An Unintended Christmas Gift

January 3, 2012

We have traveled a long way in the past three weeks—all the way to a new reality. Our world now contains a new person: Archer Burck Zabel.

We arrived in Oakland a week before Christmas, settled into a beautiful apartment by Lake Merritt, and entered a frenzy of get-ready-for-Christmas activity. Wrapping presents, baking Swedish tea ring, making Swedish pancakes, cutting the fondue meat, picking up last-minute presents. Charlie flew in to join us for Christmas Eve and Theo carefully tracked whose turn it was to open a present. We would occasionally catch a glimpse of the new baby as he continued to kick and twist in his mother’s belly.

Despite our tightly-crossed fingers (we did not want him to have a Christmas birthday for his sake), Archer decided Christmas was his day. We made it through the present opening before labor got unbearably serious, and Archer was here by 4:25 p.m. I was lucky enough to be at his birth, an uninhibited, intense and joyful event. I’d forgotten the sweet feeling of holding a baby’s head in the palm of one’s hand.

Now a week later, Archer is a husky eater and a sleepy baby, so sleepy he slept through his first bath, even with Theo’s “thoughtful” ministrations. Theo vacillates between petting, patting, pulling and cooing over his baby brother and ricocheting off the walls. Bob and I have been very, very busy cleaning and cooking and reading stories and taking adventures with Theo. In fact, today was our first full day “off.” But we look forward to being involved again tomorrow.

We have finally put away all of our clothes and books and miscellany and have even joined the YMCA (a ten-minute walk from our apartment), checked out a couple of restaurants in our neighborhood, surveyed the winter flowers, and contacted our West Coast friends. I think we’re good to go for the season.

Every Trip Has Bad Moments, Right?

December 14, 2011

It’s a good thing Bob is patient, because he has one cranky woman on his hands. All travel comes with bad moments as well as good, right? Well, my bad moment came in Windsor. We arrived in this lovely resort for five days complements of Bob’s Coast Guard Auxiliary buddy Chuck Woodward, where we were going to enjoy the charming old town of Healdsburg and an afternoon of wine tasting. I got sick. An annoying virus that’s had me by the throat for four of the five days now. The good news is that the suite is a great place to convalesce.

When we left Oregon last Sundy, we stopped in Yreka (pronounced “why-reek-ha), just south of the Oregon border. The notes in the hotel reported a Mark Twain tale of how the town got its name: some dude rode into town and saw a sign that said "bakery," but the sign was backwards. The hotel clerk said someone had shown up asking where the beach was. They thought they were in Eureka, which is on the coast. Plausible? About as plausible as the fact that when we got up in the morning, it was 12 degrees Fahrenheit(!) while it was above freezing in Minneapolis. How’s that for irony?

As we drove the freeway down the length of Oregon, surrounded by green hills and mountains, I was aware that we’d made this drive and others like it many times. I was feeling a bit jaded, thinking as one gets older that it all starts to feel like “been there, done that.” The next day, we continued south on Highway 5 and came to a stretch of the road near Mount Shasta that was much more mountainous and beautiful than either of us remembered. We looked at each other and said, “Do you remember driving through this before?” “Nope,” we agreed. And so the other side of the “being older” coin is that old things can seem entirely new. How’s that for irony?

The agenda for tonight is more convalescence – Bob cooking – watching The Wire (We’re a few years behind) – and packing up one more time. Tomorrow it’s on to Oakland where, if I’m well enough (keep your fingers crossed), I will attend Theo’s preschool holiday party. If not, Bob will be attending alone, and I will be an even crankier woman.

We hear from a reliable source (our “beloved” daughter, as she reminded us today) that the apartment we’ve rented in Oakland is “fabulous.” We are looking forward to settling in for a few months.

Wild Life and Wildlife in Portland

December 2, 2011

I love this town. Portland is bustling and sophisticated and beautiful. Charlie’s apartment is downtown and we can hop on the streetcar right outside his door, ride free anywhere in the downtown blocks. This came in very handy after a long night of traipsing between art galleries and drinking wine, which would have been more fun if we’d actually liked any of the art we found. Well, there were a couple of Dali’s that I fell in love with, but we couldn’t fit them on the street car so had to leave them in the gallery.

The downtown here feels like a young people’s town. It’s full of hippies and yuppies and who knows who else tucked into restaurants and coffee shops and wine bars and wandering among the brightly lit trees. A happening place. Completely forgetting how old we are, I think we just blend in. I am reminded of my mother looking at the assisted living place she was moving into and saying, “I don’t want to live with all these old people!”

The Park blocks make up the central corridor downtown—a broad walking mall of grass and trees for about ten blocks—a perfect echo of all the wild wooded parks that are tucked within the city limits outside the edge of downtown--every bit as beautiful and lush as the Olympic peninsula. The Willamette runs through town like the Mississippi runs through the Twin Cities. Outside the city center, there are many lovely neighborhoods with core shopping areas.

We went walking on the Oak Bottoms Wildlife Refuge along the Willamette. There we found an old steam engine pulling a holiday train for kids and their grown ups. Bob struck up a conversation with the volunteer engineer whose father had been the engineer on this very locomotive when it was operated by the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway hauling freight along the Columbia River.

When we came across this imposing mural rising above the wildlife refuge path we thought it must be a park building. Turns out it's a mausoleum. There were a lot of real live ducks lazing in the wetlands. One mallard in particular flashed iridescent in the sun. Felt like home.

Giving Thanks

November 23, 2011

Can I write travel notes when I don’t feel like I’m traveling anymore? We have been in Oregon now for five days and I feel like I am in one of my homes. We are settling into Charlie’s apartment for three weeks and I keep walking around examining his walls like I am a tourist here. They are endlessly entertaining. He has a quite a collection of quirky prints and postcards and collages. Some of them beautiful, some funny, some curious, all interesting. And then, of course, there are his own huge exploding canvases.

Charlie has a south-facing bay window that looks over the city, but the glass has been rattled so hard by the wind and pelted so hard by the rain since we arrived that we’ve barely been able to see out of the window. Water runs down the streets and gathers gobs of colored leaves. I once saw a sign of sun, lasted maybe two minutes. Still, even in relentless rain it’s a beautiful city. I expect within a few days we’ll become acclimated enough to wade out into the city in the rain and explore. Powell’s book store awaits us.

In the meantime we’ve been enjoying wonderful meals with Charlie and Lori. I’m trying to recover from the Thanksgiving feast they fixed for us today. By 7:00 p.m. we had all changed into our soft pants and were watching Outbreak. After a short break for pumpkin pie, we turned to Labyrinth until Charlie declared he’d seen it a dozen times when he was a kid (was? Isn’t he still?) and he couldn’t watch it one second more. I think it was really a ruse because he was tired and wanted us to go home. An entirely reasonable feeling. Bob suggested I post this very old poem I wrote about Charlie in honor of Thanksgiving. He was about 3 years old at the time.

WHEN CHARLIE EATS HIS LUNCH

When Charlie eats his lunch
you can hear the crunch
for a hundred miles around--
it is the loudest sound.

He bashes the beans
and whacks the peas,
cracks the carrots,
and zaps the toast.
He trashes the taters,
crashes the corn,
slurps the soup,
and burps the beats.
He splashes the squash,
mashes the meat,
chops the chips
and bops the buns.

And when he is done
he cries, for the fun
is over until the next lunch.

With gratitude for every day of this wonderful crazy life we live,
Yvonne (and Bob)

Correction

November 19, 2011

Twilight was not filmed here. The books were set here.

Getting ready for a break

November 19, 2011

We have arrived on the far side of the Olympic Peninsula tonight, a day out of Portland. I am getting ready to stay put for awhile and am very eager to hang out with Charlie and his girlfriend Lori. She has planned a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner for us along with the perfect type of after-Thanksgiving activities, laying around, maybe a movie, and other pleasant things.

We whipped through Seattle, staying just long enough to see two dear young friends, Kate Rainey and Annie Van Avery, and see Annie’s very round and beautiful belly. She’s only about two weeks from delivery and still generously offered us a room in her house. (We were smart enough to stay in a hotel.)

We spent last night in Port Townsend, which we have wanted to visit for years--we always hear it spoken of in such glowing tones by Judy and Steve. Now we understand why. Its main street is on the waterfront and has a wooden boat chandlery. Also lots of boats in the harbor. Our room had a balcony on the water, and in the morning we watched otters and ducks diving about 50 feet out from the shoreline. Ice cream shop, book store, piers…just looks like a great place to hang out in the summer. November not as much. Not bad, but the ice on the boardwalk this morning didn’t make us feel like lingering. Nor did the uber-friendly owner of the Spirit Gallery. All we wanted to do was buy a couple of cards, but we got a twenty-minute lecture on the sorry state of America, all while he clutched my credit card in his right hand. We were a captive audience.

We drove to the westernmost point of the continental US this afternoon—Cape Flattery on the Makah Indian Reservation. The coast is rugged and regal, similar to that of Oregon and northern California.

We stopped in a little backyard fish smoking shop in Neah Bay (still on the reservation). The door was wide open, the television on, but no one answered when we called out. So we knocked on the door of the attached trailer and a teenage boy trundled out. He seemed a bit self-conscious but helpful, and sold us the best smoked salmon we have ever tasted.

Tonight we are in Forks, which capitalizes heavily on the fact that the vampire series, "Twilight," was filmed here. Maybe I can convince myself to see the movies so I can properly appreciate their advertising.

Heeding the advice about changing it up, I will add another of our favorite traveling recipes here. You buy a bag of pumpkin seeds. Put one seed on edge in your mouth and gently bite the sides until they separate. Then ever so gently peel the shell back and pop that luscious little seed into your mouth. It keeps your hands busy for hours while adding very few calories to a trip.

First Nations

November 17, 2011

I awakened this morning thinking about what I had forgotten to include in my blog about First Nations. Perhaps you know this already. Canada treated the natives as badly as did the U.S. Their kids were yanked away to boarding school; the populations decimated by disease. The celebratory feasts around which community life was organized, potlatches, were actually outlawed for the first half of the 20th century. It became legal to hold potlatches again in the 1950s, and the things I have read here suggest that about that time there was a strong move toward reclaiming their heritage. Lots and lots of new artwork, most of it staying pretty true to the old ways of expression. I was drawn to the work of a man named Benjamin Chee Chee (a prairie Indian) who uses the old symbols but with an abstract style. I also found a lovely book by Bill Reid, whose mother was from the Haida tribe on the coast of British Columbia. He made beautiful sculptures and jewelry. His book, The Raven Steals the Light, is a book of Haida myths/stories that are colloquial, engaging and eloquent at the same time.

These photos ares of two the enormous "bowls" for the food that was served at a potlach.

The culture, art and spirit of the First Nations is the part of Vancouver that will stay with me.