Do not misunderstand me: traveling to the United States to see the relatives, we were all looking forward to it; all the same, part of me felt the way Captain Willard must have felt as he journeyed into the North Vietnamese wilderness in search of Col. Kurtz.

I’m waiting for a mission – getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker. And every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.

We arrived in at Sea-Tac airport nine-ish at night, picked up the rental car and drove to my sister’s house. It surprised me, as it always does, how much traffic there now is in Seattle, even at that time of day.

Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. They brought it up to me like room service…It was a real choice mission – and when it was over, I never want another…

We stayed with her about 5 days. It’s a middle-class neighborhood near Greenlake, which means middle-class people as I knew them can’t afford it. Two forty-something Microsoft retirees live across the street raising their kid. Rock star Dave Matthews lives up the street. They have two gas fireplaces and eat a lot of takeout. It was nice to see them, to see my kids playing with her kids, to see my sister and her family doing well, the effort she puts into parenting. She’s also training for a triathlon so she went running with Alpha a few times. I only went running once, so I gained 10 pounds in America and Alpha didn’t.

Then we drove to Cannon Beach in Oregon. It was the nicest trip to the beach I’ve ever had, and several other relatives said the same thing. 14 of us stayed in 3 adjoining cabins on the beach. Alpha mentioned she’d never flown a kite and my brother went out and bought her 2 nylon kites. My brother and I built a large sand pyramid. As last year in Greece, this triggered an epidemic of ambitious sand castles along the beach. We had a barbecue, we walked to Haystack Rock and looked at the starfish, which Alpha likes. We rode these three-wheeled sand tricycles up and down the beach. The kids collected stinky shells that were forgotten in the cabins when we left. After two nights, we went to my parents’ place in the untracked wilds of SW Washington state.

I was going to the worst place in the world, and I didn’t even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable plugged straight into Kurtz. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz’s memory, any more than being back in Saigon was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story is really a confession, then so is mine.

They live on 40 acres of woods surrounded by rednecks. It’s a pretty place but they rarely wander through the woods anymore because many of the neighbors are logging their places so all the scary animals some to their property. My dad doesn’t go out in the pre-dawn to collect the newspaper anymore since a bear snorted at him. And he told my mother not to call him on the walkie-talkie she takes with her on her occasional walks around the place if a cougar attacks her, as he couldn’t stand to listen to it.

They used to have a 5-acre fish pond, but it dried up this summer due to hot weather and illegal dams upstream. You’d think the State would do something about the illegal dams but it doesn’t. Still, the wildlife was a joy for our girls. Deer frolic in the yard. Hummingbirds feed outside the dining room window, and chipmunks and squirrels. They have two cats, one of which (“Stripey”) used to catch the chipmunks when they’d eat at the birdfeeder, so my mom locks Stripey up during the day. Spooky is old and lazy, so she gets to go out during the day, but gets locked up at night so no scary animal eats her.

“Your mother has an interesting attitude towards nature,” my father told me one early morning as we sat at the kitchen table doing a crossword puzzle. Normally he does them himself in the mornings, but when I visit he tells me they’re “too hard today,” and for me to solve them.

“We moved some logs and uncovered a mouse nest. I caught a mouse under a bucket. She was fat, like she was pregnant, so I figure she was the mother. I didn’t have the heart to do anything to her myself so when I came in I told your mom about it. She went out and came back a few minutes later. ‘What about the mouse?’ I asked her. ‘It’s taking a dirt nap,’ she said.”

Because there’s a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes the Dark Side overcomes what Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature.’

I didn’t really talk much with my father. I’d wanted to talk to him, but I also knew it probably wouldn’t happen. He’s a little on the quiet side, and half-deaf as well, so even if you manage to draw him out it’s still hard to talk about anything deep and private if you have to shout while the rest of the family crowds around watching another DVD etc. We did our crossword puzzles, mostly.

We had a rental car so we could also get away at times, visiting people or shopping. Once we drove to Portland with my brother and his kids, taking all the kids out to Chinese food and an afternoon at OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. One day Beta and I went out and rented a Celtic harp. She played a few songs for my uncle and aunt, who we visited. Then we went back to my parents’ place and she played for my parents and her uncle and cousins. Afterwards she said she had enough and didn’t want to play anymore after that. Her cousin who is 7 wanted to perform too so she turned on her keyboard/synethesizer that plays pre-recorded music, but turned it off again after staring at it for a while, realizing she couldn’t really play anything herself. Later she drove her 4-wheeled child-sized recreational vehicle around the house (outside) while we all applauded. We even had to get Gamma out of bed so she could give her a ride.

The next day, a bunch of old uncles and aunts came over with food and mentioned they’d like to hear the harp. Beta had sensed this and retreated to her room beforehand. “I know you don’t want to play, but I’ll give you $10,” I told her. No answer, she just kept reading her Seventeen magazine.

“You’ll make a lot of sick old people very happy, Beta.”

For saying that I will probably burn in hell, at least if god is a 13-year-old girl. She went out and played, and a lot of sick old people were made happy. My father cried, which was no surprise as he had cried the day before. But my cynical aunt with leukemia cried! My bipolar aunt with, eh, something like Parkinsons cried! My crackpot uncle who’s still eccentric but getting a little forgetful and drives slow didn’t cry, I don’t think (Alpha told me who cried, because I didn’t look at anyone while Beta played, because if I had seen anyone cry, I would’ve cried too) but my mother! she of the dirt nap, cried. And hugged Alpha! (It was the first time Alpha felt accepted by her, after knowing me for, what, 22 years now).

So manipulating Beta into playing that day was a good thing, except for the rotting in hell part.

Then we did some other stuff, then we came home.

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That’s my dream, it’s my nightmare. Crawling, slipping along the edge of a straight razor and surviving…

Here’s Gamma and her cousin, who is currently going through his glamorous phase. He likes to wear tu-tu’s and feather boas when he builds his Battlebots. At three and one-half, he is also (like his 2-year-old sister) a huge fan of baseball in general and Ichiro in particular. He hit three over the fence while I was pitching to him one afternoon when his mother was gone.

Here’s one of my sister and me after the kids painted us.

See, Francis S. told me to “say Hi to America” when we went over, so I thought it would be cute to make a “Hi Francis!” sign and take pictures of all sorts of strangers holding it, like America saying “hi” back to Francis. I was especially looking forward to taking a picture of a wino with the sign, and those guys standing on freeway on-ramps who normally hold signs like “will work for food” or “single dad needs money for rent and medicine”. It soon dawned on me that this would be a lot of trouble, though, with things like model releases etc. so I only took these two before deciding to take a more normal vacation. Next time, Francis.

It was a good trip, and it got off to a good start. Vienna-New York, New York-Seattle with a three-hour layover at JFK, plenty of time to transfer, but not absurdly long either.

Security was mellow, except that in Vienna everyone had to take off their shoes to be x-rayed, then stand around in their socks afraid to make jokes like, “geeze imagine if that terrorist guy had hidden explosives in his shorts!” while waiting for their shoes to come out the other end of the machine.

Of course I was wearing Doc Martins. Lacelacelace.

The flight was good and uneventful, except for a little turbulence. Both girls were well-behaved. Well, we had to yell at Beta to remind her to wear her orthodontial retainer; she just got her braces off and is still getting the hang of that. Gamma was a little angel, coloring away, getting tangled up in her earphone-cords, eating her food. Doing very little sleeping.

Feeling awfully hot to the touch.

And coughing.

From Vienna to New York, I sat beside Beta. I was wearing an orange t-shirt. She had pre-ordered the vegetarian food, because the special meals (kosher, vegan, etc) are made fresh and usually served first. This particular meal included a nice salad with a balsamic vinegar dressing. Nearly black in color.

So I offered to open it for her – you know, the little translucent plastic cup sealed with the aluminum thing on top. So she wouldn’t, you know, squirt herself or spill a little if we hit turbulence or something. She’s only a kid after all.

I carefully peeled back the aluminum foil seal. This turned out to be this high-tech bi-material seal, aluminum and plastic. I peeled it back so carefully only the aluminum came off, and it was still tightly sealed with the plastic layer. So I carefully poked a little hole in that, rather than peel that back, because if totally peeled back I could, you know, spill it or something – remember, airplane, close quarters, knees and elbows everywhere – so I poked a little hole to sort of squirt it onto Beta’s salad.

I poked the hole clear through, but nothing came out when I tried to pour, nor when I gave it a little squeeze. I turned it so it was completely horizontal and tried again, but only a couple drops came out. Apparently a bit of herb was blocking the orifice, so I gave it a good squeeze to clear it and the container of black balsamic vinegar dressing emptied all over my t-shirt.

This got a good chuckle out of Beta and good sport that she is she promised not to tell anyone until we reached our final destination. I slipped a dark blue sweater over my t-shirt and no one was the wiser, except of course for my now balsamic smell.

The airplane was cool, of course, but it was a warm July afternoon when we arrived in New York and Alpha kept asking me didn’t I want to take off the sweater? I’d wipe the sweat off my forehead and say, No, no I’m fine and Beta would chuckle.

New York, New York. My kinda town. Vibrant and assertive. And fucking hot. Great place. We stood around on the curb in front of terminal 7 for a while waiting for the free bus to other terminals. We finally asked a guy where the free bus to other terminals boarded, and he just pointed to a sign “Boarding for Free Bus to Other Terminals” like he must do 100 times a day. Stupid tourists.

American politeness is a funny thing. Everyone was all “sir” and “ma’am”. You forget about that when you go away. And friendly. Friendly people, Americans, in certain situations.

We had to claim our luggage in New York, go through customs and re-check it. Feh. We were glad we hadn’t brought along Beta’s harp in its bulky flight case. That would’ve been a headache.

New York-Seattle I sat next to Gamma. Who was getting hotter, coughing and finally told me she had to puke. By that time I had the barf-bag ready anyway because I’m, like, psychic! But it was just a false alarm, just, I dunno, barely anything came out. So I put it back in the seat pocket. Later it occurred to me that airlines probably don’t replace the barf bags each flight if they look intact. So like if you were sitting in seat 18A on a United New York-Seattle flight and found something small in your barf bag? Sorry!

Then we arrived in Seattle, picked up our rental car (Ford Taurus) and drove to my sister’s house.

[to be continued...]

Alpha: You as tired as me?
Miguel: I read Gamma a story and fell asleep apparently because I woke up when the book dropped to the floor.
Gamma: And I drew on your feet when you were asleep.
Miguel: What?
Gamma: Heh heh.
Miguel: [examines decorated feet] Hrm.

Feral Living second most humorous blog in July. I’ll have to go on Vacation more often.

• “Aunt Elisabeth,” the woman who runs the daycare place is roughly our age, rides a motorcycle, has a tattoo, is still in good shape, has a fairly dark tan and is wearing a short white dress.

• And a white bra, and white thong.
• Gamma is a fish of some sort, with blue hair and glitter. No, she tells me, she’s water.
• Some father is looking Beta over way too closely, and for way too long. I resist, barely, the urge to stick his head in a mop bucket and step on the pedal a few times.
• My potato salad went extremely fast. In part because it is just so damn good, in part because Gamma was flogging it to all her friends.
• “Aunt Elisabeth” is still wearing that thong.
• That pervert is still ogling my beautiful 13-year-old daughter. Seriously, where’s the mop bucket? Oh, here comes his wife…
• Gamma’s daycare person, Gabi, divulges to Beta and me where the good desserts are hidden. While everyone else is sitting outside in the hot sun, we sneak inside the house and gorge on stolen desserts.
• I go back outside and discover that, if I only relax and ask a few questions (THANKS FRANCIS), I can make conversation. At one point a mother praises the potato salad. Alpha tells her I made it. She says, “Oh, you can cook!” and I just barely keep from saying, “Yeah, and I can fuck, too.” Later I regret not having said it.
• Aunt Thong walks by again.
• People start drifting out. Gamma is burying some boy in the sand. It will be up to me to talk her into leaving, Alpha says. Gamma, like the rest of us, is usually the last to leave a party.
• I use the America card. I say, in two minutes we are leaving, because you have to tank up on sleep for our trip to see the relatives.
• To my great surprise, when I come back in two minutes, she does not even protest! She goes along with us without incident.
• It turns out to be harder to get Alpha to leave.
• Beta beats up on me for a while, because this is how we show our affection sometimes. I beat up on her a little too.
• We make it home with no tears, although Gamma makes everything blue and glittery.

Clothespins for the Revolution