Stealing Home [#40]

I’ve been asked a lot of the same questions over the years:

What are you eating?

Why are you awake?

How are you already asleep?

But, invariably, the one that’s asked the most is: “Where’s home?” This one trips me up — every time. Always has.

As a kid, “home” was technically Olympia, Washington, but I always wanted it to be someplace else — somewhere more exciting, more glamorous; somewhere distinctly less-Olympia.

As such, I mostly responded with qualified answers like, “Well, my house is in Olympia, but I go to school in Tacoma.” Or, “Well, I live in Olympia, but I was born in Tucson.”

Ridiculous.

As an adult, I came to own my OlyWa roots but still my mitigations grew longer (and more absurd). Before we moved aboard Ruby Vi, my answer had stretched to something like:

I'm originally from Olympia, but I went to high school in Tacoma and college in Bellingham and then spent a few years in Colorado, where Wyatt was born, before we moved back to Olympia, where Hudson was born, and then eventually to Park City.

I mean — seriously…

In my (albeit weak) defense, narrowing down “home” to simply the town where I grew up — or even my current street address — just never seemed to do the word justice.

If I thought “Where’s home?” was tough to answer back when we actually lived in a bonafide home, traveling the world and living full-time on a sailboat has made this challenge next-level impossible. Like, giving-up-carbs-at-Christmas hard or not-spilling-beer-during-ultimate-bocce-on-the-beach hard or wearing-clothes-that-aren’t-stretchy hard.

This, for the record, suits me in zero ways, what with my I-Don't-Really-Do-Difficult life mantra and all.

But, the majority of people we get to chatting with nowadays are optimistic enough about humanity that they don’t immediately assume my incompetencies extend as far as participating in casual dockside Q & A. As such, it doesn’t take more than a minute of chitchat before they hurl a loaded “Where’s home?” at me like a 1990s Randy Johnson slider.

Like most who faced The Big Unit, I usually swing and miss.

Until recently, when something fantastic happened.

I don’t know if it arrived in the form of his 102mph fastball, or a split-finger change-up, or maybe that long and lanky southpaw was still tossing me his lethal breaking slider…*

— whatever the pitch, entirely by mistake, I connected.

*One might assume that what I picked up as child from listening to my dad and sister obsess relentlessly over the Seattle Mariners (and baseball in general) -- let alone watching my sister become the most decorated high school pitcher in the state of Washington's fastpitch history -- would be enough for me to decipher pitches with pinpoint accuracy; but it isn't, so I can't... 

In late-April, Ruby Vi’s crew took turns arriving back to Park City for the first time in over two years. Our trips were fast and furious — long weekends with barely enough time for the COVID vaccines and visits with the tiny handful of friends we’d planned to squeeze in. But every single second was glorious and we gobbled up each morsel of that feast like we’d never eaten before and would never eat again.

Our souls binged on old friends and old haunts.

Then, just days after returning to Ruby Vi, some of our favorite Park City peeps came to visit us. More feasting ensued. Between tacos and tequila, boogie boards and bocce, sunshine and swimsuits, it became clear that our pandemic-induced 15-month friends-and-family-freeze was finally starting to thaw.

And the rad kept rolling.

On May 27th, the boys and I landed at LAX to begin 11 of the most extraordinary days and nights reuniting with our SoCal family.

Simultaneously, a trio of John’s best college buddies arrived in Puerto Vallarta to help him hold down the Ruby Vi fort.

I could write novel about the absolute magic of seeing my mom and sister again after 26 long months apart. And, I could spend three lifetimes talking in circles about how my heart exploded every time my nephew called me “My Moo.”

But that’s a story for another bookshelf and a monologue for a different stage.

You might be wondering how these moments, enchanting though they may be, have anything to do with me claiming victory over 90-some miles per hour of Randy Johnson heat.

Well, at some point during our hours spent traveling in and out of PVR and SLC and LAX — somewhere between visits to and from our very favorite humans and back to Ruby Vi — “Where’s home?” became a pitch I could hit.

My mom-heart melted as I watched Wyatt and Hudson disappear with some of their oldest and closest friends like they hadn’t missed a beat. My own happiness meter shot off the charts when I hugged my people, shared in their family dinners, giggled like old times over coffees. In those moments, I knew our trip to Park City was a trip home.

When dear friends joined us here at Paradise Village, as we lingered in Ruby Vi’s galley and reminisced about old times — laughing so hard, our faces hurt — I knew I was home.

Weeks later, under a Southern California sky, I tossed my favorite toddler “all the way up,” and watched his swim lessons, and played with him at the park, in the yard, at the zoo, in the “blue pool.” For a week and a half, I shared every waking moment with my mom and sister — and I was home.

As a recovering candy addict, I can assure you with self-proclaimed authority that the only thing sweeter than a taste of home is many tastes of many homes.

Now I’m not saying in the two months since our soul-binge began that I’ve earned a permanent spot in the Idle Conversation Majors, but I think I might finally be able to hold my own inside the batter’s box.

Predictably, the next time the league sends its ace to the mound to hurl a “Where’s home?” doozy at me, there’s not even a chance I’ll knock it out of the park. But, after two months of inadvertent batting practice, I think I’m ready to at least line drive my way onto first.

What I’ve come to accept of late is that over the years I’ve marched, slid, walked, dived, crawled, been carried, and now sailed my way across a lot of different home plates in a lot of different fields.

As we continue to play in new ballparks and return to the old ones, I hope I’ll spend less time trying to figure out which one I’m standing in before swinging away at that first pitch. After all, every park has a home plate and in each of them — if I’m paying attention — I bet I’ll catch glimpses of my father coaching third…

I’ve barely made it the first 90 feet when I see him across the diamond — his left arm spinning in exaggerated counterclockwise circles, his right pointing straight to the plate.

And, as I hear him holler, “Keep going!” with zealous enthusiasm, I realize it really isn’t the stadium that matters; what matters most is that I can round the bases till I steal my way home in any of them.