You can get there from here ... and back again
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- September 21, 2024
- 369
You wouldn’t think that the sight of a single, solitary seagull silhouetted against a late-summer September sky would send my spirits soaring, but that’s precisely what happened a week or so ago.
We had made the two-hour drive to the Lake Erie shoreline for a picnic with a longtime friend of ours who had served as my wife’s maid of honor at our wedding on the beach at Kitty Hawk in 2007.
She’s endured a series of serious medical challenges recently but has done her best to retain the spark of energy that was always central to her personality since the early ‘80s when I met her.
My wife has known her even longer, and the bond they’ve forged over the decades remains intact; in fact, it was she who suggested a phone call, back in fall 1987, that resulted in our first date.
So you could say, without fear of contradiction, that she brought us together, something for which I will always be extremely grateful.
When we moved from our Ohio home and left everything and everyone we knew and loved behind 24 years ago, we stepped off a cliff with no idea how things would go, believing only that we’d face an uncertain future together, secure in the belief that whatever awaited us in North Carolina, we’d cling fiercely to each other.
We even adopted a theme song for our adventure, a tune titled “The Way,” recorded by a relatively unknown band called Fastball. The chorus, which we sang while on the journey, went like this:
“Anyone could see the road
That they walk on is paved in gold
It’s always summer
They’ll never get cold
They’ll never get hungry
They’ll never get old and gray.”
I remember the feeling I had when the moving truck, which had transported all our worldly possessions from our hometown, disappeared around the corner that Carolina afternoon, leaving us behind, which made it all seem so much more real than it had been.
All of a sudden, in the failing October sunlight, I understood I had to grow up fast, that I was an adult, a thought that scared me.
No longer surrounded by friends and within easy reach of my family, 770 miles away from anyone who knew me, my memories growing more distant by the minute, I made up my mind.
“If we can make a stand,” I told the woman who was going to rely on me more than ever, “hang in there for five years, we’ll have done something pretty great. We’re not heading back until then.”
And she agreed.
Of course, we had no way of knowing then that it’d be nearly 25 years before we got the urge for leaving, having enjoyed an endless summer from our mid-40s until we were staring straight at 70.
My wife built a reputable career as a licensed practical nurse, excelling whether in a nursing home setting or as part of a team that served patients in a more public arena, always becoming a valued member of the medical care operation.
For my part, small-town journalism continued to be an endangered species, though I hung on as long as I could before my job was, in the parlance of the doomed, outsourced. Faced with a 100-mile-a-day commute in a 1991 Honda Civic with 180,000 miles on it, I decided to take some time off before trying to start a new career.
I had no inkling that four years would pass before that happened.
You’re probably wondering how I spent all those empty days and nights, how I managed to get by after my unemployment benefits dried up, how I made sure I was the best husband I could be.
The short answer is I traveled around the country visiting friends, and when I wasn’t doing that, I could usually be found on the beach, a cooler on one side of my chair, a boom box on the other.
Oh, I still wrote a good deal and was always reading something, but a lot of my time was spent staring at the endless expanse of ocean laid out in front of me, a swirling, sometimes savage reminder of how so much of life remained unseen and lethal.
Whenever friends or family would visit, I made a point of explaining the dangers of the Atlantic, emphasizing the importance of remaining vigilant, of understanding that we were interlopers.
“This is not our world,” I would say by way of introducing a spiel I had pretty much memorized. “The ocean doesn’t care if you live or if you die. If that sounds too dramatic, understand that it takes only 90 seconds for a person to drown. No help is coming.”
Between the rip currents and the undertow, rogue waves and jellyfish stings, violent storms that appeared out of the blue, lightning, winds that changed direction on a whim, and, of course, cramps, spasms, heart attacks and other failures of the flesh, I began to wonder why we have always been drawn to the water.
Maybe, I thought, it’s seagulls. Despite their derisive nickname — “rats with wings” — and in spite of their ubiquitous presence, I’ve always found them to be vigilant sentries, a welcoming committee.
So when I saw one — and only one — the other day as my wife laid out a tasty picnic spread beneath an azure sky, I felt at home again.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on his Facebook page, where an endless summer is just a state of mind.