PNW Road Trip

It was an old familiar feeling. Waking up in a bed and wondering for a moment, “Where am I?” Back to my college and young adult days when I never could have imagined going to a hotel— too expensive, even at $40 a night back then. My travels around the country, whether hitchhiking, busing or driving, usually meant crashing at a friend’s house. Not only cheaper, but more convivial getting to visit and enjoying a taste of someone else’s home and life in a different place. 

 

All these years later, I’m doing it again. First, staying at my daughter Kerala’s house in Portland to be with the grandkids Zadie and Malik while she was off to a Conference in Florida. Before this trip, I had a series of reunions with old friends and colleagues and former students back in San Francisco. They included Tom Kearney, a 61-year-old SF School alum who I taught my first year in 1975, James Fox, an ex-neighbor whose daughter Gabby was born one month after mine and they began life as good friends, eight retired alum SFS teachers who still get together to hike every few months, and teaching guest classes for several Orff teachers who had trained with me. 

 

And so it continued in Portland, lunching with Jeff Thomas, a friend we shared a remarkable 3-months in a small village in Southern India with —in 1979! Coffee with Marc Bescond, an Orff teacher who just completed Level III with me. Brunch with Steve and Gabe, two college friends and going with them to sing Halloween songs at their grandkids' school— in an assembly in a gym with 300 kids! (Quite a challenge to make it quietly spooky!) Singing for my Malik’s 4^th grade class and his teacher, Brooke Murphy, who was my former student at SF School! Visiting my nephew Ian and singing my scary Skin and Bones song to his two kids Camille and Ezra, 6 and 10 yrs. old. (Two kids in a living room is quite different from 300 in a gym!)

 

Finished the Portland visit trick-or-treating —of course, in the rain!— and took off the next morning to head north towards Seattle—of course, in the rain. Stopped in Lacey, Washington to have lunch with my Level I Orff teacher Kathleen Poole. That Level I class was in 1983, we kept crossing paths until 1990 or so, when she moved from Carmel to Washington and stopped coming to Orff events to become a School Principal and later, Assistant Superindendent. We couldn’t figure out the last time we saw each other or even kept in touch, but it was probably at least 30 years ago. With the advent of Facebook, we’ve had some little exchanges in the past five years ago and finally, here we were sitting together at a table in a Thai restaurant. 

 

You know how it goes with some people. Within two minutes, you’re picking up where you left off three decades ago, crossing that immense gap of time with such ease and pleasure. It was a most delightful two hours and both of us, at 74 years old, vowed now to wait another 30 years before our next visit!

 

Then on to my nephew Eren and his wife’s Maya’s place in Des Moines—not Iowa, but Washington. The sun had come out, we entered the house and were stunned by the view out onto Puget Sound. He started a business marketing and selling salmon from Alaskan fisheries and she’s a newly-credentialed lawyer and they bought this remarkable place a year ago and did such impressive work on it, both contracted and done on their own with such impressive skills—especially for me, a certified non-handy-man. We hiked around the neighborhood a bit, enjoyed a lovely dinner and just chatted the evening away. And this is where I woke up this morning. 

 

We’ll be here for one more day and night and then on to another Orff friend’s house in Seattle, where we’ll connect with yet more SF School alums and other Orff folks I’ve trained. While treating ourselves to tourism in Seattle, a place we haven’t been in decades. Such riches combining re-connection with friends, family and colleagues with wandering around a new town or city.

 

PS There is a whole other list of people I would have enjoyed seeing in both Portland and Seattle and in points in-between, but it was just too much for this particular trip. One of them asked me where I was going to be in PNW and overwhelmed by our culture of initials, I had to ask what that meant. Now I know—Pacific Northwest.