I thought having dogs in Manhattan would be problematic. We purposefully chose an apartment near Central Park for easy access to the trails and green spaces. We’ve been here for six weeks now, and let me assure you: there are plenty of dogs in the city. Thousands of dogs roam the park on any given day, many of them off-leash.
Our two fellas have never been the most cordial during interactions with other dogs. I recall a few instances of canine bedlam when meeting other dogs walking down a crowded dock from our boat. Yet here, the dogs we meet must give off a calming vibe. Our dogs rarely react to the most aggressive sniffing. It’s like they’re different dogs.
We often visit the same quiet section of the Park for our last walk in the evening. Except for the muffled sound of traffic, we might think we’re back on rural Vashon Island. Until we come around a bend and the sky opens up.
My breath usually catches at the sight, which feels like it must be computer-generated from some science fiction movie. A photo doesn’t capture it.
While the dogs pursue all the intricate scents on the ground, I am looking up and out. We are all living our best lives. What a city.
We are walking through Central Park on a beautiful May morning, two lovebirds, married these many years. It’s our third day in Manhattan, and it feels as though the city has opened its arms wide and hugged us. Everywhere we look is green and lush. We pass a bakery nestled deep inside the park and decide to return tomorrow for a coffee and treats.
We emerge from the meadows and winding paths to the thrum and bustle of the Upper West Side. We walk up Broadway looking for a stationery store that sells my kind of notebooks and the art supplies she needs for an upcoming drawing class. The store is nearby, and I’m scanning both the businesses along the street and the map on my phone.
Without warning, Lisa stops. She points to a store sign and speaks a series of numbers. A SEPHORA sign comes out as 8-4-3-5. The neon TD Bank sign is another string of numbers. I look at her closely to see if she’s joking. She's not.
My heart begins to thump in my chest. We find a bench on a traffic island in the middle of Broadway. I ask her to read an advertisement on the bus, and she rattles off more numbers. Her tone becomes emphatic, as if it’s me who’s confused. I ask her to tell me her name. She doesn’t know it.
I wrap my arms around her and tell her to take deep breaths. In a few minutes, we hear the siren of a distant ambulance. “That’s for us,” I say. There are people everywhere, but I feel utterly alone. My mind goes quiet. I know what this is.
Twenty days earlier, during a quiet morning at home in Phoenix, Lisa discovers she can no longer read the text on her phone. Moments later, she can’t recall my name or our daughter’s name. We drive to the emergency room, and she is whisked into a triage room where doctors assess her. They say it’s a stroke and administer a powerful blood thinner. In two hours, her memory comes back. CT Scans, MRI Scans, blood tests, and physical evaluations follow. The doctors say we were lucky to have come to the hospital so quickly. The scans reveal no permanent damage. After three days in the hospital, I bring her home, counting blessings.
This is good because in a week, we will drive to New York with a carload of stuff and two dogs to start a big adventure: five months of city life in a furnished Manhattan apartment. We talk about canceling the trip. The odds of a second stroke are high in the first weeks. What if this happens again in New Mexico? Or along the highway in some desolate part of Missouri? She won't hear of it. She feels fine, and we decide to go, but I am nervous.
We follow a northeastern course of freeways over six long days, stopping only for fast food and pet-friendly hotels. Our route changes daily as we dodge weather systems that, a week later, will turn deadly for these midwestern states.
We finally creep through the Lincoln Tunnel and emerge into the chaos of NYC traffic. We feel relieved and lucky to have arrived in one piece, safe and sound, in our Upper East Side apartment.
I move through the following days in a panicked blur. The ambulance ride, the stroke team at Mount Sinai, the urgent questions about medications, allergies, and medical history. The doctors believe it’s a seizure, not a stroke. She has no physical stroke symptoms, and she is healthy. And having such a drastic memory lapse twice in three weeks almost surely rules out a stroke. Yet there is no definitive proof. I begin to understand that modern medicine is still more art than science.
More tests and scans eventually lead to a conclusion. Lisa has a benign brain tumor, a meningioma, pressing on her brain’s language and memory center, which caused the seizures. We’ve known about this tumor for a year, and she had radiation therapy five months ago to treat it, which these doctors say was a grave mistake. An emergency surgery to remove the tumor is scheduled in two days.
I feel pressure in my chest as I work through what this means. We are thousands of miles from home in a new city without friends or family. Our two dogs are alone in the apartment, and I run back through the Park to walk and feed them, then run back to the hospital. Lisa’s amnesia lingers, and I cannot be away from her side for long. When I return, she is confused and crying.
Our daughter, Mallory, flies in from California. I start to get a hold of myself. I make a rough plan to get us back to Arizona, where we have friends and insurance, and Lisa can more easily recover from surgery. We tag-team hospital visits and dog walking.
We meet Lisa’s doctor, one of the country’s best neurosurgeons, who happens to work out of the very hospital the ambulance driver chose out of a half dozen possibilities. The doctor explains that surgery is necessary to prevent her from having more seizures. There are risks, but these are manageable. This cannot wait. He can do it. He will do it. Now.
I sit with Lisa on the morning of the surgery. She is quiet. She knows she might not wake up from this. My vision narrows as I watch a nurse wheel her away to the operating room. I walk slowly back to the apartment to wait.
The surgery is a success. The surgeon removes the tumor without damaging an encroaching blood vessel or causing a seizure. She wakes up in pain, but herself. She loses the ability to read again, which scares her, but she remembers our names. I sit at the foot of her bed in the ICU wing while doctors and nurses poke and prod her. Her head is wrapped in bandages and gauze. The pain is intense, but they can give her nothing but Tylenol. I send Mallory back to the apartment. She shouldn’t see her mom like this. Six hours later, I walk home in darkness and pouring rain.
The next morning, I join the queue of people at the hospital’s entrance as visiting hours begin — the line snakes around the cavernous lobby. The woman ahead of me asks who I am visiting. I tell her in broad strokes what happened.
“Oh my gosh, I have chills” she says. “Imagine if she had the seizure on your road trip? Or if you had been walking in a different part of the city? To wind up here of all places? You have a guardian angel, my friend,” she says.
When I enter Lisa’s room, I see the spark has returned to her eyes. The pain has subsided. She feels better. She shows me how she can read some of the medical notices on the wall. She asks for coffee.
As I enter the bakery across the street from the hospital, the smell of freshly brewed coffee and pastries rouses me. The light of the world grows a little brighter. She’s going to be all right. She is going to be all right. My throat closes up. I study the menu for a long time before I place my order.
Lisa had her surgery six days ago. She was discharged from the hospital the next day. Her memory is intact. She can read. Each day, she is a little stronger, though the recovery from the operation will take weeks or maybe months. We both feel blessed to have come through this, here in the city of new beginnings.
Connor would have turned 23 today. The very prime of life. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss him, but these birthdays are tough. Hug your kids. #forever20
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.
Moonrise in Friday Harbor, San Juan Island
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.
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.
Coquille River Jetty near Bandon on the Oregon coast
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.
Connor Dennis Alfred Breen (January 29, 2002 - September 27, 2022)
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.
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.
You see, Lisa and I returned from a 3,000-mile road trip to drop off our son at college last week. And then, a few days later, we waved goodbye to our daughter as she drove off in her loaded-down Nissan to start her public accounting career in Los Angeles. In the space of a single heartbeat, the house went from cacophony and laughter to a hushed stillness.
We’ve been moving toward this day gradually for decades, but the suddenness caught me off guard, like a stiff poke to the solar plexus. For the first few days, I felt listless, perhaps depressed. It helped to keep busy, cleaning out the clutter and detritus left behind in the wake of these departures. My daughter’s old bedroom is now a nicely furnished guest room. I pass by it on the way downstairs each morning, and the shock of seeing her personality stripped from the room has not worn off. I should probably close the door.
Now I’m doing what any reasonable dad would do in this situation: I’m organizing the tool shed. I’ve measured out the available wall space for an elaborate tool storage system to deal with twenty-five years of disarray. I woke up last night dreaming of tools and freshly-shined equipment hanging in perfect order on the south wall of the shed, which I’m pretty sure has a clinical name in psychological circles.
At night, I’m reading Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart to see if some old-fashioned Buddhist wisdom might help. The title felt appropriate for my situation. The advice here is blunt: lean into the loneliness and despair. Accept that life is impermanent and hopeless. “Nothing is what we thought,” she writes.
Even Rosie, the robot vacuum that haunts our rooms and hallways in search of dust and dog hair, seems out of sorts. Amidst the typical family clutter, I swear she steered for the stray charging cables and hair scrunchies that littered her path, opting for a short night’s work as she squealed out error codes in protest. Now, with no obstacles in her way, she carries out the nightly routine in sullen silence. I’ve watched her run into a wall, back up, and run into the same wall, again and again. I know how she feels.
The phone rings daily with questions and puzzlement: what kind of pots and pans should I buy? Why isn’t the internet working? And most recently, a texted picture of a massive drift of white suds covering the kitchen linoleum after using Joy dish soap in the automatic dishwasher. Still, I know these calls are numbered. Their lives will soon blossom out in every direction, with little time left for mom and dad. Cats in the Cradle has become the soundtrack playing in the back of my mind.
I’ve pondered my own abrupt departure from home at seventeen and the impact I must have had on my parents. I don’t recall any remorse at leaving, so desperate to begin a life of independence. It seems Karma has found me on the receiving end of that same natural impulse.
To be fair, we did plan for this eventuality, knowing the two of us would need to fill in the vacuum of our departed children. We bought an ocean-going trawler yacht that will take us on amazing adventures up to Alaska and down to Mexico — something Lisa and I dreamed of doing long before we started a family. And we still have each other: two lovebirds and best friends who laugh and grow quiet at most of the same things.
As I consider my options for pegboard (galvanized steel, ABS plastic, or good old-fashioned fiberboard?) and the kind of hooks and baskets I will need to organize all my tools and gadgets, I understand this present obsession isn’t healthy. I should be provisioning the boat for an extended fall cruise through the Gulf Islands and Desolation Sound, glad we’re not encumbered with school-age children. Or taking my beautiful wife to Tacoma to find a new dive bar where we can resume a 25-years-in-waiting game of nine-ball.
Yet, I can’t shake this feeling that If I could walk through my little shed and admire the nicely spaced rows of hammers and garden implements, the gas trimmer hanging just so, the old jumble of tools and tarps and junk transformed into calming straight lines and order, then ... well, then I could begin to accept this new reality, to acclimate to a universe where the axis is just slightly off-kilter, like the deck of a sailboat under a broad reach. Call it a last-minute negotiation in a deal already struck — a vestige of permanence before we set ashore in this undiscovered country while the ships burn, leaving no trace but rusted keels in the shallows.
We said goodbye to this young man this morning and have started our drive back home - 1,400 miles away. Every parent must face this, but holy smokes this was hard. Felt like a punch in the gut to walk out of that dorm room. It’s a new chapter for all of us and I know I should be excited, but I’m going to need these miles ahead to wrap my brain and heart around all this. But, you know what? Connor is going to absolutely kill it here. So proud.
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.
For me, it was my coaches and teachers, both as a young person and as an adult, that I tried to emulate. A great coach is someone who gives a part of themselves to make you a better person. They are generous, selfless. Coaches come in all ages, genders, races, creeds, sexual identities and beliefs, but they all share an unrelenting and often thankless passion for bringing out the best in others.
When Connor was five, he signed up to play baseball (well, T-Ball), and continued to play for the same coach for the next twelve years. David Prouse was that coach. Now, David is a cherished friend and I love him like a brother. But it's his role as coach and father that has inspired me the most. I got to watch David coach hundreds of kids over more than a decade of wet weather, distant road games, losing seasons, winning seasons, long practices, and every kind of juvenile attitude you can imagine. His coaching style relied on encouragement, a sense of fun, and sharing tips on how the next at bat could be more successful ... never, ever stressing how poorly that last at-bat or defensive play went. The only time I ever witnessed a scowl cross David's face on the field was directed at either an opposing coach or an umpire. Never a player.
It didn't take long before David and I became best friends and our two families did a lot of things together - weekends away, boating, clamming, and just hanging out over long holiday weekends. I got to see David as a father to his two boys and saw that his parenting matched his coaching style (OK, maybe a few more scowls!). I drank all this up, because at the time I was searching far and wide for ways I could be a better dad. Over the years, we raised our families, side by side, learning from each other, helping each other. Without question, I'm a better father to my own kids because of my friendship with David. And as proof, our kids have turned into amazing, kind, and generous adults. We are both super-proud dads.
These two. My pride and joy. What amazing adults they have become, right before my eyes. In the midst of this pandemic with the whole world out of balance, they are both set to achieve big milestones in their lives without the fanfare they deserve. Connor, a high school graduate bound for the University of Colorado in the fall. Mallory, a UW college graduate in accounting, just the third member of my side of the family to graduate with a four-year college degree. What a grand party we would throw in normal times … my heart aches for this disappointment, but I know we will find other ways to celebrate their achievements. I am reminded of what John Wooden once said: “Things turn out the best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” I know this is true for these two. I am such a proud papa!
With all our usual park trails now off limits, Franklin and I have taken to the backroads of Vashon for our daily constitutional. I am reminded that most of this island could be considered one giant park, andI feel especially thankful to call this our home in times like these. On today’s five mile loop past the lighthouse and wonderful Luana Beach road, we found the road mostly deserted. One deer, one rider on horseback, a few fellow walkers. Lots of people out in their gardens or simply basking in the sunshine in their yards. Counting small blessings today.
So many worries. Our future unknown and uncertain. Quarantine and isolation. And yet … these are the days we’ll remember for a generation: those dark times when we persevered and grew stronger as a person, as a family, and as a community. We made sacrifices, experienced heartfelt loss, and yet took comfort in the small things: our family suddenly reassembled from far-flung places, a dog’s warmth by our side, and maybe the music we played for each other to cheer and inspire …
Listen to this performance by Yo-Yo Ma with your eyes closed and really, really hear it. To think such beautiful sound and feeling could come from just one soul, alone on a darkened stage. Ancient music retold centuries later; a musical message that we can and will get through this together.
I stood mostly naked near the bow of the boat in the early hours of a Thursday morning. The sun hadn’t risen, and it was damp and chilly in my underwear. I hoped other boats anchored nearby wouldn’t witness this act of indignity. Desperate times require desperate measures, I told myself, as I contemplated the orange traffic cone standing before me atop a square yard of fake grass.
It was our sixth day into a month-long cruise aboard Indiscretion, and neither of our two dogs had availed themselves of this onboard privy, despite long passages and persistent coaxing by captain and crew.
On walks back home, they’d let go great streams on every one of these we encountered, barely sniffing it first. Even at the end of a long walk with bladders long emptied, they would find a way to dribble urine at the base of these bright orange beacons. They could not resist.
This gave us the brilliant idea for of a “Porch Pottie” for the dogs to relieve themselves without the hassle of shore leave. We even bought an aerosol spray to mimic the scent they most desire before the act.
“Maybe you should pee on it first,” Lisa suggested on the second day of the cruise. We had chugged along for 14 hours our first day out, with many fruitless trips underway to the traffic cone with the dogs.
“There is no way I’m doing that,” I said. “They’ll figure it out. They’re smart dogs.”
Thus, every morning began the same way. A persistent urging for the dogs to do their business at the traffic cone just beyond the Portuguese bridge. Zero interest. They wouldn’t even smell it. Tugging them to the cone with the leash felt like pushing the wrong ends of powerful magnets together. After ten or twenty minutes with both dogs looking at us like we were crazy, we’d relent and go ashore in the tender.
By the fourth day at anchor, the dogs took sport in the morning routine. If they humored us long enough with confused looks and a strong aversion to the orange cone, they would get to go for a walk afterward. Joyous barks and yips erupted once I began futzing with the tender. They had won again.
“You need to pee on it,” Lisa encouraged. Like that would make any difference.
Cruising with dogs is very popular. I’d say most trawlers we meet have a dog aboard. The necessity of frequent trips ashore means we explore beaches and inland areas of the anchorages while other boaters might stay afloat. Dogs warm up a cold sea berth and stand watch with you on blustery evenings at anchor. Even on our smallest sailboats, we had a dog along. I can’t think of a better way to travel or vacation with a dog than on a boat.
We didn’t know how good we had it with Bouncer, a small Boston Terrier that traveled with us on every cruise we took aboard our sailboat. Bouncer seldom barked. She slept a good part of the day and night. Her bathroom duties were carried out without fuss: she would step carefully into the dinghy in the morning, taking in the watery surroundings as we rowed or motored along, her front paws up on the bow of the inflatable. We had a leash for her somewhere rolling around the bottom of the boat, but we rarely needed it. She would jump out as soon as the dinghy touched the sand, trot about ten yards and pee, then poop. She took no notice of other dogs. She was usually back in the dinghy before I had a chance to properly tie up, ready for breakfast, and then snuggle back into a berth with one of the kids.
Bouncer on a kayak
“I miss that little dog,” I muttered, feeling sorry for myself as I stared at the traffic cone, and thought about how different our life is now aboard the trawler with Franklin and Preston.
Franklin is a four-year-old Puggle, a cross between a Pug and Beagle, and the only dog we’ve owned that can’t be trusted off-leash. Should our front door be left ajar momentarily as you carry in the groceries, this sly little bastard will dart between your legs and race to freedom, looking over his shoulder with a look of delight and mischief before disappearing into the woods. Calling him is pointless. His brain is routed through his snout, and the outdoor smells are much more interesting than our shouts to come back. We’ve tried chasing him, but he sees this as a terrific keep-away game, his eyes flashing with mirth as he darts in and out of reach. Eventually, he grows tired or hungry, and trots home, clearly pleased with himself. It’s hard to be mad at him when he loves these romps so much. We live in a rural part of Vashon Island, so there’s not too much trouble this little fella can find here at home. However, afloat and in strange ports, we all worry about what might happen if Franklin were to escape on one of his adventures. One hand for the ship, one hand for Franklin’s leash.
Franklin
He did escape in Roche Harbor, leaping in a flash from the cockpit to the narrow port side deck, and then down to the dock. In his excitement, he took a wrong turn down a dead-end, but soon reversed course and galloped at full speed toward the dock entrance and freedom. It was blind luck that Connor and Lisa intercepted him on their way back to the boat. We might still be looking for him had he made it to dry land.
Franklin defends our home against would-be intruders with a combination bark-howl that you have to experience to understand. It’s impressive. He employs this howl-bark to repel the UPS truck when it visits our home. Franklin runs from door to window, making a god-awful ruckus for a good three minutes until, sure enough, the truck decides the danger is too great and drives off (after leaving our packages and shaking his head). This near-daily occurrence has reinforced Franklin’s belief that if he barks and howls as loud as possible, the dreaded enemy will eventually retreat.
We hoped Franklin might be less possessive on the boat. Not so much. He soon learned that if he sits on the upper pilot berth in the back of the wheelhouse, he can enjoy a near 360-degree vista surrounding the boat. A fellow trawler captain dared to slowly cruise by and wave - to Franklin’s shock and outrage. He launched into howl-bark mode until the trawler was out of sight, saving us yet again. Ugh. He also defends the boat from kayakers, paddle-boarders, and any form of bird, in particular, the tame Cackling Geese we encountered in large numbers at Sucia Island. These, it turns out, are Franklin’s arch-enemy; his Moriarties. No amount of treats or admonishments could convince him otherwise.
Dog number two is Preston, a five-year-old Boston Terrier, the same breed as our beloved Bouncer, yet so, so different. He’s massive, tipping the scale at 35 pounds which is an outlier for Bostons, yet all muscle and gristle. He’s a rescue dog with extreme anxiety issues. He warmed to Lisa and the kids right away after we adopted him, but he wouldn’t come near me, especially if I wore a baseball cap. After a few months he decided I was OK, and now loves us all unconditionally. Other people or dogs outside our family unit, however, are Not OK. He has nipped more than one of our house guests and has a complete fit should another dog have the nerve to meet us on a walk. He’s a bundle of nervous energy that no amount of love, or CBD, seems to diminish.
Preston
Also, he has poop anxiety. He must have been abused as a puppy, for he refuses to poop while in the presence of others. This is a problem on a boat. On a cruise last summer, he went three days without pooping. By day two of the trip, his eyes appeared even bulgier, and his butt was definitely puckering, but he refused to go. Finally, after a long trek on the third day, a volley of poops shot out of his bum while he carried on down the trail. He did not squat or even stop. They just flew out, and he kept walking, apparently making the case that the impossibly large pile of poop on the trail came from some other dog. He’s done better on this trip, but it’s still a celebration when Preston has a bowel movement.
While Preston has his issues, he is without question the smartest dog we’ve ever owned. His understanding of English is unrivaled. He communicates his intentions and desires very clearly and responds with joy once you finally understand him. He runs circles around Franklin’s somewhat dimmer intelligence. Should Franklin have a toy that Preston wants, he runs to the basement door and barks until Franklin races down the stairs, through the doggie door, and outside to our fenced yard, seeking out the intruder. Preston then takes the dropped toy for himself. Franklin falls for this every time.
Franklin’s whimpers had commenced early this morning. I nestled further into the blankets to block out the sound, which repeated just often enough to reawaken me.
“The dog needs to go ashore,” Lisa informed me from her side of the berth. Her voice contained a trace of accusation as if peeing on the damn cone would solve all our canine issues.
“Aah ump,” came my muffled reply.
As sleep faded, I began to think through the sequence of events that must soon unfold to stop that dog’s whimpering. I would get up and dress. I would get the dogs ready for sea: collars, leashes, doggie life jackets. I would bring the tender around to the stern and warm up the engine. Our anchorage doesn’t include a dinghy dock, and the tender is too large and heavy to beach, so I would need to deploy an anchor. I would load the dogs into the tender and head for land through the chop. About 20 feet from shore, I would hurl the Anchor Buddy over the stern, goose the engine a bit, and quickly raise the prop, so it doesn’t hit bottom. I would lash the leashes of the dogs to the rail while I leap off the bow into the frigid water to pull the 800 pound craft up near the shore. Wet and sandy, I would secure the tender and hoist the dogs out on to the beach to do their business.
This assumes, I mused, that the beach at this early hour is empty. Meeting another dog would spell serious Trouble.
Each dog comports himself reasonably well alone, but some pack chemistry born into their genes a millennia ago transforms them into would-be killers when they meet another dog together. On a quiet walk up the dock, they are angels, taking in exciting smells, jostling each other good-naturedly, smiles apparent on their canine mugs. Yet, the second we encounter a dog - a Poodle or, heaven forbid, a German Shepherd, the fangs come out, and pandemonium ensues. Restrained by their leashes, they often set upon on each other, snarling and biting. Folks emerge from their boats to observe the carnage, and dog people along the docks look on in dismay. I know that feeling. I’ve been there with my docile dog, wondering what in the hell is wrong with those awful dog owners who can’t control their dogs. And yet I am now that guy, tugging ineffectively at the leashes of two gnashing demons, blood-lusting for the nervous Poodle, the tail-wagging Lab, the puzzled Shepherd.
As a result, one person cannot take both dogs anywhere we might meet another dog. Two humans must form an escort to maintain any semblance of order.
“You’ll have to go with me,” I told Lisa as I came fully awake.
“Why won’t you just pee on the damn thing?” She moaned back.
And so, it finally happened. In the growing light on this Thursday morning at sea, I let go a great stream of piss, covering the cone, grass, and a bit of my bare left foot as I misjudged the strength of the breeze.
Did it work? Did the dogs finally grasp the purpose of the great orange cone after their alpha dog modeled the way? No. If anything, they viewed the apparatus (and me) with even more mistrust.
I cleaned most of the sand out of the tender from another morning expedition with the dogs. I was finally ready for that first cup of coffee.
And still, despite the hassle of frequent trips ashore at ungodly hours, and the anxiety of what might happen when we invite friends with dogs to the boat, we wouldn’t consider cruising without our canine mates. They’re part of our family, after all. And they bring us joy in their own peculiar ways.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Lisa said, smiling at me. Both dogs were fast asleep on the settee beside her. “I didn’t really think it would work.”
I’ve been playing baseball with Connor since he was five years old. First tossing baseballs underhanded into a tiny red mitt, later playing catch out in the yard, most every night in the summer. A couple years ago we started a Sunday routine of taking a bucket of baseballs up to the high school for batting practice. I would pitch from the mound, ball after ball, while Connor swung for the fences.
Two years ago, he started complaining that I wasn’t throwing as hard as pitchers he was facing in games. Last year he connected with his first home run, the ball sailing out into the woods over the left field fence, Connor whooping and hollering. Both father and son did a victory run around the bases that day.
Connor is now a freshman in high school and will try out for the high school baseball team this spring. The big leagues. He and a few of his freshman teammates have been going off island, twice a week, to work on their skills at really nice baseball training facility in Tacoma. Here they’re getting helped by some amazing coaches, most former professional baseball players themselves. This weekly practice in the offseason, along with their fast growing frames, is going to give them a nice leg up in high school.
It’s been a wet fall and winter, so our Sunday batting practices have gotten rained out a lot these past few months. We found ourselves out on the field on a Sunday in November, and for the first time as as baseball dad, I started to get nervous about my precarious position on the pitcher’s mound. My best pitches were being clobbered, many in the form of hard line drives sailing past my ears. My reflexes aren’t as quick anymore, and it was more luck than skill when I caught a bullet aimed right at my forehead. I was happy to get off the field in one piece.
So imagine my delight on Christmas morning with my gift from Connor - an “L Fence” for batting practice. This contraption acts as a shield for coaches to pitch behind without having to fear their teeth getting knocked out. We tried this out for the first time today and Connor has gotten even stronger as a hitter. He had fun smacking line drives off my protective shield, laughing at my curses as I got used to my newfound sanctuary. I got a little cocky on the third bucket of balls, beginning to think myself invincible, when a ball whizzed by, inches from my left ear. I had failed to lean far enough behind the fence after my delivery. Even 60 feet away, I could read the gleam in Connor’s eyes.
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.
Me, a guy who’d never once given sailing or even boating a passing thought, despite living my whole life around water. In less than three months, I had completed sailing lessons and owned my own 35 foot sailboat. Now going on 20 years and four sailboats later, I owe my uncle Jim for bringing me to this wonderful passion of sailing. Ten years ago, while sailing alone and falling out of the boat on a riptide, I was fished out of the sea by a passing boater who, after careful reflection could not have possibly been there to save me. If there truly are visiting angels, I believe that my uncle Jim saved me that winter day. And now, like uncle Jim, I often toy with the idea of buying a boat in the Caribbean, sailing from island to island, relishing the freedom and adventure of exploring ports unknown. Casting off.
A few years ago, I began losing my mom day by day, month by month, to Alzheimer’s disease. For the nearly thirty years since I moved away from my small home town, my mom was that person I would call or visit for comfort, to help me through tough times, and to celebrate life’s victories. In other words, she was a wonderful and caring mom. If you have first hand experience with Alzheimer’s, you know the course this brutal disease takes. About five years ago, I realized that my mom was slipping away. Our weekly phone calls took a similar form. Me repeating what I had just said, over and over again, my mom putting on a good face, trying to hide her memory problems, and failing. She was diagnosed with breast cancer around this same time and I was able to spend some quality time with her as she recovered. There were times when she was her old self, and I cherished those hours, or sometimes just minutes.
Throughout my life, my mom had always loved birds. We had an incredibly talented parakeet when I was young that could talk and do tricks, and there were always some kind of birds around my mom - chickens, geese, ducklings. As a teenager I witnessed my mom adopt a goose as a pet, Lucy, bringing the big bird into our home when it got too cold, shitting everywhere. My mom didn’t care. I worried then a little for her sanity. But she was a caring soul, and always just thinking of her birds. I remember her telling me that she encountered a playful wild bird that visited her time and again after her dad passed away. She was sure that this bird, always perching in a spot in a workshop that my grandfather used before he died, was her reincarnated father. After that, she always had bird feeders outside for the wild birds and hummingbirds. In her last years of her life, she would dump birdseed on a picnic table outside her living room window and spent hours marveling at their frenetic and swooping activity. One blessing of Alzheimer’s is the newness of every moment. She would spend happy hours in front of that window, watching her birds.
I started noticing birds here on Vashon as I was losing my mom. I bought a few field guides to get to know the birds on our island. But that wasn’t quite enough, so I put up a single feeder off the porch. The squirrels quickly taught me what kind of feeder would actually allow the birds to eat, and after a year or so, I added a second feeder. I still don’t know all the different kinds of birds that visit my feeders, though I do recognize the glorious goldfinches in summer and have spent many hours watching them spat with one another over a perch on the feeder. Later I added a hummingbird feeder, only to be expanded to a full fleet of feeders across the north side of the porch, with a whole process of making hummingbird food to keep up with these thirsty and beautiful birds. I marvel as I refill the feeders at the audacity of these small creatures to buzz my head and squawk their complaints at my tardiness. I always smile and think of my mom who so loved these birds. For a while after my mom passed, I spent some time watching the birds, wondering if one of these might have taken on the life spirit of my mom. I think I realized that no one bird could do that, but all these birds together did a fine job of capturing her essence. And I know I’ll keep feeding these birds for the rest of my life.
A few weeks ago, my dear Pop passed away. He was ill a long time and suffered from dementia in his later years, also a horrible, horrible disease. My pop was many things, a boxer, a fisherman, a carpenter, a politician, a great grandpa, and a sometimes crook. But he was also a fantastic cook. He was happiest in the kitchen, making up one of his signature dishes, a frittata, an Italian goulash, a polenta pizza, or big pot of Mexican chili. He was always experimenting with different cooking styles and ingredients, sometimes making wonderful dishes he could never recreate because he never followed a recipe, or sometimes making horribly inedible meals. He once made something he called Goong-Ga which was truly awful. I remember gagging when I tried to eat it. My mom scolded me, but had the same reaction when she tried it and forgave me. We laughed about this for many years. But usually, my Pop was a fantastic cook. When he and my mom moved in to our cottage here on Vashon with the hope of spending their remaining golden years on the island, I was excited to have him in the kitchen. Maybe I could finally learn some cooking skills from this old man. But alas, the years were cruel and Pop had forgotten most all of what he knew of his freewheeling kitchen style. He tried to make his famous goulash, a dish he must have made a hundred times, but could not muster it, burning it and cussing himself for forgetting such simple things.
These past few weeks have been tough for me. I miss my Pop and I miss my Mom. So, imagine my surprise today in realizing that my life had changed once again, in a simple comfortable way. I’ve found myself focused inexplicably on the kitchen and pantry of our Vashon Island home. I reorganized our pantry to make spices, oils and baking goods more accessible. I’ve spent time putting our pots, pans, bowls and utensils in order, resolving a year or more of clutter. And I’ve been cooking more, but now disregarding the recipe books for more creative cooking, like my Pop would have appreciated. This is not like me at all, always wanting to follow directions for repeatability, but I’ve been throwing caution aside, making meals like Pop would, and laughing a lot more at the stove top.
I’ve lost a lot of dear souls these past years. But I am comforted to know they are still with us, in various forms, to carry on this gift of life.
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…
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.
He liked to whistle and sing the Valencia song, originally done by Jose Padilla in the 1920s, but made popular again in 1950 by crooner Tony Martin when my Pop was himself a young man. He whistled this song most every morning as he started his day. I would find myself whistling and singing it too through my early teens until our tastes in music diverged for thirty or so years. I smile as I see this happening with Connor now as he sings Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds when he’s in the shower or making himself a sandwich. Or finding old Bruce Springsteen songs on Mallory’s iTunes playlists.
So, when we were planning our trip to Spain, I knew we had to visit Valencia.
In the car as we approached the city, I found myself whistling the song, just like Pop did so many years ago, to the dismay of the kids. “What’s up with Dad? Why is he grinning like that? And what is that horrible song he’s trying to whistle?!” Even Lisa grew concerned, and she knows the back story.
We spent two days here in Valencia and Pop was right to admire the city. In contrast to the crowds of Barcelona, this place is tranquil, even languid. The charm and authenticity of the old quarter is refreshing compared to the more tourist-minded areas of some of the other parts of Spain we’ve visited.
And it’s warmer here. Today it was nearly 90 degrees. The wine is good and the women are indeed very beautiful. Lisa and Mallory have hinted that the men here aren’t bad looking either. Connor is non-committal, though he turned beet red when I asked him what he thought of seeing so many topless sunbathers at the beach.
We rented bicycles and explored the old part of town, the many tree-lined parks, the new science and technology center, the port with its Americas Cup headquarters, and the beach. The water is warm and the sand is perfect. I’m writing this while the rest of the family dozes on beach chairs under an umbrella. The sea beckons with a half-dozen white sails dotting the blue horizon, making me wish I were out there sailing on a broad reach, feeling the angle of the warm wind on my cheek.
And as I take in the beauty of this place, I wonder if Pop ever came here himself, or if his Valencia was just another of his tall tales. I could ask him, but most of me doesn’t really want to know. I’d like to believe he walked these streets as I did today and breathed in this orange-scented air; that he left some part of himself here long ago, a strand or two woven into the fabric of this beautiful place.
I wonder if any of my own tales have found purchase with my kids, strong enough that they might some day go out and experience it for themselves, to see what their crazy old Pop was always going on about …. maybe sailing off to a remote Caribbean island, singing three little birds with big dreamy grins, every sight and sound and smell unlocking childhood memories long tucked away, relishing the swell of the sea under their feet.
A nice thought. Maybe this is how dreams are meant to pass down the line after all.
Bouncer on a kayak
Franklin
Preston
Happy dogs on shore leave
