Travel

We are sitting on a bench in Madison Square Park in the Flatiron District. Buildings encircle this urban oasis, framed by a blue New York sky. It is our last day in the city, and we have been walking all morning. Small dogs in fancy coats trot by us with their owners. The din of the city is somehow a comfort, like ocean surf. The temperature hovers around 30 degrees Fahrenheit, yet I feel warm in the sunlight, layered as I am in cold weather gear. Lisa sits beside me, taking it all in.

“Would you ever think of moving here permanently?” I ask. It’s a common question we pose when we travel.

“Oh, yeah,” she says without any hesitation. “I’ve always been a city girl.” Her face glows in the chilly air.

When we retired four years ago in our mid-50s, it seemed as if we had life by the tail. We sold the house and moved aboard our 43’ ocean-going trawler, set on exploring the world at a sedate six miles an hour. I’ve always loved the water, and getting this chance to cast off the bowlines was a lifelong dream. We built a home in Arizona in a 55+ retirement community as a mere precaution, a refuge from the soggy Pacific Northwest winters. Snowbirds, or maybe seagulls, might have better described us.

But a family tragedy dashed those plans. Crushed and grief-stricken, we sold the boat and stayed put in Arizona these past three years. We made friends and enjoyed the newness and comforts of a planned community that sprouted from nothing in the desert. Mostly, we worked on finding meaning in an unthinkable loss. …

These Vagabond ShoesRead More »

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.

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The WastelandsRead More »

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. …

Fear of FlyingRead More »