Chips, Salsa, & Spiritual Companionship

Two weeks ago E. and I sat in a bustling Seattle Restaurant eating chips and salsa, savoring roasted beet tacos and holy conversation.  Fitting that we broke bread, or rather tortillas together.  Our friendship began in a dining room when we were both pilgrims in a two-year Academy for Spiritual Formation in California.  At least once during each of the eight weeks we spent in residence there, E. and I would sit at a table talking long after the meal was over, engaged in earnest existential conversation.

There was something about the way E. leaned in to listen, her curiosity, the way she smiled and offered affirmation without interrupting or judging or giving advice, the way she called me “sister,” and said my writing moved her that made my soul leap.  During those long lunches and dinners I spoke my heart about my church, serving as pastor, and about my family, how I sensed God’s call, and the struggles I faced as I learned the limits of my ability to care for my family and congregation.   

I hadn’t seen her in five years, although we’d read each other’s blogs and Facebook posts and exchanged a few emails after the Academy ended.  I knew from her blog that she was discovering her vocation for the next part of her life, and she knew I had moved to the Pacific Northwest, just across the Sound from her home in Seattle.  It was a joy to walk into the restaurant, see her radiant smile, hug her and whoop, “I’m here!”  To laugh, eat and converse in person. To convey what the Internet cannot.  “Are you as happy as you seem?” she asked.  Without pausing I answered, “Yes!”  My happiness still surprises me.  I used to think it was an equation­­––If I did A+B X C divide by D, then I’d= happy, and the parts of the equation always involved doing what I thought other people expected of me.  Guarantee someone else’s happiness and then I could relax and be happy.

I told E. I’m beginning to understand at a soul level that happiness isn’t generated by any particular life circumstances––for myself or others I love––that it’s coming from trusting God/the Universe/the Higher Power and entrusting others to that power which was never mine to control.  I’m learning to let go of my agenda and to look forward to––instead of cowering at––how life unfolds.  It’s exhilarating with a tinge of scary, like learning inward one and a half somersaults from the three-meter diving board.  There was real potential to hit the board or splat on the water, but with each “failure” came the opportunity to try again.

E.’s path has recently led her to seminary, discerning a call as a spiritual director or chaplain to the incarcerated and their families.  She told me about conversations with people who suggest she keep her professional license just in case, something to fall back on, and the clarity she has that architecture, meaningful as it was in the past, is not part of her future.  Her experience resonates with mine.  Some well-meaning folk worried about my husband and me, and our decisions, which from the outside seemed reckless, lacking a backup plan.  From the inside however, committing to the nudge and leading of the unknown means trusting it, means giving it our full attention and intention.  Keeping contingency plans alive takes vital energy away from moving forward; it allows fear, doubt, and the past to maintain too strong a foothold. 

Faith in the future doesn’t guarantee instant or easy success.  E. spoke about a subject she feels gifted and called toward, and how her skills lagged far behind the strength of her desire.  She didn’t want to drop her class, but was frustrated, wanting to learn the tools she needs to live into her gifts.  I understand her struggle.  My first two quarters in grad school, I produced only one piece of writing my faculty mentor deemed finished.  I called it my $8,000 essay.  I had to live in that painful place learning to fail and learning from my failure to inch toward the place I longed to be.  I’ve made progress and I’ve accepted that I may never completely arrive.

Our lives are a long apprenticeship as we live into the fullness of who we were created to be.  At times the work is lonely and we border on despair.  At other times, we dip chips into salsa in a noisy dining room, celebrating with a fellow pilgrim the gift of the journey and a listening ear along the way. 

Stripping and the Search for Meaning

 

I am stripping a room divider.  Last Thursday I pulled on my work clothes, donned my gloves, tied my hair in a ponytail, turned on my IPod, selected an audiobook, smoothed a tarp over the aging carpet, climbed on a step stool, slathered the piece with Citrastrip, and waited several hours while the cream colored paint turn orange as the latex bonded to the solvent, bubbling and peeling away from the shelves.  Gooey six-inch sheets hung from the wood like garish Peter Maxx bats, then sloughed to the floor, where they shriveled under my touch like burst balloon fragments. I scraped at the divider for hours, removing the rest of the tan paint, expecting to find wood grain.  Instead, an olive green surface awaited me.

  Daunted, but not dismayed, I applied a second coat of stripper, ate a late dinner, slept, and tackled the divider again Friday while following the narrative of Skippy Dies.  The green paint didn’t bubble or peel, it was impervious to the coating of stripper that slid onto my scraper easy as fresh icing.  I put all my force into scraping, managed to accumulate tiny globules of green paint, barely smudging the shelves, as if I were removing permanent ink with a pencil eraser.  The plot of my book kept me occupied long past dinner, past my planned quitting time.  I kept stripping, trying to make headway before the stripper dried.  I kept at it even though I was exhausted and my hands were sweaty in my gloves. 

It was after eleven p.m. when I quit and headed to the shower.  I tugged off my gloves to expose ruined fingers, especially on my right hand, the one I’d gripped the room divider with as I pushed against my scraper.  I’d worn my work gloves, with nitrile palms and fingers, stretchy nylon on the back of the hands.  My gloves weren’t waterproof, or chemical proof, and working alone, I’d failed to notice.  The latex paint had given way easily the first day, sparing my hands contact with the stripper.  The second day, my gloves were coated in solvent that seeped through the nylon, sucking moisture from my fingertips, leaving the skin hard, painfully puckered, and sore to the touch.  I showered, thinking water would help, toweled off, and searched the Internet for advice.  If I needed medical attention, it would have to wait until morning.  It was near midnight and I didn’t want to drive myself forty-minutes to the nearest hospital on the peninsula, or take the ferry to Seattle and navigate alone through unfamiliar streets.  The thought of gripping a steering wheel hurt.

I telephoned my husband in California and plunged my hands in the sink to soak for twenty minutes.  I’d wanted to complete a project in his absence, not just to keep busy, but to contribute to our remodel in a significant way (like my husband does) with my limited construction skill set.  I don’t know if it was my lack of stripping experience, my zeal for accomplishment, or my divided attention (IPod book), that led me make such a fundamental error, when the first instruction on the label clearly stated wear chemical resistant gloves and goggles.  I didn’t know if the chemical burn was a message about the consequences of valuing doing over being.  I did know that I needed and wanted my spouse, a witness and an ear sympathetic to my plight. 

I whined on the phone feeling sorry for myself, thinking I would miss much of The Search for Meaning Book Festival at Seattle University the next day.  I would miss the poets David Whyte and Mary Oliver and lunch with a student in my MFA program.  I was looking forward to venturing to Seattle for the first time since Christmas Eve, and having a conversation with a person I’d actually met before.  After the call, I coated my hands with antibiotic ointment, pulled on cotton gloves and slipped under the covers envisioning a morning spent at urgent care on the Island, hands bandaged in two giant mitts, unable to steer a car, change clothes, hold a fork.

I woke at 6 a.m. to find my hands much improved and decided I could skip the doctor if I wore the cotton gloves and basted my fingers with ointment often.  I caught the next ferry and debarking, trailed a discreet distance behind a group of women also headed to the festival.  Looking germaphobic, I browsed the book display in my cotton gloves, offering my Visa with shrouded hands.  I settled into the auditorium, peeled off my gloves, greased up, slipped them back on and listened.

 David Whyte is a fabulous speaker, reciting his poetry aloud from memory, speaking a poem twice with different stresses and pauses in each recitation.  In kindness to my hands, I didn’t take notes, and I have lost much of what Whyte said.  Two things in particular I remember.  One is his statement that we get to a certain point in our lives when we realize the narrative we have constructed is not large enough to contain our experience.  The script we operate under, the story we tell ourselves about our life and our possibilities is too narrow, not expansive enough.  As he spoke, I recognized this in myself, and how I’m revising my narrative, living with gratitude and a sense of spaciousness that fear used to constrict.  And second, someone else, looking at the circumstances of our life, will find it absurd.  I thought about this, too, my husband and I moving to an island 900 miles from our former home without jobs, buying a house in which everything needs to be replaced.  Our great adventure, that others might name folly.  I glanced down momentarily startled by the white gloves in my lap and laughed.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Cousin Steve was a tremendous help the first frantic week we moved to our new home, unloading the moving van, hooking up lights and electronics, replacing toilets, hanging medicine cabinets, helping with appliance installation, and sleeping in a cold drafty room, all with his usual good humor and frequent laugh, as we worked past his usual bedtime night after night.  We ventured to Seattle for a leisurely elegant dinner on Christmas Eve, and to the local theater for the late showing of Sherlock Holmes two days later, but other than that, we worked non-stop to make the house livable for me—who doesn’t know how to do-it-yourself—during the weeks I’d be alone.

At the end of his recent trip to California, Kevin asked if Steve would like to come back up sometime.  Steve’s answer, “I don’t know, it wasn’t very fun there.” 

When Kevin relayed Steve’s words I agreed.  “We should do something fun every day,” I said.  But, what constitutes fun?  Going to dinner?  Yes.  Out to a movie? Yes.  Sledding down the street when it’s covered in snow? Yes.  Climbing on the roof?  Yes.

There have been times in my life when fun has disappeared under the weight of family obligations, school and work deadlines, health crises, and crumbling relationships. I was too immersed and stressed, if not miserable, to make time for fun.  But even when there was time, my attitude could suck the fun out of an activity.  As a young teen, how could I enjoy a party when my parents were divorcing?  As a young mother, how could I enjoy a day at Disneyland when my children were tantrumming?  I was a permeable membrane, taking on anyone and everyone’s troubles.  If they weren’t having fun, neither was I.

It has taken most of my life to learn how not to absorb someone else’s pain.  It’s taken soul searching and prayer not to feel guilty for being okay, and for even having fun while someone else––someone I know and love––is suffering.  I think about Jesus saying, “pick up your cross,” not, “pick up your cross, then sweep the neighborhood and gather up your neighbors’ too.”  It’s hard navigating doorways staggering under the weight of our own burdens, impossible when we’re laden with woes that don’t belong to us. 

I’m glad Jesus was a carpenter.  He would appreciate that his cross metaphor applies even in today’s world filled with power tools.  Literal and figurative lumber is part of my life for many months, maybe years.  My husband lugs boards from Home Depot to his truck to our house and when he needs help, I hold them in place while he drills and hammers.  We stretch tape measures across walls and floors, imagining how we will remodel this house room by room with short-term fixes and long-term improvements. 

Unbelievable as it might seem, I’m having fun.  Kevin uses his creativity and vision and constructs something tangible that has purpose and can be called finished.  Very different than the never-done-often-invisible professional work he has done.  This productivity is messy, and I’m on-hand with my vacuum to vanquish the sawdust, usually before the work is done, so I vac again, and liken my contribution to that of a dental assistant suctioning mid-filling.  Cleaning up after a handy husband might not be any other woman’s idea of fun, and it doesn’t’ rank first on my fun-o-meter, but I’m blessed to have these days with my husband before he is employed full-time again, as we build desks and a life together.

Visit us again, Steve.  I guarantee you’ll have fun.

    

It’s All New to Me

I’ve been anxious about snow for the past few days.  Worried my dear daughters, who helped their father drive 900 miles non-stop, would miss their return flights from Seattle yesterday evening.  Worried about driving today and tomorrow, especially when our know-everything-about-the-region neighbors told us to stay home when it snows because it’s icy dangerous snow and our roads aren’t plowed and no one can drive those conditions well.  Worried because it’s not just me, the newcomer concerned about the white flakes.  The weather is leading local news reports as well as the talk at the market and post office. 

Until late this morning, I’d never driven in snow.  It has always been my husband’s job, and when he drove we were vacationing, choosing snowy recreation without any other responsibilities. 

I had a great time walking in the first snow on Saturday.  My husband, oldest daughter, and I had just finished trekking along Manzanita Bay at low-tide from our community beach access, tromping over barnacles and into sea-mud, until we came across the public access our fount-of-information neighbors had mentioned.  We were walking along the street when the snow began and had a half-mile of novelty and fun, opening our mouths for falling flakes and enjoying hot cider with brandy upon our return.

 

Weather of any extreme isn’t quite so romantic when you have commitments and appointments.  I used to live in a temperate rainforest.  I was familiar with flooded culverts, shoveling drainage ditches, mudslides, road closures, and multiday power outages.  But I don’t know anything about snow.  The flakes began to fall this morning as soon as I pulled out of the driveway.  I drove to town anyway, remembering what my husband said last night, “You’ll have to learn to drive in it sometime.”  It wasn’t bad, rainy at lower elevations, a little icy on our road, but my chiropractor warned that conditions are worse when the snow freezes overnight.  Tomorrow, I’ll see for myself.  Another discovery in this place I call home.

I’ve been in the process, literally, of homemaking for weeks.  Not simply unpacking our things and driving down streets to see where they lead, but establishing myself in this locale.  Last week I attended a non-denominational church service on Sunday, had an eye exam on Monday, a cleaning and dental exam on Tuesday, received a massage on Wednesday, saw a chiropractor on Thursday, and dropped in on the newcomers yoga class Friday.  Back in California, I would’ve combined several similar activities on the same day.  But here, now, each event involves meeting someone new, filling them in on pertinent details, and trying to relax with unfamiliar people poking in my mouth, prodding my back, and staring into my eyes.

It was wonderful when my husband and daughters returned Saturday after two and half weeks away.  I relished talking to people who knew me, who didn’t need explanations about my quirks and particularities. 

Last week I bought a ticket to the high school’s show choir performance on Wednesday night.  After days of venturing out on my own, I couldn’t force myself into a dark, cold car to find the high school theater, to sit through a performance where I wouldn’t know a soul in the audience or onstage.  I’m an introvert by nature, nourished by the quiet and familiar of home that energizes me for my forays into the world.  So it’s no surprise that I bailed on live entertainment, tugged on my pajamas, turned on a TV movie, and assembled a media shelf. 

Surprisingly and thankfully, my new home felt familiar.  The lacy bedroom curtains and thick sea-foam green carpet remind me of my mother’s past decorating choices, maybe the 1950’s sized bathroom vanity reminds me of my grandmother’s.  My furniture and felines fill the rooms.  It is home.  Now my husband is with me and we’re squirreled inside, waiting for the midnight snowfall, waiting for the morning when we’ll wake to a landscape transfigured by a blanket of white.  Our yard, block, neighborhood and island, new as they are, made even newer and more beautiful to us.

 

The Next Right Thing

I could say it was a job opportunity that brought us to Washington.  I could say that the promise of job—my husband was one of two final candidates-- combined with an offer on our house, led us here to Bainbridge Island.  I could say that and I wouldn’t be wrong.  I would, however, be incomplete.  It’s the intuitive, spiritual, intangible leading and nudging that was a big part of our decision.  A decision to “follow the energy” or “take a leap of faith”—add your own cliché here.

My husband and I left our lifelong home state, family and friends in response to the sort of thing I considered woo-woo or flakey in my youth and young adulthood when the physical and economic worlds were the only realms I was comfortable operating in.  If I couldn’t see it, taste it, or spend it, it didn’t exist.

Yesterday I wrote about the blessings of a single day on this island, confirmation that our move was a right (if not the right) choice for this phase of our journey.  Which is why today, when my husband said Microsoft did not extend him a job offer, I wasn’t disappointed.  I was surprised, because I thought he was clearly the right candidate (I’ll confess to some bias).  I was even a bit relieved, the commute, though mostly on public transit—bus, ferry, bus as contrasted to his years of solo commuting in California­­––would’ve been long, more than an hour each way.  I was hoping to give him the gift of more time at home and less in the car but just didn’t want to live in the cities closer to the campus.  Kevin didn’t mind.  He likes coming home to a beautiful place and commuting has never been an issue for him.  Heavy traffic doesn’t frazzle him, and he uses the time to decompress, review the day, and plan for the next. 

I was unpacking our office when Kevin gave me the news over the phone.  I shrugged, thought their loss, and said, “Well, I guess you’re not supposed to work there.”  “Yeah, I guess not,” he answered and then said he had an informational phone interview in half an hour with a company in Seattle that had found his resume on LinkedIn.  Opportunities are coming to him, and so I’m not worried, not one little speck, about his employment future.  Which is so unlike the old me I looked in the mirror later, just to check that I am in fact, still me. 

There’s a fabulous video I first saw during my lay minister training with National Geographic photographer, Dewitt Jones (who looks like he could be Tommy Lee Jones’ brother), titled Everyday Creativity (It’s astronomically expensive, so borrow it from someone, like your UMC Conference, if you can).  Jones in shooting photos, talks about getting “the next right answer,” opening the possibility of multiple yeses in all our decisions. 

Over the years I have morphed Jones’ “next right answer” into the “next right thing” as I discerned steps in my journey as they impacted me, my husband, our family, and those we’re connected to.  More often than not, I chose between options I had selected myself.  In this past year however, I’ve been practicing “not knowing” with mixed results.  I tried to make a move to particular house in Pacifica, and the owners wouldn’t cooperate with my intentions.  So here we are in Bainbridge Island and every day seems like a gift, something I didn’t even orchestrate and chose but was given to me.  And now my husband and I have the opportunity to practice not knowing about his employment a bit longer.  While we wait, we have plenty of home improvements, some necessary, some optional, to keep both of us occupied.

Late this afternoon, after the call with my husband, I prayed with my prayer partner over the phone.  We always pray for our children, and today she gave thanks for the openness and opportunities to share our wisdom with them.  I had to laugh, because it’s so unlikely, but also true.  We are wise.  Not in every way, not in many ways, but in some very important and essential aspects of life, we have become wise.  We’ve been working at it for years, together and individually, through prayer and self-examination, and the fruits are here in this phase of life. 

I don’t know what the next right thing is going to be, but I wait and practice gratitude.  I am thankful beyond measure to be co-creating with God and my husband as a dream and vision for our future gestates, rejoicing that my ancient fears have been conquered, replaced with faith and confidence, excited and anticipating the hatching.  

New Year’s Blessings

Just today--

• I ate lunch with a woman who found my blog because its title, “This or Something Better” is one she’s considering for a book on change and synchronicity she’s writing.  Intrigued by the background photo of the ferry, she read on and discovered I was moving to the island where she lived.  We talked about our routes to the island and I shared my vision about the retreat for writers, how I thought it had been particular to the house in Pacifica, not realizing it was a vision for my future no matter where I ended up.  She talked about the long process of waiting, using the metaphor of building a nest with the materials at hand before the egg is laid, the egg gestating, then hatching, then developing into its adult form.  I’m living her book project, as is she, and its exciting to share that with a new friend.

• At the public library the clerk issuing my card looked at my driver’s license and said, “Boulder Creek, I used to live there.”  She reminisced about her house there, and in Lompico (an even smaller town nearby), and tracked me down in the stacks to get my phone number, saying  “I forgot about it in all the excitement.”

• When I called my new bank for wiring instructions, the customer service rep remembered me and asked, “Did Kevin hear about the job yet?”  When I answered no, that the hiring manager just got back from vacation today, she said, “I shouldn’t be so anxious.  I’ve got to calm down.  Everything will work out fine.”

•The mobile notary who came to my new home with escrow papers said, “I grew up in a house just like this,” talking about the features he saw––Room dividers (his were varnished not painted), the stone fireplace, the garage (ours has been converted into a room—the future writer’s suite); and those he didn’t, “the bedrooms are down the hall.  There’s a fireplace downstairs, right?”  He told me his father built much of the house.  “It was called Northwest Contemporary, you can look up photos in old magazines and see what your kitchen was like before they remodeled.”   He said goodbye with, “It’s my dream to live in house like this. Congratulations.”  I closed the door, happy that my house had taken him back to his childhood, given him memories to savor in his mind as he crossed back to Seattle on ferry, a vessel he termed, “the poor man’s yacht.”

--

In the midst of the mess of unpacking, of getting lost on the Kitsap Peninsula while looking for Home Depot, of living alone for weeks while my husband finishes up the California end of our move, with pushy buyers who want him out before physically possible, of state regulations that require me to weigh my vehicles at inconvenient locations before registering them, and to get a drivers license at a separate office before I can register said vehicle, of using a new operating system on my computer that hides scroll bars and opens windows when I least expect it—in the midst of the  frustrations that are daily life, I experience daily blessings. 

The day after my family returned to California, my neighbors invited me to join their walking group for four miles through a nature preserve.  The same neighbors invited me to join them for New Year’s Eve so I wasn’t home with three cats and cable T.V.  At the party, I quizzed one neighbor about the Seattle commute, asked a handyman how to get the stickiness off my kitchen cabinets, and made constant comparisons between my old home and new ranging from recycling to public transit to rainfall.  No one seemed to mind.  My hosts poured champagne and told me about the best places for auto repair, pet care, and airport transportation. 

It’s been twenty-four years since I moved to Boulder Creek, and I’ve never lived out of California.   This move is a big deal for me.  I’m excited to be in this new place, learning the literal lay of the land, and I seem to work into every conversation, no matter how short, with clerks at the bookstore, market, Rite Aid, paint store, my haircutter Great Clips, the fact that I’m new to the Island.  Some of them ask, “What brought you here?”  It’s a complicated answer, one I’ve been blogging about for months, that I share parts of as I get to know people.  The easy checkout line answer is, “We’re looking for work.” 

Nearly everyone says, “Welcome to the Island, I hope you like it here.”  My reply to that is the same, and genuine––“Thank you.  I already love it here.”

A Moving Experience

My husband is driving a twenty-six foot moving van towing a sixteen-foot trailer on grueling nine hundred mile journey from California’s Santa Cruz Mountains to Bainbridge Island, Washington.  His cousin has been sharing the driving, and a family friend kindly volunteered to drive my mini-van, towing our outboard motor boat, which is doubling as a trailer, hauling our thousands of Christmas lights.  Our heavy trucks have only been able to drive the mountain passes at thirty to forty miles an hour, making the estimated sixteen hours of driving closer to twenty-six.

This is our first cross-county (up-country) move.  We are native Californian’s, possibly even naïve Californians, thinking we could easily pack up our stuff and go.  It hasn’t been easy.  It’s been time and thought consuming, a test of creative thinking.  Our move was a domino that required us to finish moving my mother-in-law’s things from our property, which meant my husband had to build a storage area under his sister’s house.  Our move also meant finding a place for my sister, who has been living with us, and will remain in California.  We decided to move her into a fifth wheel on property we already own.  This meant asking a current tenant to move his trailer. Now he has to decide whether to remain in the area and work, or retire to Texas where he is buying a home.  His adult son who has been working with him will need to find different work.  And so it goes.  I know we aren’t responsible for everyone else’s circumstances or happiness, but I recognize the very changes we are embracing are causing changes for others that they didn’t necessarily choose. 

Clearly we aren’t pioneers, but like pioneers, we’re leaving behind family, community, and the familiar, and doing it ourselves––packing, navigating, building (remodeling) a home, with livestock (ok, three cats) in tow, and by in tow, I mean tucked under our seats on Southwest Airlines in two days.  Speaking of wrangling our cats, who must endure a ninety minute drive to the airport, check-in at the ticket counter, security, and a two hour flight, before Kevin meets us outside of baggage claim with a litter box, I have squirreled away a drink coupon and am going to order rum with my complimentary Coke midflight. I’m sure some pioneers swigged from the whiskey jug after a particularly perilous river crossing.

We, especially my husband Kevin, are do-it-yourselfers.  There was a moment when we thought he’d get a job offer before our move that would include a relocation package and we imagined professional movers transporting our possessions for us.  But how would we survive for the ten days the POD company toted and barged our beds, pots, pans, litter box?  Or even the three days United Van Lines estimated.  And how would they know what to toss, donate, recycle?  I didn’t want to transport every item we owned.  I did a lot of downsizing when we listed our house, but I hadn’t finished.  Wouldn’t it be easier for us to pack everything?  And if we packed it, why not load and drive it? 

The job offer hasn’t come—the hiring manager is travelling internationally and then vacationing for the holidays, so we were freed to follow our natural bent.  We rented a truck, bought boxes and packing materials.  I spent sixteen days sorting and packing and with lots of help, two days loading our vehicles.  We followed the rules––leaving behind our potted roses, fertilizers, solvents, paint, propane, and everything else on the Do Not Move list. 

Given the cost of gas, two nights lodging, and return plane tickets for our auxiliary drivers, and being hassled at a truck stop for not parking properly and not being a proper truck, I don’t know if moving ourselves was worth it.  But at this point, our decision is water under the bridge on the Columbia River––which Kevin just drove over.  In a few weeks, once he’s moved my sister, he’ll have to repeat the drive with his pickup truck hauling a rented trailer filled with our patio furniture and the many items I’ve discovered in cabinets I overlooked.

I do know that moving ourselves has given us something that hiring professionals has not––stories.  My husband has his hands on the steering wheel, his foot jamming the accelerator to the floor as the truck vibrates, engine grunting, up and over the Siskiyous descending into Oregon.  He thinks he is driving, but he’s also writing, narrating through the prologue into the first chapter of how we came to Bainbridge Island.