In my last post, I chose to reframe “stuck” to “paused” and that was a helpful shift. But I have been paws-ed in another way since April, when I met a tiny puppy the day after she opened her eyes. The grandniece of our beloved Capi, this tiny Coton de Tulear puppy came home with us in June. Since then, she has filled the days with laughter and my heart with love.
We’ve named her Skipper, because she is running things on Kagán, and in our lives, in a most wonderful way.
So, please welcome our cute, curious, clever new crew member!
I had started a piece titled Stuck, but have decided to shift that sentiment. And so, I’ll say I’m Paused.
Given the privileges I enjoy in life, I can hardly call myself stuck. That doesn’t mean that hurdles don’t appear in the path I’d like to travel. Some of those can be leapt right over, and some require a detour around, but it occurs to me that there are times to pause—to consider the nature of the hurdle, and the way over or around. Or even to consider whether changing course all together is what I want, or need, to do.
So I am paused.
One place I’m paused is aboard Kagán. Most of the summer, we have been trying to find, and fix, an intermittent problem starting her engine. Hence, being stuck—in port. Twice we thought we had the problem solved, only to have it recur. Twice this happened while we were safe at anchor or on a mooring buoy (and more times than I kept count of at the dock). So, we were not, thankfully, adrift after furling sails as the wind died in what can be the strong currents of our cruising grounds. Now, I know what our problem is, and I feel damned lucky that we were able to make it back to our home port of Friday Harbor safely.
The problem is salt water incursion into the engine, the death knell for a marine diesel. I will be leaping the hurdle of re-powering Kagán (indeed, a long series of hurdles) during the off-season. I only paused a few moments to consider my course of action, as the desire to continue adventuring on Kagán still beats in my heart. When this race has been run (thank you for indulging me the metaphor—I ran the hurdles in college, and it feels apt), Kagán will be a more dependable boat, and therefore a safer one. I believe my re-powered boat will empower me as her skipper.
As for the other hurdles that have popped up in my path—life feels a bit like a Whack-A-Mole game these days—I’m paused. Considering.
Are you stuck, paused, or full speed ahead? What are you considering during the waning days of summer?
I am. I am not special in that. We all grieve. It’s universal, yet unique.
I have grieved before, so I thought I knew. But it turns out it is also unique for each person grieved and for each time it comes.
I have been wondering—despite having a life I feel such gratitude for, despite many good things happening in the past months, despite managing my thoughts and feelings about the news, despite having important (to me) “to dos” to do—why I can’t seem to find a rhythm to my days or a focus for my mind, why I can’t seem to make myself sit down to write, why I’m snappish too much of the time.
This morning, I finally let myself own that I am grieving. Though it’s true I did not see the friend I lost more than once or twice a year, and it’s true that his loss has not changed my day-to-day life much, it is also true that my world does not feel the same without him in it. And I don’t like the world without him as much as I liked the world with him.
I grieve my loss. I grieve for his family and friends whose day-to-day lives have changed with his loss. And for those friends, who like me perhaps, didn’t realize how much a part of their lives he was. But I also grieve that he didn’t get to do more of the things he had listed on little bits of paper just days before he died—contemplating his life after working so intensely for decades, contemplating doing more of what he loved rather than what others needed.
His many accomplishments and all he did in service to our environmental geology profession, and the common good, could fill pages and pages. But I think I’ll simply say that he was one of the finest human beings I have ever known, and I sorely miss my dear friend.
These photos were taken on a fantastic field trip at the 2012 AEG Annual Meeting.
I write this in honor of Duane Kreuger, April 26, 1970-May 26, 2024, who left those who love him much too soon.
[He was President of the AEG Foundation at the time he died. His family has asked that if you wish to honor Duane in this way, to please make a donation in his memory to the fund of the AEG Foundation you most care about. https://aegfoundation.org/]
Here’s the conclusion to Flying Lessons, but just the start to a life of adventure for young Will Ross. I hope you’ll read No More Empty Spaces, my debut novel, which picks up on Will’s life decades later as he takes his family to a remote and rugged region of Turkey where he has signed on to work on the construction of a troubled dam.
Finally, Will felt a shaky touch—his mother’s on his shoulders. She peered over his head at Lucien and said, “Good riddance.” She led Will toward the front of the house, the kitchen door swinging closed behind them. There was a pillowcase stuffed full, leaning on one of the suitcases. She handed it to Will. “There’re your things.”
He clutched at the sack to keep it from spilling over, pulling a wad of fabric tight in each hand to carry it.
With a suitcase in each of her hands and her good purse hanging over her left wrist, his mother pushed the screen door open with her hip. It screeched on its rusty hinges, like it always did. They both looked back toward the kitchen, but the swinging door remained still. A look passed between them, then Will followed his mother through the door, across the porch, and down the steps. She rushed toward Lucien’s old red beater truck, her dress whipping around her legs in the wind.
She loaded the suitcases in back, while Will climbed into the cab clutching his things.
He reached his chin on top of the pillowcase, and asked, “Can we say good-bye to Joe?”
“No, we’re just goin’, no good-byes, no one knowin’ where we’re goin’.”
She cranked the truck. It whined once, turning over on the second try.
“Where are we going?”
“Willard, stop askin’ so many questions. We’ll get goin’ then I’ll figure out where we’re goin’ to. We just gotta get before Lucien comes to, is all.” She jerked the truck into gear.
Will turned around to see the little white house, curtains fluttering in the windows like they were waving good-bye, and something told him he would never set foot in Kansas again.
He raised his hand—just a small wave, so his mother wouldn’t notice.
Bye, Gramps. Bye, Joe. Thank you, he thought. Bye Scout, old pal. Bye Tuck. I’ll never forget you, but I’m gonna fly. Up and away!
At the end of the last installment, Will thought, Gone wrong. This day’s gone wrong. If only his day had gotten better from there…but sometimes they don’t.
Despite that, Will realized he was hungry. His nostrils twitched at the smell of raw onion when he pulled the door open, this time careful not to let it slam behind him. Will was surprised not to find his mother in the kitchen, but supper was started, and he heard her rattling jars in the cellar. He hopped onto the counter by the sink. From that spot, he could wash his hands, like he was supposed to, and see what was cooking, too.
Will noticed the wind blowing harder outside. It sounded like screaming. Then his mother was too. Sounds of glass breaking and wood splintering and feet clamoring and Lucien’s yelling and his mother’s shrieking vibrated up from the basement. The door trembled from the bedlam below. He heard some of the words Lucien and his mother spat at each other.
“Give it here,” Lucien demanded.
“Dirty drunk.”
Another crash.
“I’ll kill ya, bitch.”
“Let go a’me.”
Will felt the house shake as feet beat their way up the basement stairs, the sound of his mother’s heels followed by heavy boots. She pushed through the narrow door and it slammed back hard, straining on its hinges. She hesitated, then turned toward the front of the house, but she’d missed her chance to run. Lucien grabbed her and dragged her backward. He slapped her and her head snapped to the side, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth contorted. Lucien hit her again and again, the shape of his sausage fingers rising on her cheeks. She cursed him, but stopped pulling away, given up on getting away. Again.
Neither his mother nor Lucien saw Will sitting on the counter, and he watched it all as if it were in slow motion, like at the movies when the projector slowed way down. With each swing of Lucien’s arm, Will saw the hundreds of swings of Lucien’s arm that he had witnessed over the years the man had been married to his mother.
Will’s mind flashed through the images Lucien had left there—being thrown across the yard and his blood melting the snow he’d landed in when his teeth broke and punched through his lip, his mother splayed out on the sitting room floor with her nose bleeding into her new rag rug, Scout’s agonized cries when Lucien blinded and bloodied him with a board run through with long nails, Will dodging the same weapon while he yelled for Lucien to stop, and Lucien kicking Tuck so hard that he broke the dog’s back. As if it were happening again, Will heard the crack of breaking bone, saw Tuck land in a heap, and something snapped into place in his mind—his mother could not, or would not, ever make this stop—but he would. No more, he thought. No more.
He shifted, readying to jump down, to do something, though he wasn’t sure what that would be. His leg bumped the cast iron fry pan on the counter beside him. Brown gray, and rough on the outside, the inside shone with the slick of oil from years of frying countless chickens and endless strips of bacon. There was a half-chopped onion on the deeply grooved cutting board next to the pan with bits of onion stuck to the mottled metal of the knife blade. The knife handle was smooth, the color of honey. The other half of the onion tipped beside the knife, cut side up, the rings even, perfect circles within circles within circles. Will stared, his mother’s cries filling the kitchen, then his hands reached out.
The weight of the pan almost pulled Will off the counter when he swung it. It shoved him sideways when it hit the right side of Lucien’s head with a deep thunk. The blow knocked the pan from Will’s hands and it crashed to the floor, landing hard on its edge, denting the linoleum, then clattering from side to side, until it settled flat. During the seconds the skillet was coming to rest, Lucien hung in the air, swaying, his head cocked oddly. Then his knees buckled. Will looked down between his dusty boots at the Lucien pile on the floor. The screaming went silent, except for the wind.
His mother regarded Will through puffy, red eyes.
“Oh my God, Willard, why’d you go and do that? When he wakes up, he’ll kill us both.”
Will looked at her, then down at the floor. “Had to,” he said.
He slid off the counter, reached for the pan, and placed it back beside the cutting board.
As he and his mother stood looking at Lucien, blood began to trickle from his right ear. They watched it trace a line down his square jaw, then drip onto the floor.
“Well, oh, oh boy. I guess we’re leavin’ then,” she said. “You stay here and watch him. Run quick and tell me if he moves.”
She ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs toward the bedrooms.
After clearing Lucien with a big step, Will inched toward the kitchen door and pushed it partly open. He heard doors and drawers opening and closing. His gaze clocked back and forth—from Lucien on the floor in front of him, to over his shoulder toward the stairs. When Will’s mother came down the stairs, she placed two suitcases by the front door, then turned without a glance at him and went up again.
Geologists study the earth and the processes that shape it. Writers study the human heart and the processes that shape it. The GeologistWriter builds a bridge between the two. Come across it with me!
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