situation repeated at various estates throughout the memoir. No one wants these books. No one.
I called my daughter in Los Angeles. She’s a reader like me but prefers a Kindle to physical books. Of course, she wants the books, she said, but without much enthusiasm.
The notion that this library and I might share the same dissolution took a while to accept, like a wild plot twist in a novel you didn’t see coming. Perhaps it never dawned on me how used bookstores acquire so many wonderful books in the first place. I pull down book after book for evidence. A set of Wallace Stegner books I purchased last year bears the previous owner’s carefully inscribed name and address. A Google search turns up the obituary: her death preceded my purchase by two short months.
As I consider the likely future of this little library, I feel more reflective than anguished. After all, books are beacons of light for me, as for many wayward travelers. Let that be enough. My gaze slips along the spines, and I acknowledge each silently. How many thousands of hours have we spent together, ruminating, investigating? How many journeys? These books have shaped and reshaped me. How can you tell where the stories end and the man begins?
I imagine a time when these books take flight, like a great host of swallows, all chaos and boxes and pages aflutter, and in time settle on a thousand different shelves to inspire a thousand new owners.
Until then, let’s commiserate together, my friends, my shipmates. Let us sing on the deck of this foundering ship, our voices a cheer across the ages.
Source link: The End of Private Libraries.
Reading The Story of Civilization
In the spring of last year, I started reading The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. This is no quick undertaking. Spanning eleven volumes and 10,000 pages, it will take me the rest of this year to finish.
The first volume was published in 1935 when Durant had just turned 50. He published the final volume forty years later. Midway through these decades of writing, Will’s wife Ariel became a co-author and active collaborator in this epic undertaking. Together, they read an average of five hundred books as research for each published volume.
The Story of Civilization is regarded as one of the most compelling narratives of world history ever written. The tenth volume, Rousseau and Revolution, won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction in 1968. Goodreads currently gives these books a 4.4 out of 5. Such a high rating is rare, which indicates how readers truly admire the series. Essayist Jamie Todd Rubin chose these as the sole books to take along to his proverbial desert island, which was all the prompting I needed to start this adventure.
While the books were best-sellers during their time, I do wonder how many people got around to reading them. Who has the time to read this much history? After all, this set collected dust on my bookshelves for twenty-five years before I picked up the first volume.
But the intrepid reader who perseveres is in for a telling of history unlike any other. Durant’s writing is clear, colorful, engaging, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. He’s good at digging into the philosophical and religious beliefs of these ancient civilizations to parse out what elements contribute to our present-day ideas and also what, if any, stand up to his skeptical intellect. He pokes fun at the war-mongering gods of Egypt and Persia but shows genuine reverence for the ancient Hindu Upanishads with their belief in impersonal immortality and the oneness we share with the universe. In Ancient Rome, we learn about Julius Caesar and Nero, yes, but also about thinkers like Cicero and Seneca, about the everyday lives of both emperors and peasants, how they cooked, celebrated, and prayed. I feel like I’m on a journey through time with Professor Durant, and he’s motioning for me to sit nearer to him while we take all this in together.
I have a personal reason for reading these books. I inherited the first six volumes from my grandmother, which were a Christmas gift to her from my grandfather in 1959. He died a few years later, before the seventh volume was published and before I had a chance to meet him. My grandmother became a widow at 57, two years younger than I am today. She was always a voracious reader, and I know I inherited my love of learning and books from her.
I have the benefit of my grandmother’s notes in the margins as she read these books some forty years ago. I recognize her cursive handwriting, her exclamation marks, her underlining. I am adding my notes to hers. It’s like we’re reading this grand history together. Maybe one day, my daughter will join us in this shared experience across time and generations.
I am nearing the end of the fifth volume, The Renaissance, which covers the history of Italy from the 14th to mid-16th centuries. My progress is slow but steady. I read an average of 30 pages a night in my little library, hot tea by my side, pen in hand. I’ve come to cherish this time with Professor Durant. There have been more than a few times when my jaw dropped open in sheer disbelief at what I’ve read. I am shocked both by the crazy shit that has happened during the darker periods of our history and that it took so many years for me to learn all of this.
I’ve reached a point in life where I have the time to dedicate to personal projects. Early retirement has its thrills and challenges. Without direction or structure, I could see how I could squander these precious years. But this is something I’ve dreamed of doing since college. I always loved literature and philosophy, but I was too practical to consider a career in academia. Instead, I compromised. I majored in accounting with a personal vow to resume a scholar’s life as soon as financially possible. In hindsight, that is exactly what I have done.
I read a lot, but my knowledge of history is uneven. I’ve read many biographies and a few accounts of specific eras. I have a good grasp of the history of the British Navy during the Age of Sail, early American history, and World War II. I know a little about Ancient Greece and Rome from my readings of philosophy and Stoicism. But these pockets of knowledge feel like tiny stabs of light in an immense underground cavern. Reading Durant, I am slowly illuminating the darkness. I am renewing my education, my scholarship.
Rounding out my knowledge of history complements my other reading as well. How many books have you read that referenced a historical event or leader that you glossed over? If you’re like me, a lot. Having a broad sense of history has deepened my understanding of practically every book I’ve read since I started this adventure. I feel extra synapses firing when I understand a historical reference that would have flown over my head before this newfound knowledge. And with bi-directional links in Craft, my reading notes have exploded in value with the addition of this history overlay. I feel nearer to wisdom the more I read these books.
In the Dark Ages, owning a copy of the Bible was strongly discouraged by the Roman Catholic Church. It was believed that only the clergy could properly interpret the Scriptures. A driving force behind the Italian Renaissance was a loosening of these religious laws to permit a greater pursuit of knowledge, which in turn led to a rediscovery of the philosophy and wisdom of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Today, we face a different obstacle. Our attention spans have shortened from the constant dopamine drip of social media and TikTok videos, the binge-worthy Netflix dramas, and the pressure to keep up with present events that wash over us like a river. We divide ourselves into polarizing groups, yet read the same books, the same news feeds, and the same websites, and thus end up thinking the same way. Our horizons are laughably short. Modern wisdom can sometimes feel like an oxymoron.
Perhaps, then, a study of history is the antidote we all need to make sense of this distracted and confusing world. Maybe the context of prior ages could help us better understand our current struggles. As they say, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Original Blog Post: Reading The Story of Civilization.
My Two Journals
I surprised myself a little over a year ago by writing in a paper journal every morning. The surprise wasn’t that I was keeping a journal but that I was doing it by hand. I had been using the Day One journaling app to record my private thoughts for over a decade. But this was no ordinary year. After suffering an immeasurable loss, I yearned for the comfort that sometimes only flows from pen and paper.
Yet what’s even more surprising is that this was no momentary whim. I’ve kept up this daily habit of scribbling in a notebook in the morning and typing in Day One at night for over a year now. And I think I’ve pieced together why, for me, the combination of analog and digital writing has developed into the best possible journaling experience.
The Benefits of Journaling
Keeping a journal promotes mindfulness, reduces stress and anxiety, improves memory, and can enhance creativity. Journaling can also help you heal from profound loss, providing solace, catharsis, and a means to explore feelings that might otherwise get suppressed. When my son was killed in a motorcycle accident a little over a year ago, I turned to my journal as a way to process my grief.
I am not new to journaling. I’ve kept a private journal for more than thirty years. I filled a dozen notebooks before switching over to Day One in 2012. My journal holds almost four thousand entries dating back as far as 1982.1 I haven’t missed a night of journaling in almost a thousand days.
The Lure of Paper
Despite my appreciation for digital efficiency, I’ve always carried a Field Notes notebook in the back pocket of my jeans or my bag. I like the feel of a pen in my hand when I’m thinking. When we moved to Arizona last year, I knew we wouldn’t be traveling as much as we did aboard our trawler. I decided to upgrade to a full-size desk journal for a change of pace. As one does, I scoured the internet for a suitable notebook.2
I chose the B5 Journal Pro from Scribbles That Matter, which is roughly the size of an iPad, though much thicker. The notebook paper is numbered, dotted, and thick enough to feel luxurious and sturdy with no bleed-through (the paper is rated at 120 gsm). There are two placeholder ribbons, several index pages, and a tucked-in folder in the back of the book for storing notecards or loose paper. When you open the notebook, you hear that satisfying crack of the binding. The book lays flat on a desk.3 The cover is made from vegan leather and feels terrific. This is undoubtedly the nicest journal I’ve ever owned.
I didn’t know how I would use the notebook at first, but a pattern soon emerged. I reached for it as I sipped my first cup of coffee in the morning while my mind was fresh and any dreams still lingered. I would write a half page of fragments, lists, how I slept, and stray thoughts that were top of mind. Sometimes, my pen would linger over the page for minutes, my mind in a meditative trance. Other times, the words that escaped my pen surprised me, like a possessed Ouija board. Later in the day or evening, I might write a little more about the book I was reading or capture a quote I had heard, but most of the action this notebook saw was during that first cup of morning coffee.
I wrote more honestly and sincerely about the loss I had suffered than I did at the keyboard. Slowly, over days and weeks, the pages filled and overflowed with feelings my stoic heart couldn’t express in front of a blinking cursor.
After several months of morning writing, I marveled over how connected I had become to this notebook. Would-be journal keepers who give up too soon miss out on the magic of a journal filled with 50 or more pages of their musings. Flipping back through prior days and weeks of writing reveals the mosaic of meaning you missed because you were standing too near. These cryptic clues drawn from your subconscious remain invisible until you turn the pages just right and suddenly glimpse the pattern. The invitation to revisit what you wrote yesterday or last month prompts you to probe deeper into the crux of what’s troubling you.
Why Two Journals
And yet, as much as I enjoy this handwritten journal, I still use Day One in the evenings. The two journals flow from different parts of my brain, though they work together in an interesting way.
At a keyboard, I write in complete sentences in my practiced journal voice. I am articulate. I write to understand, yes, but also to communicate with some future version of myself, or potentially others. All my published essays began as one of these nightly journal entries. The handwritten notebook is focused squarely on the present moment; the writing in Day One leans back and tilts forward. One is meditation; the other is memoir.
During the time I’ve kept the handwritten journal, the quality of my writing in Day One feels richer. Fragmentary scribbles in the morning often blossom after a day of rumination, elongating into full sentences and paragraphs. A vague concept at daybreak might give birth to the start of an essay that night or maybe a few days or weeks later. There is a give-and-take between these two journals that I’ve come to appreciate.
And besides, Day One isn’t going anywhere. With thousands of entries spanning three decades of my life, the app holds tremendous value for me. I search it often to track down events, trips, critical milestones in my life. The memories I’ve captured of my son stand out like beacons of light on my darker days. Writing each night in Day One is a ritual that helps settle my mind and bring closure to the day.
A New Year, A New Journal
I completed the final page of my paper journal on the last day of 2023. I realized this potentiality in the middle of December and managed my writing output to coincide with this tidy conclusion. Filling one of these journals each calendar year feels right.
After so many years of digital journaling, I forgot what it felt like to retire one. I had grown quite attached to this old journal with its hundreds of pages of private thoughts. After a year of daily use, the book held up surprisingly well. No loose pages, and the binding is still tight. Before shelving it in its lovely slipcase alongside my other paper journals, I archived a PDF copy with the scanner app on my iPhone for safekeeping.
I am slowly breaking in the new notebook, an identical twin to its predecessor. I miss paging through past entries before I start to write in the morning. But, perhaps it’s a good reminder to celebrate new beginnings and the ever-changing nature of life, to close the book on a year of sorrow. I am not healed. There is no healing from some losses. But, at least I can measure the distance I have traveled through the pages of my two journals.
Do you keep a journal? Do you use an app, or do you write by hand? Or both? I’d love to hear about your experiences with journaling in the comments below.
The Wastelands
Grieving the loss of a child is a journey through wastelands you never expected to cross. Unlike every other challenge you’ve ever faced, there is no easy way through a loss like this. You stumble and fall. You curse. You are hobbled and bloody. You are not sure of the way. You might be going in circles.
The truth is everyone suffers in this life. It’s our lot to take the awful with the beautiful. We all must face it. In a perfect world, your mom wouldn’t forget you in the fog of Alzheimer’s Disease. You wouldn’t lose a dear friend to cancer in the prime of her life. Your son wouldn’t die in a motorcycle accident before his twenty-first birthday.
In the months before we lost Connor, we crossed a high wire of reinvention. We retired from our careers. We sold our long-time family home and said goodbye to a lifetime of friends on Vashon Island. We bought a winter home in Arizona with the half-sane plan of living a life split between the summer sea and the winter desert. For half the year, home was where we’d drop the anchor.
Reinvention might come easier for some. I felt like a reluctant hermit crab who knows he must shift to a new shell to survive but dreads the transfer. The plans were years in the making. And just at that vulnerable juncture between one shell and the other, that final letting go of the safety and security of the familiar for the heady promise of a new life, a tsunami upends everything, stranding this naked, scared crab, its tiny claws raised as if to fight the wind and water and waves.
And yet, life continues. We settled into the new house in Arizona. Little bursts of joy came from unexpected sources: the convenience of curbside trash and recycling, reliable high-speed internet, and kind, welcoming neighbors. I unpacked the sixty boxes of books that make up my library, caressing each volume, inhaling its scent, remembering its message as I slowly rebuilt my sanctuary, my illusive shell.
Reading has always been a solace. I read a lot of history and philosophy these past months: the marvels of early Egypt and the brutality of Ancient Rome in Will Durant’s grand opus, The Story of Civilization; the millions of years of Earth’s geology poetically taught in Basin and Range by John McPhee; and the insignificance of our human existence in a careening, infinite universe in Probable Impossibilities by Alan Lightman. Taking a dispassionate view can ease the sting of personal loss.
We sold MV Indiscretion this spring, saying goodbye to trawler life and our ties to the Pacific Northwest. I have let go of so many layers of my identity — business professional, islander, sailor, son to my parents, and now father to my son — that it felt right to reach back to utter beginnings, where I might remake myself, like Gandalf after his plunge from the Bridge of Moria.
We bought a small off-road capable RV in April and have taken a few trips to explore the deserts and mountains of the Southwest. In June, we crossed into Mexico to camp on the shores of the Sea of Cortez. These months in the desert were the longest I’ve strayed from the ocean in my entire life. I missed the smell of the sea and the feel of dried salt on my skin. We waded in the warm surf, feeling once again that indescribable joy of shifting sand under our heels and between our toes while flocks of pelicans dove for their dinner a few yards from us.
I sat beside tide pools nestled within the rocky outcrops that lay between long stretches of sand: hermit crabs battling to defend their territories, starfish, sea stars, sea slugs, mussels, sea urchins, and tiny brine shrimp, all pursuing the minutiae of their daily lives. Looking up into the cosmos and down into a tide pool, I noted the parallels: we are all one.
A strong south wind picked up one night, and gusts gently rocked the RV on its suspension. I emerged from a heavy sleep to check the anchor, trying to remember how far we were from the rocks on shore. I drifted back to sleep, still dreaming we were afloat. I know the sea beckons on the far side of this wilderness.
After a long period of intentional isolation, I have begun the process of reconnecting with old friends and making new friends here in Arizona. This has been difficult for me. They ask me how I’m doing. Am I OK? I don’t have an answer. “What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step,” said Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Every day, I take a step.
I’m writing this tonight from a small campground in southern Colorado. We’ve been traveling for a few weeks, taking the backroads, stopping often, seeing where the open road takes us. We have no plan, no definite time to return. It feels good to roam.
Driving through western New Mexico, I felt a lightness I didn’t expect. The beauty of the colorful mesas and buttes rising around us filled me with awe. We hiked to La Ventana Natural Arch to find ourselves in an ancient, sacred place — a place of prayer and hope and resilience. It left me wanting to see more, to do more. For the first time in many months, my mind tilted forward, a blessed release from so much focus on the past.
Every day brings a little more joy and a little less sadness. On good days, I see a brightening just over the horizon. A clearing? Yet there are still those days when I sink deep into sorrow and recognize the false dawn. There is no way around this, only forward, across this barren terrain. One step. Then another. When I dare look around, I see so many others walking beside me. Grief is the price we all pay for love. Won’t you take my hand? It won’t be long now. If death has taught me anything, it’s that nothing persists, not even grief.
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A Father’s Grief
This is the most difficult thing I’ve ever written. I’m sharing this partly because I hope that releasing these words will provide some catharsis from the excruciating pain I have carried around these last months. Perhaps the sentiments I’ve conveyed here can be a small comfort to someone who has experienced a similar tragedy. I also know that people are worried about us, about me. Consider this an abbreviated journal of our past one hundred days. Unlike anything else I’ve written, this one contains no epiphany, enlightenment, or happy ending. This one is mired in the messy middle of heartbreak and loss.
On the night of September 27th, our son Connor died in a motorcycle accident in Colorado Springs. A car pulled out in front of him on a busy street a half mile from his apartment. He was killed instantly in the crash. He was riding a motorcycle he had owned for just one day. He was twenty years old.
I mentally replay the call we received from the coroner’s office in the wee hours of September 28th over and over and over again, my mind trying to push this all away, to wake up from the darkest, longest nightmare of my life.
I look back at that person I was on September 26th — that carefree soul with so many blessings — and compare him to the person I am today: darkened, sorrowful, broken. The two of us could be long-separated brothers, but a world apart in life experience. I no longer recognize that other me who swung so happily from the thinnest of threads, not understanding his entire world could crumble in the space of a single heartbeat.
Lisa and I have faced our share of grief together. First her mom, then mine. Her dad, then my dad. With each of these losses, one of us was always the stronger one, there to hold the other, to give comfort, to listen. This was the first time in our marriage that neither of us was strong enough to hold up the other. Thankfully, dear friends joined us on the boat to help us make it through the day, make travel arrangements, encourage us to eat, and simply hold us. I am forever grateful to these friends who also lost a near-family member for their love and help on that hardest day.
When the shock wore off and grim reality set in, we rallied as a family to do what we must. Our daughter Mallory took a leave of absence from work and joined us in Colorado Springs to help with Connor’s arrangements. During breaks from our awful tasks, we hiked the hills that he loved. We hungered for stories from his friends about his last days, his last night. We splashed the healing waters of Manitou Springs on our faces, needing their restorative powers to give us the strength to finalize the affairs of such a young life, a life so wholly intertwined with ours that we struggled to find where he ended and we continue.
We returned to Seattle utterly bereft. Unable to face the grief and sorrow of others, we stole away for the San Juan Islands aboard the trawler in an attempt to regain our equilibrium. Connor spent his entire life around saltwater and boats. We knew that if there was any way for us to find peace after something like this, it would be on the water. We could feel his presence in every anchorage, every trip ashore in the tender, every meal around the saloon table, every sunset and moonrise. Visiting these familiar islands over those two weeks was both a comfort and an agony.
We returned to port steadier but still reeling. We held a small gathering of Connor’s closest friends to mourn his passing. I was surprised and grateful that so many made the long trip from Colorado to Vashon Island to attend this memorial. It took everything I had to talk with others about my son in the past tense. There were tears but also smiles and laughter as we collectively remembered his life and the impact he had on all those around him. It was the first time since his passing that I remembered him with more love than pain.
Link to Connor’s memorial tribute video (six minutes)
In November, Lisa and I drove south to Southern California. We took the coastal route, stopping frequently to gaze at the ocean, to feel the pounding of surf, to take in giant lungfuls of healing sea air. Lisa took this same route in reverse with Connor in 2020, when his university in Colorado Springs closed down because of COVID. She pointed out the places they stopped and the sights they took in together, as if a part of him were still there, waiting for us.
We stretched a three-day trip into a week, knowing somehow that it was important for us to linger. We are feeling our way through this. There are no charts, no waypoints to follow, only instinct, love, and shared grief.
I poured my sorrow into a journal each morning and night to help me make sense of what had happened. You can trace the first stages of grief in those early entries: shock and denial, the second guessing and what-ifs, the heartbreak and rage at the universe knowing that Connor would miss the most beautiful aspects of life: falling in love, finding his path, becoming a father himself one day.
On Thanksgiving morning, I forced myself to write what I was most thankful for as Connor’s father. I wrote how grateful I was to have had the chance to be his dad, that I took a sabbatical from work to spend more time with him and his sister as teenagers, that he was able to squeeze so much life and adventure into his twenty short years, that he died doing something he loved.
Luckily, we spent Thanksgiving — our first holiday without Connor — surrounded by the comfort of extended family and the welcome chaos only small children can bring to a home.
In December, we moved into our new winter home here in Arizona. The sunshine and change of scenery from our life on the trawler have been a welcome change. Mallory and her partner drove from California to spend Christmas with us. We tried to be festive and honor Connor’s memory on a holiday he dearly loved.
As I write this, It’s been one hundred days since he died. I cringe at these words — their harsh reality, their certainty. There are moments, sometimes whole hours, when I forget.
The nights are the worst. I wake most mornings with tears in my eyes. My subconscious won’t accept the truth. It’s as if I’m learning, again and again, the facts of this unbearable loss with each new day. My son is gone.
If Lisa rises before me, I approach her quietly, softly, like someone waiting for word in a hospital lounge, anxious for a loved one whose prognosis is not good. “How did you sleep?” I ask her out of kindness, but I already know the answer. I wonder if these splinters that keep stabbing us will ever wear down to mere rough edges.
I looked to the ancient sages who did so much to shape how I live my life: Epictetus, Seneca the Younger, Marcus Aurelius. Their counsel when I was young helped me reconcile our universal longing for permanence in this short life we are given. I tried to apply their teachings to what happened to Connor, to regain my Stoic footing, but Memento Mori feels so hollow and pointless when I consider the death of this young man whose life had only just started.
I’ve never been religious, but I suddenly ache for the certainty and hope the faithful possess. I have listened to Mozart’s Requiem dozens of times these past months. Though I don’t understand the Latin, there’s something universal in the music that communicates comfort and awe on a spiritual, perhaps even molecular level. Since Connor’s death, my uneasiness with mortality has softened. I look forward to the chance, however slim, of seeing my son again, and if not, to know at least that we’ll be together in that vast universal void.
Our plans to cruise the northern reaches of British Columbia and Alaska next summer aboard our trawler feel somehow awful, as if our fairy tale life could possibly continue after such a loss. I feel like making a new start in the desert, to follow the dirt roads and mountain passes where Connor found such happiness in the last year of his life, to cauterize this paralyzing sadness and emerge somehow transformed, reformed, like Phoenix from the ashes.
I remain a proud father to my beautiful daughter Mallory, who inspires me daily with her kindness, intelligence, and generosity. There were days when she was my lifeboat, the one who pulled me to safety from the wreckage. After all those years of holding her hand, she held mine. We need each other more than ever now.
And I have my Lisa, my best friend and soulmate. We may look at the world through different lenses and leverage different strengths, but we never waver on the big things — what’s most important to us and our family. We’re apart for the first time since we lost Connor as she celebrates the birthday of her grand-nephew in Los Angeles. I miss her dearly. We’re two leaning pillars that can only stand upright because of the other’s weight and support. I like to think of myself as mentally and emotionally strong, but I know this: she’s the reason I’ve maintained my sanity through this ordeal. Without her love and support, I don’t know where I’d be.
A family friend who suffered the loss of her 24-year-old son called us shortly after Connor died. Her loss was still very fresh — just three months — but she was strong enough to help us in a way that no one else could. She understood exactly what we were going through.
One stranger who understands your experience exactly will do for you what hundreds of close friends and family who don’t understand cannot. It is the necessary palliative for the pain of stretching into change. It is the cool glass of water in hell.
— Laura Mckowen, We Are the Luckiest
She recommended a book that helped her: Finding Meaning by David Kessler. In his career as a grief counselor, Mr. Kessler helped develop the now-famous five stages of death and dying, and tragically suffered the loss of his 21-year-old son before writing this book.
Reading this book did help me. I began to see that what happened to Connor, though horrible, wasn’t that rare. Many, many parents have gone through this same torture of the loss of a child, some much younger, or through circumstances riddled with regret and even more heartbreak. I learned that the agony of grief is equal to the devotion and love you had. It’s no surprise that I am utterly gutted. I loved that boy so much.
About three months after Kessler’s son died, a colleague sent him this note: “I know you’re drowning. You’ll keep sinking for a while, but there will come a point when you’ll hit bottom. Then you’ll have a decision to make. Do you stay there or push off and start to rise again?”
And that’s where I find myself today: at rock bottom or very near it. I too have a choice to make. Will I stay down here to flounder? Or will I swim for the surface? A part of me knows there are many magical moments yet to be shared with family and friends, to begin again to appreciate the everyday joy of life. Will I ever again choose joy? I hope someday I can.
Thank you for reaching the end of this meandering post. If you made it this far, you must either really care about me and my family, or you’ve been part of a similar tragedy yourself and are looking for some comfort. If it’s the former, I am grateful for your concern during this most difficult time. If it’s the latter, I hope you find peace in your own way, and in your own time.
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The Art of Letting Go
If the first half of life is about growing and accumulating, then the second half must see us disbursing, letting go. Life is full of cycles — like the seasons, or perhaps more dear to me, the flooding and ebbing of tides.
In the past few years, I’ve let go of my aging parents, my career and a lifetime of associates and colleagues, a dear friend, and this past year I watched my two kids leave home to start their own lives of growth and accumulation.
At its best, letting go brings an emotional release, a lightness, a feeling of immense relief, like putting down a heavy weight you’ve been carrying around for too long. At its worst, it brings a paralyzing sense of irretrievable loss. I’ve been thinking about these two very different outcomes as we navigate our next phase of letting go.
I’m told your house never looks as good as the day you sell, and after twenty-three years here on Vashon Island, we’re close to reaching that particular zenith. White paint has stained my fingers and forearm, and a big smear tattoos my right cheek. The list of projects has dwindled over the past weeks, and we’re down to just a few beauty marks.
After each section of trim I painted today, I found myself looking out at the water on this sunny Spring day. You’d think after all these years I’d take this view of Puget Sound for granted, but I don’t. For a spell, I watched a container ship make its way southbound to offload in Tacoma, its wake stretching out for miles in the flat water.
On clear days you can see Whidbey Island from our front porch. Such a wide, unencumbered expanse of water provides a theatrical experience for watching weather systems roll through, especially the northern gales in deep winter. Dark gray squalls march across the water, relentless in their intensity, unstoppable in their progress. Bald eagles float just fifty yards off the porch, contorting their wings in tiny increments to remain utterly still as they study the whipped up sea for a meal. The Firs and the big Japanese Maple tree groan and shudder in the gusts. The biting sting of the wind on your cheek makes you appreciate the warmth inside the house as you take all this in.
They say it takes a special kind of person to live on an island like Vashon. Betty MacDonald wrote her memoir Onions in the Stew while living here in the 1940s. Most of her humorous observations about the eccentricities and shortcomings of island life still ring true.
Anyone contemplating island dwelling must be physically strong and it is an added advantage if you aren’t too bright.
Vashon is nestled in southern Puget Sound halfway between Seattle and Tacoma. The island population of roughly ten thousand hasn’t budged much in thirty years. There are no bridges that connect us to the mainland. Ferries on the north and sound ends of the island are the gateways to visit or leave.
Unlike more tourist-minded destinations, Vashon grooves with its own unique personality. Some say that driving off the ferry boat and winding your way through its rural roads is like going back in time. “Keep Vashon Weird” bumper stickers adorn VW buses and BMWs alike. Eco-friendly farmers, artists, hippies, celebrities, weekenders, old families, newcomers, commuters, eccentrics, musicians, professionals … a hodgepodge brought together by a love of saltwater, an unconventional lifestyle, and geographic seclusion.
I’ve lived here far longer than any other place. I’ve put down deep roots. In 35 years of life before Vashon, I moved some twenty times, from one house or apartment to the next, every year or two, which at the time seemed perfectly normal. Growing up, my parents had this ache in them to roam. We moved every year in my four years of high school. I was a shy kid. By the time I made any friends, we were packing up for the next town.
Lisa, my partner these many years, also led a wandering life as a child. Instead of traipsing through small Washington coastal towns, she lived abroad, calling places like Singapore, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand her home. Her father worked in construction, and when the job ended, they moved on. Again and again.
From the early days of our relationship, we kindled a dream of running off together. A ranch in Montana, a seaside villa in Mexico, a flat in Madrid. Six months into our courtship, we spent three weeks touring Greece and decided, after perhaps a bit too much Ouzo, to get married there and then on the island of Skiathos. Neither of us had met the other’s parents, and our stunned friends were sure the marriage would not last out the year. But when you know, you know.
When our daughter was born, we vowed to give her something we never had: a consistent, unchanging childhood home. We moved to Vashon just shy of her first birthday, and she and her younger brother grew up in the same house, in the same little town, with the same friends from pre-school tots to angsty high school seniors. When the time for college rolled around, both were desperate to get away from a place so small and remote. Yet, later in life, I wonder if the deep-rooted memories of sandy beaches, quiet forests, and a one-block town without traffic lights become a subconscious yardstick for the ideal life?
The house, built in 1917, turned one hundred during our time here. At one point or another, we’ve remodeled just about every inch of her, but we always stayed true to her spirit. She’s an old soul, sitting atop this hill looking out over the water. I realize we’ve just been her caretakers for a time.
I left the island every morning by ferry for twenty years and suffered through my fair share of business travel. Returning home, breathing seemed easier, the sea air and open vista perhaps working together to inflate my lungs more completely than anywhere else. The sound of the gentle surf through the open skylight lulled me quickly to sleep when I fell into my own bed at last. This island home has always been my sanctuary.
Every so often, a grandchild of the former owners stops by to see the house. Fully grown now, they look around, starstruck. “I spent every summer here when I was little,” a lady in her mid-twenties tells me, close to tears. They will have brought their partner along as witness to a living piece of their childhood.
I learned to sail on Vashon, and the connection between boating and island life is inexorably linked. I’ve sailed along her forty-five miles of coastline countless times, and my family knows to spread my ashes in Quartermaster Harbor should the sudden need arise. For years, we kept a mooring buoy in the deep water in front the house. It became a summer tradition to sail the boat around from the marina for crabbing and sailing and floating picnics.
On clear nights, I would sometimes sneak down the long flight of beach stairs to sail alone under the stars. Lying back in the cockpit, steering with my leg over the tiller, trimming the sails in the darkness by the feel of wind on my cheek. Sailing at night feels so magical: the lift and fall of the gentle swell, the hiss of the waves against the hull, the green glow of phosphor trailing astern, and that dizzying feeling of falling and merging into the galaxy of stars splayed above you. I’ve never felt so utterly connected to the cosmos as on small boat under the stars on a summer night.
Selling the house and moving off island has been our plan for years, so why do I feel so pensive as our time here draws near? My glances around the house and the water are slower, more considered, like Ahab gazing at the sea before his final showdown with the white whale. I strain to hear the tolling of an iron bell, for it’s possible the end of this chapter of island life is followed by mere epilogue. A little voice inside me tells me to stop, to reconsider. The house looks so good; why not stay, the voice implores. I am sorely tempted.
But no. What haunts us late in life are the things we didn’t do. In letting go our island home and life, we step into a new life of two distinct halves: from May through October we’ll live and cruise aboard Indiscretion, our expedition trawler, with Shilshole Marina as our new home port. Near enough to see our friends on Vashon and the perfect launching off spot for exploring the Salish Sea during the best weather the Northwest offers. In October, we’ll drive south to our new home in a 55+ community 40 minutes west of Phoenix, AZ called Victory at Verrado. Six months of warm winter weather, desert hikes, Seattle Mariners spring training, and poorly played golf is just enough time to begin pining for the greens and blues of the beautiful Northwest. We’ll lock up the house in early May and make our way back to Indiscretion for another season.
Lately, I’ve been having this recurring dream of riding in a hot air balloon. The gondola is staked to the beach in front of our house with anchors that seem much too small for such a large craft. An offshore wind buffets the big balloon and I know those anchors can’t hold much longer. The two of us pile in the gondola, which, once aboard, looks weirdly like the pilothouse of a trawler. We release the mooring lines and float up and up into the sky. We clear the tree line and watch our house and the island grow small, insignificant. We keep rising, our view expanding in all directions. I point out the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast. We float over Desolation Sound, Princess Louisa Inlet, the Broughton Archipelago, and the wide expanse of Queen Charlotte Sound. Ahead, just over the curved horizon lies Alaska. The dream always ends when we toss out the sandbags of ballast at our feet. Maybe we simply fly upwards into the stars. Or, perhaps we set down in Greece to renew our marriage vows, but this time, we stay the whole summer, traveling light.
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Keep the Change
As I walked through the throng of travelers at LAX recently on my way to a flight that would be canceled the minute I got to the gate, I reflected on how change is the only real constant in life. In less than a week, I found myself hurrying through crowded airports in Seattle, Denver and Los Angeles (fun fact: these three airports accounted for 60% of all holiday flight cancelations). From Denver, I drove 1,200 miles to Los Angeles in a Jeep with Connor and his ten-month-old puppy, listening to baseball podcasts (yes, that’s a thing) through Colorado and New Mexico. The music changed to hip hop in Arizona, and I felt nostalgic for the podcasts. I paid nearly $7 per gallon for gas in California and felt nostalgic for Arizona. We survived freeway driving in the rain as we neared Los Angeles with Connor relying on his 19-year-old reflexes — or the Force — to weave in and out of 80-mph traffic.
Mallory hosted us at her beautiful apartment near Santa Monica. She’s only lived there a few months but showed us around her bustling neighborhood like a native. I can’t believe this young lady who grew up on an island of 10,000 is now so at ease in a city of four million. We picked up Lisa at LAX later that night in a downpour. And defying the promise of the song and our much-needed dose of Vitamin D, It really does rain in Southern California. Serious drenching rain, like the kind I used to see in the rain forest near Forks.
With the four of us together, we did the usual holiday stuff, but in a new way: last-minute Christmas shopping at an open-air mall in the pouring rain, Christmas Eve ramen, a marathon Monopoly game made longer by Lisa’s insistence on gifting money to her children and thereby violating the very premise of the game (!), a requisite walk through Marina del Rey to gawk at boats, and Christmas Day with extended family in Costa Mesa. Here I got to meet the next generation of little ones — Jackson, Avery and Effie — and as I helped them play with their Christmas toys, I couldn’t shake the feeling that time had somehow looped back on itself, and I was a new dad, and Mallory and Connor were little again, and that life stood still.
For many years, our holidays repeated a predictable pattern at our island home. The same setting, the same meals, the same corner with the same kind of Christmas tree, the same wintry night on the same porch, looking out at the night sky and sea. Yet, life is forever changing, renewing, and reshaping. As Alan Watts said, “the only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” Long-standing traditions can be a comfort, but on this family holiday, with its unexpected detours and moments of sheer bliss, I learned a new kind of music. And it’s time to dance.
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Organizing the Tool Shed
In my office, I keep an old photograph of the Buckaroo Tavern in the Seattle neighborhood of Fremont. The photo truly captured the character of the place: two chrome-festooned Harley Davidson motorcycles parked up on the sidewalk out front, bright orbs from the lights hung over the pool tables, and an outstretched arm and pool cue of a patron poised in mid-shot. I spent many nights at this dive bar as a young man. My eyes burned from the cigarette smoke, and the rough-looking biker crowd that congregated at the bar would often chuckle over their beers at this clean-cut accountant toting a pool cue case, but I loved the place. I had the photograph framed when we first moved to Vashon Island. It hangs between a picture of Mark Twain standing before a pool table considering his next shot and a signed photograph of Jack Dempsey in his famous boxing stance. But, it’s the tavern picture that has caught my attention lately as I think back on that long ago life before kids.
Coaches
I'm told I say it every year, but today was certainly the best Father's Day ever. Being spoiled by my two children, and seeing how they've become wonderful adults has put me in a thankful, reflective mood. I'm sure every generation thinks this, but I believe what it means to be a father has changed a lot over the past thirty years. I had the benefit of having two dads as I grew up, first one and then the other. I loved them both, but I looked for other role models when I became a father myself.
A Wheelhouse at Night
Backing to Port
Fear of Flying
I spent last weekend in Las Vegas to attend my niece’s Little White Chapel wedding on the Strip. Frequent flier miles paid for our tickets, placing us in the far back of the plane. On the way home to Seattle, my family took the whole row on the port side of the aircraft, while I settled into the opposite aisle seat. A couple soon appeared and clambered into the seats next to mine. They had flown down for the weekend to see Billy Idol perform and were on their way back home.
I felt my seat grow a little smaller as I wedged my body and gear inside the proper confines of my aisle seat. I’ve flown in a lot of middle seats in my life. Those armrests go with the seat-bearer. Trust me on that.
The woman, dressed in sensible travel clothes, sat in the window seat and soon busied herself with a book. Her companion, fitted out in trim, athletic apparel, was personable enough upon introduction, but soon fell silent, back straight, eyes open and staring forward. Unmoving.
Before every plane trip, I make sure I bring along enough distractions to keep me occupied for the duration of the nerve-rattling tin can captivity of air travel. While I’ve flown nearly a million miles over my life, most of it shuttling between airports and corporate conference rooms, I still maintain an unshakable dread of flying. I’ve woken from nightmares of being stuck in the middle seat of a plane with nothing to read. Seriously.
In the old days, to take my mind off the jolts of turbulence, I weighted down my bag with two or three books and a couple newspapers, along with an ample supply of work projects. For this particular trip, I brought my Kindle with a newly begun 1,000-page novel, an iPad loaded with the day’s Wall Street Journal, a movie and a few episodes of a TV show I’m following, and an iPhone with 300 hours of music and a slew of games. Pair all this with noise-canceling headphones, and I carried more entertainment gear than the tiny seat back pocket could accommodate — my electronically-insulated cocoon.
While the man beside me continued his meditative trance, bugging the shit out of me, I considered my obsession with keeping busy on planes. I try to meditate every day, but I cannot imagine a two and a half hour meditation while hurtling along at 34,000 feet in intermittent turbulence. Taking a car ferry every day like I do is far more dangerous than flying, based on the data. Yet I need something at hand to occupy my mind in any confined space, especially a multi-hour strapped-in plane ride.
I thought this fellow, in his enthusiasm for seeing Billy Idol, must have forgotten to bring along reading material. You know, rushing out the door with your bags and tickets, excited for the bright lights of Vegas and to see a beloved entertainer. This can be forgiven. I think. But wait. The Airline Magazine was resting at eye level in the seat-back 11 inches from his direct line of sight. Did he ever flip through it, even as a diversion? No, he did not.
My air travel anxiety began even before I made that walk down the gangway to board my first flight. When I was seven, my mom shared a story with me about a strange feeling she had at the gate before boarding a plane to Guam when she was in her early twenties. At the last minute, she followed her instincts and decided not to board. The plane crashed with all passengers lost somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. A horrifying event. Looking back now, I don’t think this actually happened to my mom. I think she made the whole thing up after reading about something similar in the National Enquirer or watching a TV show on ESP. I can’t ask her now, but even if it wasn’t true, it instilled a healthy fear of flying in me at an impressionable age.
Then, in my teens during my short-lived boxing career, Chuck Robinson, a 17-year-old welterweight, two years my senior, made it on the Muhammad Ali Boxing Team all the way from our little small-town Washington state boxing program. He got to spar with the great one himself at Ali’s gym in Santa Monica. Chuck was an exceptional athlete, and to me and many others, a real local hero. He and 13 other amateur boxers flew to Europe in the Spring of 1980 to compete in the qualifiers for the 1980 Olympics – a dream of mine and near reality for Chuck. Somewhere over Warsaw, the aircraft suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure and spiraled out of control for 26 seconds before crashing. The muscles and tendons between wrist and forearm of most of the athletes were severed on impact, suggesting these young men were awake and gripping their seats at the time of the crash. The plane disintegrated as it plowed into the ground, killing all 87 aboard.
I think about Chuck and that awful half-minute of terror every time I fly.
As I considered my seatmate, I realize the two of us must exist on separate ends of a personality spectrum. Me, with with my gadgets sprawled on my lap as we taxied down the runway, intent on distracting myself from the potential of immediate demise; he, with his zen-like serenity, oblivious to the unnatural motion and angle as we made our ascent to the heavens, only to plummet to our deaths should one of a hundred possible mechanical failures present itself.
When the drink cart rolled through after a rough bit of turbulence, I ordered a beer, maybe my last, I reasoned. He took only water.
Near the end of the flight, I stole a glance his way, sure to find him asleep, perhaps a spot of drool pooled on his fitted microfiber shirt. But no, I saw his eyes were open and intently focused …. on nothing. I turned away, abashed. A part of me wanted to be like him, to be relaxed and calm, to be present, even during this suspended limbo of plane travel, maybe crafting a beautiful sonnet or the perfect line of code as he stared at the seat back ahead of him. Yet, at that moment I found myself hating him. His smugness and self-assuredness. His straight spine and posture. His stillness.
After the plane landed safely and people began the slow disembarkment ahead of us, we exchanged pleasantries. Welcome home, I said. You too, he said. That must have been some show, I said. He and his companion smiled and nodded. I helped take down their bags from the overhead compartment.
While we waited our turn to leave the plane, I wondered again at my nervousness of air travel. Do I need all these distractions underway, or am I obscuring an opportunity at more profound personal enlightenment to fully experience the present moment and embrace the wonderful but temporary life we have been given? Maybe this man has the right of it.
I looked around and found entire rows of people with their heads pointed down, intent on their tiny screens, catching up on what they had missed in our three-hour sojourn from tarmac to tarmac. The siren song of voicemail and text message pings filled the stale air of the plane all around me like the sounds of a pinball machine. I was not alone in this constant need for distraction.
As I followed my seatmate and his companion up the aisle, I vowed to myself: next time, I will face down my demons and experience the joy and terror of the moment even as we careen and jostle through the skies above.
Writing this from the Alaska Airlines Boardroom as I await my flight to San Francisco, I have already broken that promise. I would save a child from a burning building, but I won’t board a plane without a well-stocked iPad.
In my acceptance of these shortcomings, I tip my hat to the well-found soul in seat 34B.
Eartec Wireless Radios - The Marriage Saver
Lisa and I have celebrated 22 wedding anniversaries. For at least the past dozen years, we haven’t exchanged gifts beyond small tokens like flowers or chocolates. Instead, we go out to dinner, just the two of us, to celebrate the occasion. This year we celebrated at May’s Kitchen, a Thai restaurant on Vashon that is so good, it is worthy of special occasions like anniversaries. As we were heading out the door on our way to the restaurant, Lisa surprised me with a package.
“Wait, what’s this?” I asked with apprehension. She was breaking tradition. “I didn’t buy you a gift.”
“Don’t worry. It’s for both of us. It’s a marriage saver,” she replied with a cryptic smile.
The Ferry Commuter's Secret
I’ve taken over 6,000 ferry rides since moving to Vashon Island. Most of these were uneventful passages to work and back. But everyone once in a while, say 1% off the time, or 60 sailings, I’ve been the very first car on the ferry.
Being the first car on the ferry has some unique benefits. Unless an ambulance or police car has priority loading, the first car loads into the first spot of the center lane, perched out on the bow of the boat. The view from this vantage point is unencumbered and fantastic. On summer days, you can roll down the windows and open the sunroof and take in the glory of sun and sea. In winter, you feel the rollers and spray even with the windows up. No reason to go up on deck when you have such a wonderful ringside seat. I almost always put down my book or laptop on these journeys and soak in the raw beauty of the waves usually lost on me back in the bowels of the car deck on other sailings.
But being the first car on the ferry also has its downsides. Earning this spot means you missed the sailing of the previous boat by just one car. You were the lonely vehicle left on the loading dock while all the cars in front of you sailed off, the ferry worker dolefully shaking his head as the traffic divider bar slowly descends, dooming your fate. You’l wait about an hour stewing on this before you get to enjoy your prime viewing position.
In the probability analysis all commuters calculate every morning and night, wondering when is the last possible minute you can leave and still get on the ferry, being this first car is tangible proof that you blew it. That pause over a last sip of coffee in the morning, that last small talk at the elevator at day’s end, the missed traffic light, all these you think about as you wait.
New York commuters rushing to their trains have a distinct advantage. All they have to consider is travel time and a fixed departure. With ferries, you have to also estimate the volume of other commuters, dump trucks, tourists, and delivery vans that fill up the ferry sometimes well before the sailing time. If only it were so easy to plan on time alone.
This is why ferry commuters usually have a diversion with them: a book, a journal, a musical instrument to while away the time. I’ve filled many journal pages with private thoughts over the years during these unplanned delays.
After over twenty years of ferry commuting, I now see this as just another part of life. Normal. Simply driving straight to work with no waiting, no surge of the sea as you make the crossing, no unplanned hour of waiting to read or think, or maybe write… without that, my life would feel diminished. Incomplete. So, I’ll keep this up, practicing my daily probability analysis, and while I’m sure I’ll be frustrated, I’ll deep down relish my perch on the bow of the ferry when I find myself there once again.
Losses and Gains
Back in my early thirties, my uncle Jim died unexpectedly. He had a lifelong passion of sailing, particularly the sell-everything-and-sail-off-across the-horizon variety. He had years and years of Cruising World magazines stacked up next to the toilet in his bathroom. I remember him waxing on about his plans to cast off, the destinations he’d visit, the freedom he would feel. He bought a sailboat, a very seaworthy vessel, capable of sailing anywhere in the world, and spent years in the boatyard getting her ready for sea. The conversations changed from if he would go, to when. And then, out of the blue, he passed away. To my knowledge, her keel never floated while Jim lived. He never achieved his dream of casting off and chasing the horizon.
I vividly recall the day I learned of his death. I was shocked. His was the first close death in my life. He was still a young man and I struggled to comprehend the awful fact that he was gone. Living near Puget Sound afforded access to many marinas. I drove to the nearest one and walked the docks thinking of my uncle Jim. I looked at each boat on the dock, most of the boats sadly forlorn, and was miserable at my loss. And then something happened to me, literally on that dock. I was struck by an idea that I must carry on his passion for sailing.
House Guest
I’ve always been a big reader and dreamed of having my own private library for as long as I can remember. One of the things that drew me to our house here on Vashon was the book-lined room with views out to the water. We’ve expanded the shelves over the years and now have all my books in easy reach from two antique leather wingback chairs. I’ve spent many a quiet evening reading from one of these chairs in perfect peace, feeling very fortunate to have such a sanctuary.
And then … we got a puppy. Not just any puppy, but a Puggle (mostly Beagle), and my private space quickly became his playground. First, he chewed through a half dozen rare leather-bound books I spent a small fortune to acquire. He then tore through the leather cushion on the starboard wing chair. Later he gnawed through the ancient leather base of the port chair. The kids would avoid me on the nights I would come home to discover another puppy atrocity in the library. I am on a first-name basis with an antique furniture repair place in Tacoma.
We ended up covering the chairs and putting baby gates across all the bookcases to prevent further damage from the little fella. Since then, the damage has stopped, though the charm of the place has lost some of its magic. Yet tonight, as the two of us sit together ruminating on the day, I think it’s become a good place to share after all…
Valencia of Childhood Dreams
When I was a boy, younger than twelve-year-old Connor is now, I believed all the stories my dear Pop told me. He sailed across oceans, traveled down the Nile, jumped out of planes in the 82nd Airborne, drank with Hemingway, conspired with Castro, along with many other misdeeds and adventures. While my kids are constant skeptics of any tales I tell, even the true ones, I didn’t question the stories I was told. Pop was a great story teller. He would get this gleam in his eye while he drew you in and threw in such vivid details of the surroundings and the things that happened to him that you couldn’t help but believe.
One of Pop’s favorite tales was about his time in Valencia, Spain. I don’t recall why he was there. Maybe the army? It didn’t matter. All I knew is he loved Valencia. Its beaches, women, wine and music. Its history and machismo and bullfighting. This was captivating stuff for a ten year old.