The last days

Time has been travelling at warp speed around here.  Last week was spent packing up. We don’t actually have to pack the boxes, which should make things easy, you would think, but we have our share of labor to do getting ready for the packers to do their thing: clean out closets, empty pencil boxes, sort out batteries, take down pictures, disassemble bunk beds. Lots of little jobs get compounded.

On the one hand, I love this opportunity to shed extra junk.  Goodbye, puzzles no one solves. Goodbye, pack and play with a mouse hole. Goodbye, papers from 2007.  But sifting through things takes longer than it should with me, because I’m faced with making decisions like what to do about a t-shirt with a bleach spot that I would still wear, even though I have plenty of other choices, but would anyone else? Give it away or throw it away? How about those cleats with mud stains that I can’t scrub away? They don’t fit my kid anymore, but does anyone else want cleats with a brownish Nike swoosh?  Glass jars? Old puzzles? Old videos? Cassette tapes?

Once again I am confronted with the amount of junk we own, and the waste of what gets thrown away.  Consumer culture at its finest.  We perhaps did better at fighting the accumulation of new stuff for the two years we have lived here because we don’t have Walmart and Target, but the Legos must breed in the dark closet, the flipflops clone themselves, and t-shirts from 5Ks sneak their way in the door, along with prizes from goodie bags, craft supplies, and a fair share of books.  

But progress was made: I’ve got a nice pile of stuff to take away to the Catholic Social Services garage sale. Found homes for the fish, guinea pigs, and rabbit. Sold the big car, which makes me both want to sing and sigh because I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with it. I’ll being sighing even more when we have to sign over our life’s blood for a newer vehicle with less mileage. We had a hard time selling our 10yr old vehicle with almost 187K on it, even here, where “Guam bombs” are perfectly acceptable modes of transportation.  The mileage scared quite a few buyers. The car was still going strong. Part of me wishes we were bringing it back to drive another 10 years, even if we have to buy a new transmission.  But the other part of me doesn’t want to be sitting in a broken down vehicle in the middle of New Mexico on a hot, dry road trip with six kids. Once we bought a mini-van on our 4^th anniversary. Looks like we’ll be buying a new suburban for our 17^th.

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The pack-out went reasonably well, although I scared the girls and a neighbor on the first day, when I lost my cool with the packing team. They started taking apart the kitchen table the first thing. And they stacked the oriental rugs on top of the upholstered chairs. I was already frustrated because they showed up 4 hours late and then took an hour and a half lunch break. I tried not to show my extreme frustration, but my daughter said my face looked ugly and she wanted to hide. And my neighbor said the same thing when he came by the next day to see if I was okay.  But after the initial blow up, I settled down, and they settled down, and they seemed to be careful packaging everything up for its transcontinental voyage.  We’ll find out in 45-60 days.

So in the meantime, we’ve been enjoying the simplicity of only having one set of dishware for the family. One big pot, one big skillet, one big bowl.  Rinse, reuse.  We have the loaner furniture again that we had at the beginning of our stay here, which makes our house look like a Spartan hotel, easy to clean, plenty of open space to run around, plenty of Scotchguard on the fabric.

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We’ve also been trying to see as much as we can.  We got two hikes in this weekend – one to a waterfall and one to a cave.  Beautiful. Fascinating. I love caves, especially when you can actually explore them and not just follow a roped-off path behind a guide. I love jumping off waterfalls, although I don’t always love watching my kids jump off.

The paths to these places are sometimes hard to find, rarely marked – an occasional bit of pink string or plastic ribbon to mark a turn – which makes the hike that much more exciting. The kids aren’t always happy to go – they complain and whine as we pack up water bottles and slather on sunscreen – but once we hit the trail, their spirits rise and they chatter and make up stories and throw mudballs at each other.  It’s family time at its best.

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Other fun family time: Mother-daughter book club finally got underway last month. We’ve been meeting once a week – read A Wrinkle in Time for the first book, then the abridged version of Journey to the Center of the Earth, which reminded me why I don’t bother with abridged versions. Boring! They don’t even try to develop character.  Then we read Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby, which is a book about a deaf girl who makes friends with an old man who has a pet chimpanzee who can sign. The girl’s mother doesn’t want her to learn to sign because she’s afraid it makes the daughter look handicapped, and she doesn’t want people asking why the girl, Joey, is deaf (her father beat her). The book club girls loved this book. It’s a bit melodramatic, and I was a little uncomfortable with how much the girl stood up to her mother, but it was moving on a variety of levels. Prepubescent girls and their animal stories – I’m sure someone has someone written a thesis on this. I am happy my daughter has found friends who love books, and she’s found some books to love.  Although I’d rather have her loving the classics, I am glad that she’s finding interesting characters to identify with.

The other YA book I read because my daughter got it at the library was Circle of Secrets by Kimberly Griffiths Little. It’s set in Louisiana on a bayou. It, too, is a little melodramatic. It even has a ghost. And it kept me up to 1 am. The girl in this book, Shelby Jayne, is the daughter of a “traiteur” who leaves her and her father to go take care of her grandma, who lives on an island in the swamp.  Of course, swamp island living is somewhat romanticized in this story, although alligators are a constant threat.  Shelby has to go live with her mother when her father has to go overseas for work.  This book also has some dysfunctional family issues, but the family works it out in the end. And even though the mother is accused of being a witch, she makes it clear that when she prays over someone, it is God doing the healing, and not her.

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In addition, we’ve had a couple parties to go to which were enjoyable, Friday night track meets, which I love oh so much better than Friday night football games.  No one is going to get pounded on!  No complicated rules. Not nearly as much attitude. The competitors treat each other with respect, most of the time.  Some of the kids participated in a kids' triathlon.  We've done a little bit of math and language arts, but school is basically over for my home schooling girls, and the boys turn in their school work on Friday. I turned in my grades at the community college.  I was planning to write something about schooling this semester, but it may never happen, like many good intentions. Time is short, and I keep getting distracted by hanging out in the street, as we did last night, drinking a glass of wine with the neighbors while the kids played "rental shop" and "lost hut girls" on their bikes long after sunset. (ok, I admit, and looking at Craigslist and Facebook...)

1500m race - Oldest takes first

Shot put- second oldest doesn't place this time. Meets are held at the same place every
week - a resort in the central part of the island.

Kids triathlon - 1st girl in 5-8 yr old division

1st boy in 5-8 yr olds

Second girl in 9-12 yr olds

Mangrove crabs hiding for their lives.

I thought I flipped this, but too lazy to change. Here's a peril of island life:
MRSA. 4 of the 6 kids have had staph infections over the last month.

More kids tri - 3rd in 13-15 yr olds

Having fun at the middle school band concert doing hair.

Calamansi almost ready to eat!

Goodbye, hibiscus!

Goodbye, bananas! We ate one bunch that ripened already. These won't
be ripe before we move.

Goodbye, orchid!

Goodbye, Dustbunny! He went home with the movers. Hope he's not
dinner.

Packing up.

Loading the crates. Same number of crates we came with

Goodnight, mange tree! This image is not enhanced.

Fun in an empty house.

Hike to Lower Sigua Falls. "Tank farm."

Lower Sigua water fall

Look out below!

Cowabunga!

A little muddy from the rain on the climb back up.

These are boonie stomping shoes. Note girl who rinses shoes in puddles.

Mother's Day hike to Marbo caves.

Swimming in the cave pool. 

Snorkeling in the second cave.

Note the blow hole

Another orchid finally rebloomed

Rain over the harbor.

A complaint

I’ve been full of woe lately about moving. The reality of our transition is setting in. I've been putting off thinking about it, but the packers come in 2 weeks, and I need to clean closets. I know, I wasn’t all that excited about coming to Guam. I was reluctant to move so far from the mainland, I was afraid I'd feel trapped on a small island. And now here I am, with my fingers grasping the dirt trying to hold on to this place while being pulled away.

Driving home from our last soccer games Saturday, I was feeling tearful.  Our last games here. I’ve been impressed with how good the soccer program has been. These kids here are talented. They play on turf. Goodbye, soccer teams! Goodbye, fun flea market in the parking lot next to soccer! Thanks, coaches, for all the instruction! The kids will have to earn their place on a new team next fall.

It didn’t help that I had pulled out our old tapes to play in the car because we have to sell this car with the last remaining tape deck in our family.  I’ve always complained about our GMC. It’s a big, banged up gas guzzler. Duct tape holds a piece of trim to the door. Another piece of duct tape covers the button to open the top half of the back tail lift because it’s broken. Another piece of duct tape is taking the place of the piece of plastic that broke off the bottom part of the tail lift. It has 187,000 miles on it. But now I don’t want to get rid of it! For 10 years, it has been our faithful chariot. Even though it blends in here with all the other Guam bombs, while it probably would not pass inspection in California, and it probably is going to need something fixed soon, I don’t want to buy a new car. I looked briefly into our options. They are expensive, expensive and expensive, unless we want to buy the extended home school van, as my dad recommends. But my husband’s friend from high school was just killed in one that rolled over. Not a great safety record.

So we are going to have to buy a new car. And we are going to have to find a new house. We’re looking for a rental, along with everyone else moving to or within California, it seems. Not a lot of choices listed on the internet for four bedroom houses.  Conveniently, my husband had to attend some meetings and a class in the area where we are moving this week. In his limited free time, he is on reconnaissance for a house and schools. He has looked at a couple of places, one of which seemed like it would work, until the landlord decided to raise the rent $600 a month when he found out a family of 8 wanted to live in his precious house.  Is this discrimination? Or is it within his rights to charge more for more people? More wear and tear? Why not raise the security deposit? At any rate, I don’t want to have anything to do with this kind of landlord.

While el esposo is there, I’ve been cooking my brain looking at websites for available houses in our price range around the schools we’re interested in. If I just keep searching, perhaps in some dark corner of the internet I’ll find something. The six houses available all seem a little dated and have giant garages but tiny yards. Yet, despite the tiny yards, they come with gardeners to trim the manicured shrubbery, I guess. I don’t want a gardener. I have teenaged boys to mow the lawn, and I like planting and trimming things. Maybe I need to shift my priorities regarding schools and look further out beyond the suburbs, but then my husband’s commute time will extend. We’ve already been looking at places 30 mins from where he’ll be working. The base does have housing available that might fit our family, but the word is that the schools around the base are to be avoided.

And schools! What to do, what to do. Of course, the best schools are the ones that are in the area where the houses are too expensive. The county does have a school choice option that allows you to apply to attend a school out of your district, but do we want to spend hours commuting to school and school events?  There is a Catholic school that is potentially affordable, but is it worth the money? It’s hard to tell much about the personality of the schools from websites.  Academically, the public schools seem to be strong – and most anything is going to be a stronger school than the boys’ current school – but they are huge: 2500 kids. Do I throw the boys into the zoo and hope they find their way or pay through the nose for a smaller school?

Even though the DODEA schools here have not lived up to the rumor that DOD schools are good schools, the boys still like their school. They get to be big fish in a little pond. My oldest is excelling at track and in the classroom, and the second one got invited to do the model UN program in Korea as a freshman. Neither wants to leave, and I have the perception they are pretty safe, despite reports of kids coming to school stoned.  Since this is such a small community, I have eyes everywhere keeping track of things for me. Goodbye, extra eyes.

What else can I complain about? I’ll miss our Mayberry neighborhood, and the friends we’ve made here.  I’ll miss not having traffic jams. I’ll miss the warm water. I guess we’ll still have nice sunsets in California, but the water will be freezing, and there won’t be coral reefs everywhere. I’ll miss the running community here – where you can run 5k’s for $5, you recognize most of the faces at the starting line, and they start at 6 am so you still have all day Saturday to spend as you will. I can’t say I’ll miss red rice, but I will miss fresh mangoes. They are falling from the trees by the hundreds right now. I don’t really love the wild bananas, but I do love the soursop, which supposedly kills cancer cells. And even though I’m sure we’ll be able to find good sushi in California, it won’t be $10 for a container of sashimi that is big enough for a small party and you know it just came off the boat because the fisherman is right there.  I’ll miss my classes at the community college, I’ll miss the boonie stomps, I’ll miss the fiestas.  Goodbye, goodbye, all of this! Farewell, happy island dream life!

Back to consumerville. I don’t want to be neighbors with Barbie and Ken. I don’t want to drive everywhere, I don’t want to deal with Target and Walmart. I don’t want to go through all our stuff again. (Although I do like getting rid of things once the clutter is gone.)  Sigh.

My mom went to a grief workshop the other day.  She called to tell me that moving is also a source of grief and requires a process. So I guess I’m in the anger and denial process. I know this will pass, too.

After all our moves, I can honestly say that we have been happy everywhere we have lived. Each place we seem to love more than the last. I doubt this pattern will keep recurring, but. . . I hope that what is good about each duty station stays with me, forms me in such a way that I acquire the virtues of the place. From Guam let me take lessons about generosity from the people who share this beautiful island and their overflowing fiesta plates. Let me remember how we much we enjoyed the slower pace of life, the lack of planning ahead, the satisfaction with having what we have and not worrying about having the perfect thing.

Let me also remember how long it took us to feel at home here, how comparing this place to that place doesn’t increase overall contentment. I may love the illustrations of spring flowers in Tasha Tudor’s books, but I also love the silhouettes of palm trees and the brilliance of hibiscus outside my door.

Even before reading The Geography of Bliss, I knew that there is no one place that has cornered the market on happiness. When I think about the places I have loved, where I was happy, or thought I could be happy, they really don't have that much in common: the midwestern community of my childhood; the Michigan beaches of our family vacations - where we always wanted to live, but only knew as a summer vacation spot; New England; the Midatlantic region; the deep South; the Southwest; the metropolis of the midwest, Chicago; this tropical island, ...  suburbs, city, country. Now we'll be heading west again. I dread living on the left coast, but I trust that the pattern of happiness will continue. The day will come when I'll be crying about leaving California as the moving van comes ‘round again.

A more hopeful view

We are soaking up the beauties of Guam while we may before moving or being bombed. Fortunately, we now are the fun owners of the sportastic Gopro underwater action shot camera. 

Here is how the Gopro captured the crosses of Good Friday:

And here is how the Gopro captures the underwater world, where threats and worries go unheeded.

Camera readiness and green sea turtle sighting FINALLY coincided.

These creatures are truly stunning. I can't describe how lovely they really are. Large but graceful. Gentle but powerful. 

This guy, on the other hand, is a strange sea cucumber. Cool and unusual.

Descending the reef, an underwater mountain. We didn't reach the bottom, because we are cautious about going deeper than 80 feet.

A school group on the go. 

I have to get mad at this kid for touching the reef, but he loves to explore.

With my 10 year old. Unlikely relative to a mermaid.

Following the leader.

Spelunking

Look out below!

We had the opportunity this weekend to check out Talofofo Caves, a series of five caves of varying sizes. This is one of the more popular boonie stomps. It does not require trekking through sword grass under the hot sun.  The path from the road is fairly short and the entrance to the largest cave is easy to find right off the trail.  This cave opens to a drop-off of about 90 feet. A group of young spelunkers had a system of ropes set up and were rappelling down into the depths of the pit. When we peered in, they could hear our voices echoing, and they immediately began chanting, "Don't touch the ropes! Don't touch the ropes!"  We moved on to the next cave, although my oldest son really wanted to try the rope descent.  We had inconveniently failed to pack gloves, carabiners, and crash helmets.

The second cave had a large opening that shrank to a small passageway. On hands and knees we followed a slight breeze to a slit in the rock where you could crawl out onto an overlook.  Had it been a bit clearer and our eyes more eaglelike, maybe we could have seen all the way to the Philippines.

The best cave was the third.  It looked like just a small opening in the rock, but once you shimmied through the mouth, it opened up into a large room with lots of stalactites and a large column. We followed the intrepid 8 year old along a passageway that led to a rope-assisted climb and then down a slope where, in a tiny puddle of cave water, we found a land crab.  He fiercely defended his hole until we finally let him alone.

For a moment we turned out our flashlights and sat in a darkness too deep to discern even the faintest shadows. Our eyes never did adjust, although we waited quietly in darkness as long as the six year old would let us.

The four and fifth caves were shallower. We read that one was supposed to have a turtle pictoglyph, but we couldn't discern it.  One of the pleasures of this area is that you can still explore without being contained along a roped-off passage, as you are at some of the caves we've visited in America, but apparently time and freedom to touch have caused the drawing to erode away.  Or maybe we just didn't know where to look.

Interesting roots.

My pictures aren't very good because I took our little camera which has a focusing problem. Or maybe it's my skills that are lacking. But I don't think even the big camera could capture the fascinating formations of the open spaces and the passages, nor the adrenalin-rush inspired by the view after being confined in a tunnel.  The eight year old, who regularly is reprimanded for being too rambunctious, was in a state of delight as he climbed up rocks, explored dark corners, and  got thoroughly dirty sliding through the tunnels.  As he hung from a tree branch, he declared this his favorite boonie stomp ever.
 

The 16 yr old loved the adventure, too.

Giant birds' nest fern really makes you feel like you are in Land of the Lost.