Introduction

PREFACE

In June, 1991, my wife, Cathy, and I and our four children, Robert, Mara, Jeffrey and Thomas (ages 10 to 3), left our home in Las Vegas and moved to England for a year's sabbatical.  At the time I had worked at the same law firm since graduating from law school in 1975 and Cathy and I had lived in the same house for ten years.  Why were we doing it?  What would I do?  How many times were we asked! 

The first question seems rather stupid.  What 40-year old husband and father, if he could afford it, wouldn't take a year off of work to be with his young family?  My strong sense of the shortness of our lives, however, seemed to run counter to the more prevalent concern over security for the length of our lives.

In my mind, the real question was not, "Why?" but, "How?": how could I afford to take a year off--a question most people were too polite to ask.  In a nutshell, the answer is that our financial ship came in that year; and, having been educated by both my mother's mother and my father in the spirit of Horace (in my own mind the phrase was Andrew Marvell's), we seized the day, or, it might be said, we blew the wad.  I think of that, every now and then, as we suffer through our financial ups and downs.   If we had not gone off together on a lark, we might now have a nice little nest egg: a college fund, a swimming pool, the living room furniture, a savings account. 

But it wasn't a lark.  It was a dream and I don't regret it.  If I had to do it all again, there are, of course, things I would change; but we would still have gone.  Time will tell whether I'm right or not, but, when I think about what we did, it seems to me that spending that year together in England, as a family, traveling across Europe, being together every day, was more valuable to my children than a four year ticket to the private college of their choice.  I like to think of it as investing our money early in the children, rather than later.

Looking back, it seems to me that a sabbatical is more of a process than an event.  Dit it change me?  I think so, though the changes are subtle and may have come anyway.  The real questions take some time to answer.

            Las Vegas, Nevada

            December 6, 2003

1.         THE BEGINNING OF THE DREAM

Early 1971.  Westwood, California  When I was eight years old I lived in England for a year with my parents and five younger brothers and sisters.  I turned eight somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, on the rolling decks of the Greek Line's S.S. New York.  The event is memorialized in a picture of me, dressed in my Engineer Bill cap, blowing out my birthday cake.  We returned from England a year later with a new sister.  Before I knew it, we were back in Malibu Colony once again and things returned to normal.

The Buckley Children with their new sister, Hilary, at Greenfields, Surrey (1959)

I didn't give England much thought for a long time.  There were too many distractions: the beach, my friends, huge family reunions, the Dodgers, rock and roll.  In 1962 we moved to Pacific Palisades, closer to Santa Monica and my father's medical practice.  In 1968, my father had what he believed to be the opportunity of a lifetime and moved our family to Las Vegas, where he worked for awhile for Howard Hughes.  I stayed behind at UCLA. 

Our Backyard at 56 Malibu Colony (Taken from the beach.) 

It wasn't until I was in college that I came to appreciate the places of my childhood.  Introducing myself to a fellow student outside of English class one day, I heard myself say, "I grew up in Malibu Colony and spent a year in England when I was eight."  My new acquaintance was impressed, and it dawned on me that what I took for granted many would envy.  I had indeed been blessed with remarkable opportunities.  When I was a boy Malibu was just "the beach."  As a college student, no longer living there, I too knew Malibu as the place of the rich and famous; and, as I stood in the corridor in a building whose very existence was premised on the value of English literature, I began to view my year in Britain as an ideal year of history and natural beauty.  At some point as I concluded my college education I dreamed that I too should live in England, and do what my father had done with his family in 1958.