Close your eyes and feel the wonder

The drive home was lovely and took seven hours. Be like this, the family that takes trips instead of makes time. Stop at the historical markers. Eat lunch in roadside diners where the waitress calls you "hun" instead of McDonalds. The cheeseburgers are better and so is the marionberry pie (a berry developed right here in Oregon, in Marion County, a hybrid of the blackberry known for its juicyness and flavor. In the words of the immortal Casey Stengal, you could look it up.) Be the dad who strikes up conversations with interesting strangers and makes teenaged daughters roll their eyes. If your teenaged daughter does not roll her eyes at you at least twice a day you are simply not doing your job. You've got to give her lots of goofy stuff she can look for and avoid in the man she marries. That's your job for seven years, to be the Dumbest Man in America. Unfortunately some of us never outgrow that part, but in the words of the immortal Mark Twain she will wake up one day in her twenties and be amazed at all you have learned. Enjoy the next 22 years. They are going to be a lot of fun.

I drove straight through to Cascade Locks, the town where I once had a psychotic breakdown (a true and wrenching story I'll have to develop a great deal more insight and wisdom to tell) and it was marvelous to return 15 years later in a state of transcendant health and spiritual peace, in a white convertible with the top down. I passed the baseball field where I tried to begin the salvation of the world by picking up litter (my mental illness, like the rest of me, was really quite tender and poignant, but a wracking terror and sorrow to those who loved me.) Never turn away from the truth. Accept though, that every truth has to be told in its own time. There are so many stories, and everyone of them ends in the same place, a place of grace and redemption and hope. But you have to have courage to not look away or be afraid of what the story is telling you. I'll return to this story later, when we are both more sure of my authenticity as a storyteller.

I stopped at Cascade Locks' famous roadside diner to eat, but the restaurant looked dirty and dingy and no one greeted me when I walked in, and the menu didn't include chicken-fried steak. A roadside diner with no chicken-fried steak? They did have a special on a New York steak, 15.95 with baked potato and salad. 15.95?!!? That's a quarter tank of gas! Yeesh. I decided to leave. Marie and I have a rule that if we don't get a good feeling about a place, particularly a restaurant, particularly if it isn't clean, we just turn around and leave. You only have 10,000 more meals to share with your family and friends. Or maybe 10. The exact number does not matter. In the words of the immortal Joaquin Andujar, a former pitcher for the St.Louis Cardinals with marvelously fractured English, "All of baseball [life] can be summed up in just one little word: youneverknow." And you don't. So don't waste any of those 10,000 meals on bad food, immodest prices, poor service or a dirty dining room. Vote with your feet. And enjoy the soul-nurturing communion that is a good meal in the place you were meant to be. Like home for instance. I paused a moment to read the community posters on the walls (the concert series, the hours of the public library, and a flyer for the Christian Bikers of the Columbia Gorge. I may have to buy a Harley and join. Marie would look sensational in a leather jacket and leather pants, her long blonde hair flying in the wind. Maybe a little too sensational. Youneverknow.)

I wanted to keep driving but I was too tired, and the next exit was a small park with a boat landing and large nearly-empty parking area and I pulled over, put the top up, locked the doors and took a nap. The sun was setting when I woke and I went down to the river to sit and to think and hear God's voice, not an audible voice, but the voice of the stillness and beauty and the river. Some careless fishermen had blighted the area with discarded food containers and poles and plastic bags, and even the sane part of me wanted to start picking up litter again. But this wasn't the time for that. I sat maybe 10-15 minutes enjoying the breathtaking sight around me, a place I could hardly open my eyes wide enough to see, let alone describe with my poor words. I walked back to my car filled with quiet. A husband and wife were dismounting from a beautiful black Harley at the top of the boat ramp. Two interesting strangers. "Where are you headed?" I asked. The man had his helmet in both hands and he looked up and smiled. "Home," he said. "Have a good ride."

And I too had a good ride. The moon was out and the top was down and the music rose in my heart. On the way home I called Marie and told her how much I loved her, and she told me the same and told me how glad she was that have started the blog and we have begun this new adventure together. We have a date tomorrow, to have dinner with Captain Livingstone and his bride at Wu's Open Kitchen, a clean restaurant filled with the smells of delicious food lovingly prepared, and it will be wonderful for all of us to sit and talk. After dinner Marie and I will get a motel room and spend the night together, and I will make love to the only woman I want to be with for the rest of my life. The best part will be when she puts her head on my chest and soothes me to sleep with her voice. I need her. I miss her. I want us to have a home again, and make it a safe place to grow old.

I stopped at a Wendy's in Troutdale and had a large cup of chili and a tall ice tea. The kitchen in this restaurant was sparkling and the entire crew was humming with activity, closing down stations, performing tasks without being asked, working together as if they were on a submarine or an aircraft carrier, in crisp uniforms with a common goal. Think how a smart businessman could transform the tow truck business by infusing it with this spirit, another version of the cowboy way. Everyone in our company works hard. They are friendly and neighborly, and wear a crisp clean uniform shirt, tucked in, with no tails or underwear hanging out, and no droopy pants or surly unkemptness. Someone needs to become the FedEx of towing, and they will make a kazillion dollars. The dispatcher of our towing company realizes that every call is the worst day of the customer's life, with a thousand uncertainties and anxieties on the other end of the line (what will I tell my wife, I hope it won't be expensive, we've got to be to soccer practice by 5:30, oh god that looks expensive) and he is calm and reassuring and polite, like he's talking to a neighbor. The tow truck driver conducts himself like a friend of Mark Wheeler and has a friendly, easy grin. He's a good troubleshooter and solves a fair amount of simple problems without a tow. He has friends in town and steers the stranded motorist to a safe haven ("you need to see a fella I know, Dick Allen. His garage is just over town. He'll have you going in a jiffy.") He offers her a cold bottle of water from the ice chest he keeps on the floorboard, or maybe a banana for each of the kids. There's a way better way to do the towing business, and a smart man could make a lot of money and make the world a better place. The key to getting rich is to find a need and fill it. That's one of the kazillion reasons I write about hurt and hope. The exact numbers do not matter. You get the idea.

This rant isn't random; I accidentally left the trunk popped open on the Vista Cruiser last night (random movie reference for the truly attentive) and it ran down the battery and this morning it wouldn't start. I had 8 more precious hours with the 3 Most Important People in the World, and I foolishly spent most of it in Exasperated Blog Editor mode and Exasperated Tow Truck consumer mode. Do you know how hard it is to get a tow truck to come out and jump a vehicle in a small town, or even a big town, and how harder still it is to get anyone in that industry to be pleasant or presentable? One guy pretty much said, with this much blunt indifference, "Two hours. Fifty bucks." Stephanie was holding Ethan (she's such an attentive, calm mother) and finally she looked up and said, "Dad, why don't you go down to NAPA and buy some jumper cables? Just borrow my car." After 30 years I finally get to borrow HER car, a nifty Honda with air conditioning, a sun roof and power everything. It scoots. (I didn't go faster than 60, Stephanie, I swear.) In Selah NAPA closes at three on Sundays so I frantically drove down the highway to Yakima in a blind search for an open auto parts store, a fruitless bumblebee route through a town I did not know, my head swiveling from side to side trying to sort the surrounding shops, increasingly frantic. The clock was ticking on my promised, discourteous, exorbitant, slovenly tow. Finally I had a brief moment of maturity and wisdom and decided to ask directions. A Mexican woman with three kids passed on foot. I remembered seeing a Kmart before from the freeway on my trips past town. A woman with three kids, she would know where Kmart was. She wasn't confident of her English. She asked one of her boys in Spanish and he pointed for me, behind me, East, ahead and turn left and then right, but his mother interrupted him in Spanish and they pointed me to an easier, clearer way, a freeway onramp just a couple of blocks ahead in the direction I was going. "Thank you so much." I said, "Have a good day with your family." They looked to be on their way to the park, 2 boys and a little girl in a pretty white dress, not much more than two. They all reminded me of my mother with the lot of us, so many Sundays ago. The Kmart proved just up the road, and I bought a box of jumper cables and a bag of trail mix, starved, but now with bread for the journey and no longer frantic. Stephanie called when I was in the store, the tow truck driver was there and fuming, threatening to charge double if he had to return. "Tell him we don't need him," I said. They'll probably run my plate and charge me Eighty, but I just wanted to be done with them. Business, life, and person-to-person daily living don't have to be that way, so mean and adversarial and difficult. Solve the problems. It takes far less energy than contributing to them.

In the blog we are working on a Unified Field Theory of Human Experience. We will cover a lot of ground. The point of the tow truck thing is that it took me so far from what I wanted to experience today, and we all, particularly me, could have done better. Sometimes life sends you a reminder that you are still a work in progress, a reminder too of how much I need my wife. She keeps me grounded. She always knows where the keys are, or how to find them, and never leaves the trunk open or the babies unkissed. Her priorities are generally flawless. We just have to learn how to get along without the fear, without letting hurt get in the way.

I didn't finish my story about the trip home. As I have said before the blog is a first draft of a work of uncompromising genius, direct from my heart to yours. It will be big and messy. You'll just have to keep up.

I don't have time to tell you about Daniel, the clerk at the Shell station in Parkrose, who like my friend Igor at Mall 205 Bally's greets a 1000 people a day and few of them notice the intelligence and awareness and courtesy he conveys in a simple greeting. They both greet a guest like a guest, like a person just walked through the door instead of a wallet and a transaction. It's an attitude, an attitude of grace and aliveness, and if enough of us catch the attitude like a fever the entire country will be transformed by the audacity of action. We'll move mountains. All the litter will be picked up, and much of it will never happen.

The moon was out and it was a glorious night, with the top of the Vista Cruiser open to the stars. On 104.1 "The Fish" I heard a soaring a capella version of "Amazing Grace" that provided the soundtrack for the entire weekend, emerging from the other side of so much writing and such a tremendous gift of love and experience that I feel made new by the glory of what God has given me. I called Roger around 9:30 from somewhere around Mt. Tabor. I thanked him for the incredible privilege of being his dad, how much I enjoyed all his humor and intelligence and heart and promise. I love that boy. He's starting a blog of his own; I'll send you the link. The chills are starting. The hound of heaven is afoot. I can't open my eyes wide enough. I can't type fast enough or write clearly enough, but I try a little every day. And thank you to you and Him for watching over me. It's time to say good night.