4. WAR COMES; THE LAST LEG: We Are Going.

April 5.  Friday.  High clouds, cool mornings and nights, hot days, warm evenings.  Our room upstairs at home is hot at night.

I awoke at five this morning into the cool, calm air.  This is a wonderful time, when the mornings are delicious and very long, for the sun arises early; at five it was quite light.  (We lose an hour this weekend as we convert to DST.)  The birds in the morning are absolutely raucous.  They seem to take pleasure in just chirping.  It must be the sparrows and the finches, but occasionally off in the background I can hear the subtle cry of the mourning dove. At five a.m., I heard a mockingbird off in the distance.  The other day at lunch there was a mockingbird quite close to us, and I was startled by the strength of its voice.  I believe it would almost hurt my ears if I were right next to it when it sang.  There is a vivid, uncanny presence close up to that song, which changes so easily from one melody to another.

The thousands of details of our trip seem to have resolved themselves into one large detail: MONEY!

With taxes coming up, the reality of that detail is starting to become pressing.  I know we will make it through all of this somehow.  This plan is too much a part of my life for it not to work out.  I'm not big on aggressive plans, either; seems I wait until the last minute then panic and stress out as I wait out the crisis, but things do work out.  Just yesterday I received a call from Tom Moore, the fellow from whom we rented Folly Farms in Tetbury in the Cotswolds.  He called to say the receipt was in and would we need anything else, then called back in a little while to say that he and his wife were going to be in England in July and that perhaps we could meet the duke and the duchess (related to Queen Mary or Princess Mary or something of the sort).  It may all be a crock, but we certainly have met at least one interesting person, and this is not to mention Jacqueline Rolls-Berardi at British Homes - London Flats, Alfred at the car agency and so on.  If nothing else, our year abroad will open our eyes wider to the world around us and the people with whom we share that world.

April 8.  Monday.  Today I write for therapy!  The office is the real world and back here from a weekend at home, I feel the pressures closing in on me, financial that is.

A case study:  I have not worried at all about paying taxes this year, thinking I could always borrow the money on the strength of the PR case.  Now, as the deadline for filing approaches, I begin to see myself more objectively, even pessimistically, trying to borrow money from the bank, and having no means to repay, for I am embarked on a year of profligate spending.  Surely they will reject me, won't they?

I need to write and relieve some of the pressures.  I have done about all I can do regarding the trip.  The only things that remain open are the financial burdens: tuition, automobile, airplane tickets, rental deposits, etc.  Today I have to write a check for our Las Vegas home (management fee) and send in applications for a school that will cost over $15,000 per year if we get in!  In the midst of this we are packing and dreaming of the good life we will have, a dream, no doubt, that could use some scaling back down!

 I hope and basically know everything will turn out OK.  I will not believe this is the first time they won't.  I have nothing really at risk right now.  I am a lawyer on a one year leave.  It will be next year, if I am ready, that I take a bigger risk for the simpler life.  Now it is just a question of money, not a risk, though it is the future.  Then again our trip is also the future, for it is a way of life and viewpoint for the children for all of their lives.  It may not make them better persons, but it will help them to understand this world better.

At worst, we would go live in the east or Seattle or some place different for a year.  I know, however, this trip will come to be.  It's just that sometimes I start hoping too specifically, as in, I just hope the PR money comes in tomorrow, or something like that, instead of my more usual and, I think, preferable style of simply hoping for the best (and hoping that the best includes PR!).  It sounds like sort of a complicated game, but I think it is more than that, for it is a reliance on the gift of another (His Bounty) rather than a knowledge and belief in one's own abilities.

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One of the things I dreamt about last night was that someone threw or dropped my pen and broke off the tip.  It had to be sent back to the shop for repairs.  I couldn't afford it.

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I remember, when Cathy and I arrived in London in 1981 with Tara and Pasqual, seeing the sign: LONDON.  LON DON said it all.  It was hard to believe we were really there.  The last two times I went back, once with Cathy and once with Robert, London seemed very real and, to some degree, sort of ordinary.  I wonder whether the difference was that in 1981 I had changed very much since my last visit to London in 1967.  In 1967 I had been a teenager in the control of my parents (father) and in 1981 I was on my own, responsible for myself.  Although, by 1987 I was now a parent, the gap from 31 to 36 was nowhere near as great as the chasm between 17 and 31.  

Now we will go back again.  Will it be/feel different or just like last time?  It should feel a little different, because this time, like 1967, I am with all my family, only now I have come full circle and I lead a family, rather than follow the lead of my father.  However it comes out, it does all seem that I am operating in a dream world right now.  When will reality come crashing down on me, and will it crash or will it come down gently?

April 9.  Sunny, clear, slight breeze.  Cathy awoke at two a.m. to call St. John's College School in Cambridge, which sounds even better than Catholic Waterside (and at half the price!).  St. John's, I read, was originally formed by St. John's College in Cambridge as a school for the young choristers who sang at the college chapel services.  Over the years the school expanded to take in students other than the choristers.

While Cathy was calling Cambridge I was dreaming about Moses and the Jews wandering around the desert for forty years.  The idea I took from this was that I must simply trust more in God, be like the child who knows his father will take care of everything.  As God lead the Jews to the promised land, taking care of them, the people sometimes forgot about God.  When problems arose, the Jews either blamed God or turned to Him for relief.  I can see the same pattern in my own life, for it is only for when problems arise that I turn to God, in the fear that He has forgotten me.  The trick is to remain faithful in ordinary times, when it is harder to remember who it is that provides for us.

It is strange that our directions have seemed to lead us to Cambridge.  Roy Smith a few years ago mentioned Cambridge, then Jacqueline sort of steered us that way.  I understand that the spies (Philby, Burgess, et al.) (my curiosity) were from Cambridge.  Now the school.  Sounds intriguing!

If there is any truth to that old expression about the sins of the father being visited upon the sons, then it makes sense that the virtue of the father must be visited upon the sons.  If that is or may be the case, then I am carrying around within me a virtue that has been built up over many, many years by my ancestors.  Not only should I be thankful, but I am carrying a precious legacy to cherish and pass on to my children.

Looking for cemeteries in Los Angeles in preparation for my upcoming visit.  Thinking how much my grandparents, Dad and Mer, seemed at home in Pasadena.  I am sad I don't feel the same way here!  Is there anywhere I would feel at home?!

6:45 p.m.  The map I received today of the Saffron Walden area includes Cambridge.  On the front cover is a picture of St. John's.  Coincidentally today was the day I mailed off our request for admission for the children to St. John's College School.

April 11.  Thursday night, Ritz Carlton, Marina del Rey, Los Angeles.  I forgot how the LA sky is diffused, the barest hint of stars.  Today was remarkably clear.  Looking at the downtown high rises pointing up, alone, over the hills from West Covina, one of the more interesting LA views I've seen.  Then stopped by graves of Mer, Dad, Uncle Harry and Aunt Helen.  I began my visit by asking myself what I was doing there.

April 12.  To Holy Cross to see graves of my father's parents, Ed and Ruth (Gogo) Buckley.  

April 17.  Wednesday morning.  Clear, windy, cold.

Arrived at 6:30 or so at the office, talked myself out of calling British Customs again about the car.  Read the instructions, and figure the worst case is that we just pay duty.  Thought last night about whether I should cancel the AM-FM radio cassette and order a better one independently, but just more hassles, better to start with the basics and go from there.  (How is it that I can spend any time thinking about that?)

 Seems every day I should be doing something for our trip.  The hardest are those with nothing to do but wait, trying to keep busy, but with the hope that something interesting, something helpful and revealing will come in the mail or with the UPS, and if not at the office, then waiting for me at home with the house mail.  I despise my attitude, for it means that I allow time to pass by, speculating, waiting for something to happen, instead of enjoying each moment allotted to my life.

April 19.  Friday morning.  High clouds, getting smoggy, cool morning, but probably in the 80's today.

We received the package from St. John's College School, Cambridge.  Naturally we had assumed our tuition would fall into the lower numbers, but it turned out to be the high ones.  It was exciting to hear about St. John's and imagine the associated connections with Cambridge.  We also received a nice letter from the registrar, and then, imagine my disappointment, my collision with reality, when I saw the tuition, £1300 for Robert and it looks like £1220 for Mara and Jeffrey, is per term!.  That's £3,740 per term and there are three terms in a school year!

I have no doubt the money is worth it, and the children will get a wonderful education, but that's like buying a new car every year!  The money is almost the same as the house payment.  Will we like driving the 30 mile round trip to Cambridge twice a day?  We need to look into the local school and see what we can find out.

I will have greater pressure on me to write something which I can make some money on.  That is good, but I'm not sure that pressure to come up with a commercial success is a good idea.  Sometime ago I wrote that I wanted to write a book for the greater glory of God.  I would rather pursue this theme.

This week I've brought in irises to the office.  Our front yard has tens of blossoms, the full bearded kind.  The flower is so wonderful, a magnificent statement of colored reality and form, with its magnificent curves and delicate, jagged edges.  The nearest thing I can think of to compare it to is a potato chip, but of course the iris is soft, and that is the amazing thing.  The flower stands in a complex form of attention until it withers.  When it no longer has the ability to live (though they have lasted two or three days in the office), the whole structure collapses in on itself, into a little ball of wilted flower, a soft, cushiony ball.  I can almost imagine the strength and power it took to live, to keep the complex form of its flower until the end, when it gave up the ghost and folded, like an arm wrestler who pushes and pushes and holds off the other fellow, until finally all strength is gone and his forearm just keels over; you wonder why the victory was so hard, when the ending seemed so easy.  The end, however, is easily understood as total exhaustion after the demonstration of the exertion of the will to withstand defeat  . . .  And saying this he removed the spent iris, out of sight of its still glorious brethren, and threw it away, lest anyone see the ugliness of its death.

Many people say to us, "How exciting!" when we tell them of our plans; and it really is exciting.  But our reality is the stress and worry of the financial burden and the amount of work remaining to be done.  This real reality of our trip is far removed from the view from outside!

April 23.  Cool to cold, sunny, no clouds.  People speak of this being the coldest April in memory.

Jacqueline from British Homes called.  Dodds is with the foreign service and is off to Pakistan for three years.  The house is definitely available to us for the year.  Pictures out today, but the Dodds' estate agent, Harvey, is lollygagging so Jacqueline will put together the lease herself.

April 24.  Wednesday. 43 days.  There is still a lot to do, but I am happy we will be leaving only after traveling in the U.S.  It gives some extra time to smooth over any problems in the office before we head overseas. 

April 29.  Monday.  When I think of spring in Las Vegas, I never want to come back.  It is so maddening to live in a place where the outdoors are so attractive, and to have to make a judgment about whether to enjoy the outside and pay the price or to simply play it safe and stay inside.  I'm usually half and half, sometimes in, sometimes out.  At home, with the door opening and closing it really makes no difference.  My problem really must be the olives (which I contemptuously chew and swallow now, whenever I find them on my plate, in an effort to conquer my enemy).  Between spring and the oven in summer, I could very easily abandon Las Vegas and simply consider my stay here as experiment in corporate life for 16 years, during which time I was able to increase my net worth from zero to a six figure number (on paper at least) and to learn a few things about the real world.

Had an argument with Cathy the other night.  Cathy was worried: maybe we shouldn't go to Europe, we don't have the money, etc.  I said, "We are going," several times.  I don't think I've ever heard myself speak in such a decided way and Cathy remarked on Saturday night (when we had a nice dinner for two at a Thai restaurant in Commercial Center) that all along I have been decided, that Fran told her a year ago, she had better have her bag packed.  That remark surprised me.  Looking back, I think it was a combination, in mid-90, of finishing my book and the apartments selling that gave me the feeling of certainty that this trip would happen.

I have not thought a lot about how it will feel to actually stop practicing law.  The work day ethic is too strong, the training of 16 years of keeping track of my hours too inbred in me to let the thought of a year off really sink in.  It's beginning to creep up on me, however, little by little, as the house empties and the warehouse fills.  The sense of unburdening ourselves from our daily routines and work slowly makes its presence felt and I sense a slow bubbling excitement within me, a sense that there is not much more to this, that if I work hard and diligently over the next 38 days, the end will rapidly be here. 

April 30.  Tuesday.  Sunny, no clouds.  85 - 90 today.  Cooler and winds by Wednesday.

Wrote out a list of things to do yesterday at the little league game .  It added up!  Cathy has now realized that we are leaving very soon and now has "1,000,000" things on her mind.  She has turned slightly scatterbrained.

The beat goes on.

Cathy now wants a professional mover to pack her.  I said, no way!  Not after I have spent three months packing does she get away so lightly!  Even if we had the money, procrastinators are not supposed to benefit from their procrastination!

Thinking this morning as I drove to work:  How does God fit into this world, which His people have made, a world which, almost by virtue of its very existence, tends to exclude Him?  Unless God is somehow in all the business we go about doing, which seems hardly possible in view of Jesus' occupation and His statements about wealth, we exist in a world diametrically opposed to Jesus.  I have asked myself whether it is right, from a true Christian perspective, to go live in England for a year.  I'm not sure that I have a complete answer on this, other than that I have a feeling that it is good that I take a year off of work as a real estate lawyer to be with my family, to try and capture what it is that the Lord asks of me in this life. 

My secret hope, perhaps not so secret after all, is that I never come back to Las Vegas.  One of my secret fears is that I have lived underneath and with my parents and their sense of family for all my life; even those times away from them I depended on them and I do not know how I will/would do without them.

May 6.  Monday. High clouds, warming.  75 - 80 today.  Calm.  Book club is over!  We leave in one month.  The house is rented, the cars are not.  I have thought of this day a lot, focusing on book club as about the last thing we had to do at home.  Still the questions: "What are you going to do over there?" and others that I can't remember now.

Last night I had a dream of being on a big boat.  The boat docked, then "kids" (teenagers, college frat types, etc.) took it out again and made a point of going into the ocean where there were now huge swells, and the boat was going under the swells.  It was scary.  I was inside the boat, unable to get off (I was down below relieving myself when the boat pulled out again).  I awoke, got up and went to the bathroom.

My next dream took place around San Diego, and towards the end I was in a speed boat on the bay, and whoever was driving (it could have been me) remarked that this was the largest body of smooth water in the world.

How odd for two dreams to have similar settings, yet opposite themes: huge swells vs. calm waters!

May 7.  Tuesday.  At the office at 6 a.m.  I couldn't sleep at 4:30 and at 5 I finally got up and came downtown.  I kept going over lists in my head of things to do before we leave.  Seems that if I make lists I can control my worries.

May 8.  Wednesday.  Decided the other night that I am beginning to think of myself as a high school senior who's been admitted to college.  I don't really care about finals, but I have to pay attention enough to be able to walk my way through them, blindfolded, as it were.