Part IV.
The Work Goes On
Chapter 13.
The Aftermath, Lessons
Learned
With the preponderance of The Adventure over; it was time to write most of The Book.
During our vacation of 1998, I had brought along the book about Viannah and the Grand Canyon and had read excerpts from it to mom and dad. Given limited time and attention span, I had picked the two or three best spots, about a half hour’s worth. This experience confirmed for me that much of what was in these books would not be of interest to people other than those of us who had actually lived the events told in them. For us, it was a memoir, a travelogue. For anyone else, it would be someone else’s memoir and travelogue; there were only a few places where we had something to say that might be of broader interest, importance, or impact. On top of that were the issues of reporting and writing style.
In fact, during the composition of Viannah’s book, I couldn’t even get her to read it. Four years later she did read through it at the urging of her psychotherapist.
“Dad, you worry too much,” she commented, “You spent the whole trip worrying all the time.”
“Well, you were twelve and I was in charge.”
But it was true; I had sweated many things inappropriately. Much of what we were attempting was unknown to me. I didn’t feel I had a lot of depth in terms of knowing what to do if there was trouble. I didn’t know what sorts of trouble might occur. If you’re not in charge, most of this doesn’t matter, but ours had been a party of two.
And, well, I worried a lot just for the fun of it.
This trip, I had worried about not being busy enough. It appeared that I just couldn’t be pleased.
But, those readings in Hillsboro had generated a small fan-dom. I promised that, after the draft of Katy’s book was done, I would review Viannah’s book again (from a more distant perspective) clean it up for “release” and have Viannah post it, one chapter at a time, to my website, mailing printed copies to Hillsboro for mom and dad to read and pass around as they saw fit. Projecting my plans, I thought maybe this publication phase could be starting by February.
This was still the plan in September 2001 and in May 2002 when I passed through this point in writing and proofing. (As of May 2005, the last time through here, Viannah's book was indeed finished and put away sometime in 2002 and this one will be done and mailed by next month.)
Viannah had not been there for our Monday return from the island, she was at her second Band Camp as a sophomore in High School. The Band and Color Guard (of which Viannah was a member) spent the last week before school on the campus of Cal Poly Pomona learning their new material for the fall season. This year it was based on Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. Viann went out with other band parents to join and chaperone them on their last overnight, Thursday the 24th.
Starting work on the book consumed more vacation days. I managed to finish drafts of the critical central parts, Chapters 7 through 12, before losing focus totally, that is, having to get totally back to work and “routine.” This stretched on through the first week back home and I finally went back in to work that Friday.
As before, I had made plans to provide structure and a timetable for the remainder of the work: the “before” and “after” chapters. At first it was one chapter a week then, reorganizing my approach to all un-scheduled tasks, it went to two chapters a month. Chapter 4, in particular, was in progress in fits and starts for over a year. Finally, with the beginning of the 2001-2002 school year, I was able to finish up a first draft in late September. The outline pattern was similar to Viannah’s: the chapter central to the experience first, then the ones around it describing the Main Event. After that, the near-term pressure was off and it was back to notes, journals, and recollections for the main events that weren’t on the island itself. This was followed by the early chapters, descriptions from conception through various preparations. Finally it was the last chapter, then, very last, this, the Lessons Learned chapter.
The startup with John, which was supposed to begin slowly through the book-writing period then ramp up for a year or so of preparation didn’t really happen until after that.
As always but more acutely, I just wished that time would stand still while I got caught up on things. Having to put in 40 to 60 hours a week on somebody else’s project just to survive financially can be a real imposition at times!
The Family Meeting
Saturday there was an end-of-summer church BBQ at Rob and Jamie Knauss’s house. Viann was in charge of part of it. I talked with Rich McWhorter whose father-in-law had chartered a sailboat sometime back in the 60s and had sailed the whole extended family out to Painted Cave on Santa Cruz then all the way around Santa Rosa, anchoring one night at Johnson’s Lee. The man had been a professional geologist. Rich and I shared some common knowledge about the Channel Islands separated by several decades.
Later in the year, we found that California Gold, a local PBS series with Huell Howser, had an episode on Santa Rosa Island. I ordered a copy from the PBS website. They loaded cattle right off that same dock where they had loaded us. We’d also bought a copy of the Channel Islands National Park picture book that contained many pictures of places we’d been and seen and many others of places we’d wished we could have seen.
Sunday evening we had a Family Meeting. I was going to dictate rules of scholastic and domestic behavior and entertainment access for the coming school year. I also wanted to establish a weekly Family Night when we would make a priority of being together and doing something common. The meeting began with a taste testing of the three various waters we wanted to compare, some from Santa Rosa, some of that which we had carried out and back, and some from our own tap. We also ate the Oreo Cookies, which we had, continuing tradition, taken on the trip and not even opened. This bag was smaller, and less pulverized, than the "family economy sized" Grand Canyon package. We had thought of this, at least.
As usual, my dictated rules bent the family in the right direction but were frayed, worn, and broken within weeks, some within days. Family Night itself was an idea from the Family Camp we had just attended. “Opportunities To Serve” (OTS) was another idea from the same source. I had set up a weekly rotation where everybody helped around the house or with meals or cleanup, just like at Family Camp, a few times a week. This came to nothing pretty quickly.
Monday was our first Family Night. I showed a video for which I had been searching for at least twenty years and had finally found on eBay, “The Truth About Spring” starring Halley Mills and her real-life father John Mills. It was a romance adventure about a man raising his daughter on a small sailboat cruising around the Keys and what happened to them as she reached the age where she needed to leave “home.” Made around 1960 when Ms. Mills was about that age, it had been a family favorite when I was a kid.
Tuesday I took the day off and we went to Magic Mountain as a family. We spent lots of money doing things like eating at Moose Lodge. Everyone said they had a great time. It had been a tradition to go to Magic Mountain with Viannah every winter since fourth grade. Trying to do something similar with Katy, but at a different time of year, I suggested Hurricane Harbor near the beginning of school. She didn’t want to go just the two of us, so the whole family went to Magic Mountain instead. Later in September, all of us but Viann went to Hurricane Harbor one Sunday afternoon.
The snorkeling promise is still pending. In retrospect, we should have been a little braver down at East Point that day. I had no idea what the currents were but just didn’t want to get washed out to sea. Still, nearly certainly, we could have played safely in surf there and snorkeled maybe 50 yards beyond it without too much risk. Then there wouldn’t have been this additional outstanding lifetime promise to … worry … about.
Wednesday was the first day of school. With classes starting at 7:50, Viannah, a new sophomore, was up at 7:17 sharp, “Call momma, I don’t know my schedule!” Viann was not available; she was being oriented herself as a new professor at Azusa Pacific University and was out of touch. Viannah had not seen her schedule since registration two weeks earlier. Katy, a new eighth grader, wandered off into the first-day-of-school crowd, not in much of a hurry. Traffic was awful everywhere. Up at Palm Crest, John didn’t want to be seen being escorted up to Ms. Fuhrman’s room, but he still wanted me with him to face the unknowns of fifth grade.
On Thursday, the last of August, I finished cleaning up from the campout, pouring the last of the island water out on our new grapefruit tree that I’d put in down the hill. It was putting on leaves anyway, and the one fruit that had been on it when I bought it was growing. That was good.
Some of the lessons learned from the trip through the Grand Canyon had been applied here with good effect. We had more film, but still not enough.
I had been more sensitive to the child’s personality in planning. There had been a better balance in that respect.
I had taken better and more consistent notes to aid in writing the book.
I realized after we had left East Point on Santa Rosa Island that the place we could have hiked to half a mile away was the sheer, south-facing edge of the island with blowholes and treacherous, beach-less surf. In addition to wishing we had had the courage to go a little further out in the surf and snorkel a bit on the safe side, I wished we had gone over and looked at that. Katy had not wanted to hike any distance, but if I had realized what we were missing, I would have pressed a little harder and she would have done it. It wouldn’t really have been a “hike,” over and back would have been less than a mile total.
From notes: “Wear glasses to start with in windy places if there’s not a protected place in which to put in and take out contact lenses.” Duh.
As had been the case with Viannah, the preparations had been too busy and had packed already busy lives so much that there was no psychological adjustment in approaching and preparing for the time away on the island. This was a big reason why the shock from busyness to mere existence had been so great and had contributed to missing things that might otherwise have been savored. We made cards from paper and played games. We could have thought in advance that we would want to play games and could have brought a deck along or could have decided not to be in a game playing mindset. Making cards from available material was fun too, however, and created a memento.
The problem of overload, prioritization, and saying “no” in order to maintain composure was much larger than was represented by just this event. In the fall, Viann and I joined a Simplicity Circle at the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena near the Rose Bowl. By increasing, yet again, our commitments, we were exposed, yet again, to possibilities for healthy reduction.
Much sight seeing was saved by the volunteer ranger who came to help the disabled person who hadn’t come to the island after all. Otherwise we would have had to do some walking, and should have been more prepared for that. The annual Family Hunt there restricted the hiking that we could have done, but there were still some twenty miles of trails that we might have walked on but instead were driven over.
We could have been more prepared for the wind. Different camping gear, earplugs, or a different attitude would have helped. I couldn’t remember on the spot what seemed so appealing about living in the panhandle of Texas, which could also be constantly windy like this, in spells. I couldn’t remember on the spot what had been so appealing about riding a bicycle to Alaska. Another major fantasy withered again in the face of reality.
Of course, one can always stand more physical preparation, especially those of us with sedentary jobs and hobbies.
Despite her nearly grown-up size, Katy was still a little girl in many ways. She was now taller than her mother but I h ad sometimes made the mistake of dealing with her more like her older sister. At least we had brought ample sanitary pads. We had learned that from experience.
Finally, there is the paradox of the book itself. Producing this book was a significant effort just like the event itself, but the book had the drawback that it was more “terminal time,” (i.e., more "computer time"), more time not with the kids, or anybody, or anything else. It remains to be seen if its ultimate value will be worth these efforts and sacrifices. The decision to do it was already made by the precedent with Viannah. I’ll need to go through the whole cycle with John before changing course on trilogy writing in any significant way.