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.
