Reset ...

Car, tram, airplane, van, train, metro-link, bus, dink ... HOME!

For more than a month I lived alternating between four rooms, each roughly the same size and shape. The floors were smooth and carpeted and still, never once rippling to send light dancing in all directions. The walls were hard rectangles equally still. Except for a louvered hole here and there, no breeze flowed through them. Except for a window here and there, no light flowed through them either. No matter which way I turned the view extended a few feet and was stopped by a drab so dull as to be numbing. Looking up was even worse. Instead of sky and sun and an entire cosmos of stars laid out in a feast for the soul, there was only more drab. The sound was muted. The colors were muted. Even the temperature was muted.

Three of the rooms held a resident TV which was usually the only source of pretend movement. The TV didn't move of course, just the obviously 2D pictures that danced across the screen. They weren't pretty pictures either. It was hard to tell which was more insipid, trite, shallow, violent, and twisted, the news, the "shows", or the commercials. I finally decided it was a draw. "News" that has been thousands of years in the making got summed up in minutes by people who clearly had no clue. Not only did they sum it up, they were quick to suggest what it all "meant" and who should be blamed for it. TV shows from decades ago (a station called MeTV – don't bother) were openly racist, overwhelmingly sexist, and just as violent as the modern versions but lacking the special effects. At least the commercials were honest about being pure propaganda. Some were so blatantly BS that I swear the narrator / actor / pitchman was winking at the camera. It was almost as if he / she were saying, "We know nobody believes this crap, but they pay me big money to say it like I believe it, and you should see the size of my house".

Then, yesterday, I scrambled up the last of the eggs in the 'fridge, toasted the last English muffin, downed the last of the orange juice, and brewed some coffee in the last of the coffee filters. (It was actually the second pot through that filter. There was one less filter than there were days, so it got recycled to fuel my heading home.)

The car ride started at 1115, the dink bumped Kintala's starboard side right at 2200. It was dark. Thunderstorms flashed out to the east, northeast, and southeast. The bow swung back and forth, unable to decide which one was heading our way. I sat in the cockpit trying to get my bearings. Apparently us human beings calibrate our senses to fit the surroundings. Lightning on a horizon open in all directions, wind shifts and temperature changes, stars and a near full moon back-lighting a massive thunderhead and its ice-cap cloud, waves splintering the moonlight and sending it dancing in all directions. My room-dulled senses where being overwhelmed.

I didn't sleep much. The boat was uneasy, or I was. One of the storms finally found its way overhead. The sound of the wind hummed in the rigging, lightning flashed, thunder rolled; none of it was muted, none of it was dulled. This morning I stumbled my way through the morning routine sleep deprived and wishing I could take it easy. But we need to get heading north this week and there are tasks that must be done.

While others tended to shopping and laundry and taking care of kids, I humped 140 gallons of water to the boat in four trips. It is summertime in southern Florida. The sun fried my indoor pale skin. Muscles used to sitting for hours and challenged only by pushing wheelchairs down padded hallways, balked. Feet long laced up in shoes searched for purchase on a deck that wasn't as familiar as it should have been. Hands as soft as a CEO's pampered paws chafed at hoses and lines, cramped at the weight of water jugs. By the end of the day I was sore, tired, dehydrated, slightly ill, and maybe a bit touched by the heat.

But grand kids needed to go swimming and I couldn't bring myself to say "no". We beached the dingy on the island near the marina and I waded out into neck deep water keeping an eye on the little ones. The water was warm enough to ease sore muscles but still cool enough to leech the heat out of my core. The sun settled behind the next round of thunderstorms. Back on Kintala a cold shower washed away the salt and the last of the sting from my sunburned arms. Dinner was served and along with the chicken, rice, fruit, and corn were glasses of water and a cold drink. The kids went back to Floating Bear for the night. Deb and I settled into the cockpit for the rest of a quiet evening. Lightning danced on the western horizon. A near full moon rose to flood the flanks of the storms with a pure white light, but Kintala kept her bow pointing the other way. Not sure we will see any rain tonight. But unlike last night the place was familiar, comfortable, ...

Home!

One Last Hero . . .

The thing I came here to do is nearly done.  In about 48 hours I should be back on board Kintala and making plans to push north.  Its time to be on the move once again.

While it is long past time for me to be back among my own, I can't really begrudge the last six weeks, even if it did mean being back in a world I don't enjoy. Cars, traffic, noise, crowded buildings, TV, and along with the TV a snoot full of "news." I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but the world is kind of screwed up. The vast majority of the people in the news - world leaders, decision makers, and criminals of all types (some of them the aforementioned world leaders and decision makers) - are pathetically bad excuses for human beings. This is the best we can do? If so, it would seem the human race is bent on making its presence in the cosmos short, unpleasant, and utterly inconsequential. And I have come to accept as a brutal truth an idea I once held as a merely interesting observation: the more power one has, the less human one is. So far as I have seen there are no heroes on the world's stage, just the worst our kind has to offer doing all the harm they can manage.

But that has just been a side-bar observation to doing the thing I needed to do and, like I said, the thing I came here to do is nearly done. Part of winding things up has me joining my parents for their meals at the new home. Seating is arranged to encourage people to be part of the community and my parents share their table with the only other married couple in the place. At the table next to theirs a single woman has sat alone for every meal. That seemed a bit strange to me, so last night I pushed my chair back and met Mary.

Mary is a war widow. Yes, THAT war. As a newlywed she lost her young husband in the Battle of the Bulge. She never remarried. You can see why in the echo of the love that still shines in her eyes these seven decades after her loss. Her brother was killed in that war as well, though she didn't tell me exactly where or how.

Alone, Mary raised a daughter who never knew her father. She told me her story without a hint of self-pity or a single word of complaint.  In fact she smiled a lot, and laughed, and explained that she normally sat alone because many of the others are uncomfortable around her. Having spent some time with her, my guess is they are just worn down by her exuberance. I am 30+ years her junior and can usually hold my own when it comes to slinging words, but I was hard pressed to volley some of her serves.  Her court is no place for the timid or the shy.  And while I believe I held up the honor of telling sailor's tales well, I had no match for her life's story or the style with which she has lived it. Somehow, in a life marred with a hurt too deep for me to imagine, she found joy enough to share.

I'm going home soon, but I got the chance to meet one last hero before I do.

Tribes and communities ...

We human beings are tribal animals. Sometimes that is a bad thing, leading to a destructive world view of "us" vs "them."  Mostly it is just part of who we are, helping us find a place that fits, setting up the rules of engagement, sorting out who is supposed to do what.  We like to imagine we are intelligent creatures, but when it comes to tribal life most of what we do is instinct, bred so deep into our DNA that we don't even notice.

In a simple society, a person belongs to a single tribe.  As society gets more complex, any one person becomes a member of overlapping tribes. There are the tribes of work, of home, of church, of the voting booth. There are tribes of pro-this or anti-that, tribes based on skin color, body shape, and chosen method of transportation. Then there are tribes within the tribes: bikers are also sport-bikers or Harley riders, dirt-bikers or those with an Iron Butt. Sometimes these tribes are at cross-purposes. My guess is that a lot of the stress land dwellers know comes from trying to sort out the conflicting demands of the different tribes they call their own.

The cruising community, by its very nature, bucks this trend. The tribe of home is left behind, as is that of work, and of church. This is not to suggest cruisers are a tribe of heathens, but going to the same building with the same people once or twice a week gets a bit difficult when this Sunday finds one in one country, the next in a different country. (Though some of us are, indeed, heathens.) Most human tribes have given up wandering as a life style, the main reason ours is so different.

We do have our stink or stick boaters. But the truth is most live-a-board long term wanderers fly canvas when they can. And many of the tug and trawler crowd flew canvas once upon a time, so the tribal lines are blurred. (Jet skiers need not apply, unless they pull the jet ski behind a boat, not a pick-up truck.) In any case, joining the tribe of cruisers means leaving many other tribes behind.

For weeks now I have been in this place doing this thing I need to do. I expected it to be a long, sad, somewhat lonely sojourn far from my own tribe. Instead, I found myself part of a completely unexpected, and unsuspected tribe. Tonight, as I was waiting for the elevator, I noticed Grandma and Helen. Grandma speaks okay, but her conversations come from places far away in distance and time. A series of strokes left Helen unable to talk. She makes noises and waves her one good hand. Their wheelchairs were rafted up starboard side to. They were holding hands, clearly communicating; two friends far out to sea, helping each other along. A month ago I would not have noticed what was happening, but I am part of their tribe now. Grandma stops me in the hall to tell me Mom is going to be alright. Helen never fails to notice when I walk by, and I never fail to notice her. Somehow I know her noises and hand waving mean "Hi."

Molly is getting ready to leave the rehab center and move to a nursing home, having mostly overcome the paralysis caused by a stroke. Her boyfriend, Joe, will move with her. They have been together for a long time, and will finish their journey that way as well. I know this because Molly shares a table with Mom for lunch, and we have become friends. Mary has lost parts of both legs to diabetes. She spends much of each day in her chair, wheeling slowly up and down the hall checking things out, stopping to watch, often talking with others in a slow and labored voice. She always stops to talk with me. I always stop to listen. Where a month ago I saw people aimlessly wondering a hallway now, most often, I recognize a person looking for the doorway of a friend.

John once played in the Sugar Bowl. Now he works his legs from a wheelchair, laughing and cracking jokes that, sometimes, only he understands. He is usually in a better mood than is his therapist, which is pretty damned astounding, if you ask me.

All is not sweetness and light. The end of life is the hardest, most harrowing journey of all. Fear is a part of it, as is anger, resentment, and many, many tears. Often the members of this tribe live day-to-day, face-to-face, with a reality the rest of us spend a lifetime trying to ignore. For most this is their one, and last, tribe. But it is a human tribe, perhaps the most human I have ever seen.

I am going to miss these people when I leave. Still, this tribe lives in a hard place of walls and meds and near constant pain. For some of them it is a trial just to get outside, to see the sky without glass in the way, to feel a breeze that isn't coming out of a vent. And in spite of the walls, the seat belts on their chairs, the bars everywhere to keep the standing from falling, the call buttons, and the vigilance of the good folks who oversee this tribe, they sense they are far from safe. This most human of tribes knows a constant danger lurks. They do what they can to face it together

I will hold the time they accepted me into their tribe as a gift, a chance to learn some things I would never have otherwise learned. But I long to be home, back with the tribe of the open sea. I am not brave enough, or tough enough, to be a true member of this tribe yet.

But they have taught me to be human enough.

Life is Short...

. . . eat dessert first.

Going cruising revealed that I am not the go-far, off-shore, adventuresome sailor envisioned while plying the fearsome waters of Carlyle Lake. Overnight runs to places not much further than 100 nm miles away are more my speed. One hundred nautical miles is far enough to be out of sight of land for much of a day, or night, and I have had the rare privileged of helming a small boat over the horizon in the deep watches of the dark. It is a magic place out there. What matters and what doesn't is different than on land. On the sea, names mean nothing, neither does history or background, race or religion. All that really matters is that one manage to keep on sailing.

All truly magic places have monsters and demons, things that can challenge and test and frighten those bold enough to venture that way.  For sailors there are storms and waves and falling masts.  It is part and parcel, these things that can stop the sailing.  Magic and monsters go hand in hand.

Where I travel now, magic is hard to come by.  Much of my day is spent in a place most sailors dread more than any creature hiding in the deepest ocean, a nursing home. As is my need, I was was there today like most days. Lunch was being served in the common room and the room was pretty full. The only person sitting who was not wheelchair-bound was me. At every table were struggles to control utensils and dishes; shaking hands splashed drinks. Bibs were required dress. It was every bit as sad and depressing as it sounds. But as I looked I noticed nearly every person in the room was reaching for the ice cream that came with the meal.

They were eating dessert first.

Just like that, the room was transformed. Instead of tragic, sad old folks struggling to feed themselves, I saw people who have traveled so far over the horizon that names no longer matter, nor history, background, race or religion. All that matters is that they manage to sail just a little bit farther. For some of them, lifting a cup is as physically challenging as getting on deck to reef the main in a sudden blow. For others, walking down a hall is as fraught with danger as climbing a mast in a rolling sea. These may be frail bodies barley holding onto fragile minds, but somewhere at the helm is a will of steel, a courage so deep as to be unfathomable.

Some have gotten so far away that the lines of communication are stretched to the breaking point. They can't tell us of the monsters they face or the demons that haunt their travels. We have no idea how hard it is for them to keep going. Sometimes our courage is no match for theirs, and we fail them by discounting the scale of their journey.  

But not all. As I watched some more, I noticed the aids working the room. They knew each patron by name, were unconcerned with spills and stains and shaking hands. Touch was their common language, and smiles, small encouragements and gentle voices spoken loudly. Nursing homes and nursing home workers are often the monsters of our urban tales. But not here, and not in the places I have visited looking for a home for my parents. Sure the monsters lurk, but they are the exception and not the rule. There are Helen and Michael and scores of others who stand their watch without complaint, people who carry part of the burden for those who have traveled so deeply into the night, who see them safely to their final port of call.

Today I had lunch with some of them.  And though they will never know it, they served up just enough magic to help me along as well.