Yuck

I just got through with an "initial consultation" with a financial planner from Ameriprise. I'll be the first to admit my finances could use a little TLC. I mean, I would like to retire some day in a manner better than the one I'm accustomed to.

So after the meeting I decided to do a little research on the Web and read all these awful things about Ameriprise (formerly AmEx). So I don't know what to think anymore. I didn't hand them any money today and kind of made it clear that I didn't have the fee right then.

I hate being ignorant of stuff like this. Sometimes, like when I enter a car dealership or mechanics shop, or get lost in the aisles of Home Depot, I wonder if "Single Woman = Sucker" is writ large upon my forehead. It's quite irritating.

A River Runs Throu ... Oh Forget It

On Monday I stood next to the Ocoee River eyeballing the raft that was going to take us on our whitewater adventure. My fingers clutched the T-grip of my paddle, my torso was swathed in protective layers (actually a Personal Flotation Device, Class III rapids and above), and my wild curls were confined by a ridiculously bright yellow helmet.

I was ready.

Our little family vacation this year centered on this rafting trip. I was proud of my parents who were willing to indulge their daughter. I assured them they would have smiles on their faces afterwards. It would be fun! Different! Etc.! Having once done a rafting trip in 1987, they agreed to give it a try.

Our guide, who introduced himself quickly with a name that sounded like “PayDay,” was a cheerful, Opie-like individual who was not so much as tan as that all his freckles had run together. I thought we would get a guide that we had met at the outpost and who talked to our family for some time while we awaited our departure. But when Mom asked how long he had been a river guide he replied, “About three weeks.” Mom also pointed out that he tripped over his feet when he first introduced himself. I was glad when he took the raft of tween girls.

Anyway, PayDay ran through the instructions and reminded us, once again, that the most dangerous thing on the river was our paddle.
“Keep your hand on the T-grip at all times!” he yelled.
Mom immediately let go of hers as soon as we entered the raft, hitting my shoulder. I gently closed her hand around it.

We strategically positioned ourselves behind my Dad and Bro (the better to be shielded from large sheets of freezing water), and we were ready. One of PayDay’s instructions was, “Get down like James Brown!” when we were going through a rapid. That meant we were to throw our bodies into the bottom of the raft. Considering there was only about three feet of space for both my mother and myself, I decided that the command was actually more of a suggestion, although I did try.

However, about halfway through our trip I noticed that when PayDay yelled at us to get down, why, I was already down. And that Dad and Brother kept getting taller. And that it was harder and harder to reach out and “dig in” with my paddle. And that Mom and I were getting pounded by a lot of water.

At one point Mom shifted and I discovered I was actually sitting in the bottom of the boat. Turns out we had a large hole in our seating tube. So we scooted to the one in the back of raft and enjoyed a much more inflated, elevated view.

Our trip was a lot of fun, PayDay was a terrific guide, and we only hit one snag when one of the other rafts lost a junior higher (we found him again, no worries). At the end of the trip there were smiles, some sore muscles, and some pretty cool moments that will one day be the “Do you remember when’s…?”

I only get to see Mom and Dad about three times a year, but we are close. And I love having them here. Aside from all the little things that get done that I don’t expect – my vacuum cleaner, showerhead, and bathroom commode are all fixed, and the top of my dryer is cleaner than it has been in years (“Are you collecting lint, hon?” Mom asked in all seriousness.), I revel in the time I get to spend with them and with Brother.

They are precious and they are wonderful and they are mine.

The Whole Wide World

And this is how it goes:

As a child of a Navy dad, we were stationed in Japan for most of my elementary school days - 3rd grade to the middle of 6th. It was a tough transition mostly on my Mother, because back then there really wasn't a program in place to help military families with cross-country moves. Two weeks after we arrived they shipped Dad off for a 6-9 month cruise. Mom had to find us a place to live (as there were no homes available on the base), find a car, get us registered in school, and attend to a million other details of setting up a home in a foreign country where she knew exactly no one.

We were put on a waiting list for base housing and in the meantime lived in delapidated WWII barracks that an enterprising Japanese woman rented out to families like us who were stuck in limbo. There was no heat in the apartment at all, so Mom nailed quilts over the windows and we huddled around kerosene heaters for warmth. The only phone for the entire apartment complex was in a little wooden box nailed to a tree in the middle of the gravel parking lot. The first night in our new home we experienced seven earthquakes.

As a kid, I thought it was a grand adventure. My main concern was when my bicycle from America was going to arrive. Three and a half years later, I was heartbroken to leave Japan. Being shot from that culture back to San Diego, California, was a shock. You adjust. You learn to put up with strange questions from other children, such as why my brother and I didn't have slanted eyes (the child apparently not understanding that living in a place does not endow you with the native culture's genetic characteristics). You get used to the fact that you are missing nearly four years worth of US pop culture and history. Even today, these gaps reveal themselves sometimes in the "Remember When?" conversations.

In 2001 I became a full time missionary in Scotland. It was an eye-opener for what my mother must have gone through. Now I was the one to procure the housing situation, the car, the utility companies, the taxes, the foreign currency, the heart-breaking homesickness. Six weeks after I arrived, I sat in my living room and watched the World Trade Center disappear. Over time, my best friend had her second child. My other best friend got married. People and things evolved and changed in big and small ways. I did too.

When I returned to the US in 2003, I felt like a woman trying on a sweater that was too small. I couldn't get it to fit, no matter which way I contorted myself. In the beginning, all I wanted to be was back in that little town in Scotland, where I knew the pace and rhythm of life. When I returned for a visit, though, Scotland had become another garment I didn't fit into. The people and things had evolved and changed there, too. For a while, I hung suspended between two cultures, fitting into niether.

Three years later, I have carved out my little life, taking what I have seen and where I have been and who I am and molding it day by day into my own place. I do not fully fit into this Southern life. I do not fully fit into a Scottish or Japanese or Californian or Oklahoman life either. I am made up of bits and pieces of all of them and I make them part of me.

"If you came back, you wanted to leave again. If you went away, you longed to come back. Wherever you were, you could hear the call of the homeland, like the note of a herdsman's horn far away in the hills. You had one home out there and one over here, and yet you were an alien in both places. Your true abiding place was the vision of something very far off, and your soul like the waves, always restless and forever in motion." -Johan Bojer, "The Immigrants"-

Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson

He smiled down at me, tall, dark-haired, beautiful eyes, nice teeth (Hey, give me a break. When you live in Britain for two years good teeth stand out on a person.). I summoned my courage to pop the question.

"So, how old are you anyway?"
"23"

And that's when the needle skittered off the proverbial record that provides a constant backing soundtrack to the life of moi.

Yikes - a full decade younger than my humble self. This means he is missing out on everything from 1972-1982, which, admittedly, might not be a bad period of history to skip, fashionwise (remembering wrap dress Mom made me out of terry-cloth here), but still.

It made me feel kind of ... um ... mature. And slightly unsettled. You see, one of the drawbacks of being single in your 30s is that, after a certain point, you have a hard time judging how old a person is. I can usually tell if they are still in the collegiate league, but mid-to-late 20s it gets a bit hazy. You wonder, for instance, if this person who is chatting you up knows what a 401(k) is or how to respond when the car breaks down on the freeway. These are important marks of maturity. Not necessarily the fact that he has a cool camera phone or shops at Abercrombie & Fitch.

*sigh* And so I slip the needle back into a more comfortable groove.
With just a few minor protests from my inner 19-year old.