Trout No Doubt

We've already made two trips to Clear Lake just outside of Cheney to scratch the fishing itch, and I suspect we'll go at least twice more before we leave. 

I'm very proud of Sam. He got all the gear he needed to hook his first trout, including asking neighboring adults what they were using for bait, then changing tactics. Gutted the fish all on his own when we got home, and pan fried it up perfectly for dinner. 

Paul, this is America. America, Paul

We flew from Colombo, Sri Lanka, departing under the heavy cover of a humid night.  We were picked up in front of our house at 8:00 p.m., a white cargo van the only object on the empty, locked down street, reflecting the orange street lights of its steely hide. Despite the late hour, there was an uncommon amount of traffic on the roads. Especially considering the country was still under a government lockdown. The airport, on the other hand was deserted.  We were the only people there, greeted at the front sliding glass door by a guard in an aluminum foil hazmat suit and machine gun. 

Our flight departed shortly after midnight, sandwiched in between departures to Chennai and Milan. There were only a half dozen or so other passengers on the giant Airbus A-330 to London. We spread out, lying flat across three seats, and slept most of the 11 and a half hour flight. 

The Lindon airport was more crowded, but there were still only 20 or so passengers on the second leg of our journey from London to Seattle. I used points to upgrade us all to business class, a rare splurge. It was totally worth it. We dined on steaks, drank IPAs and gin and tonics, watched movies and listened to music through noise-cancelling headphones, and stretched out flat in our automated recliners. I don't know how we'll ever go back to flying coach. Alas, we must. 

It took forever to take the shuttle from the main terminal to the rental car pavilion. The airport was packed, reaffirming reports domestic travel in America was on the uptick. We eventually made it to the townhouse we rented in Eastlake around 2:00 in the afternoon on the officially longest day of travel ever. 

The first few days were spent in a confused and hazy state outside of time. We slept when we were tired and ate when we were hungry, but our sleeping hours didn't necessarily coincide with darkness, and our meal times didn't necessarily neatly line up with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The goal was just to....be, and that was enough, a state of content to just be present in America, particularly Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. 

The scene was made more surreal by Seattle's long days. The sun doesn't set until 9:00 at night. The kids adapted quickly to the jet lag, but still often fell asleep under a full sun. I laid in bed one night, the Seattle skyline at the foot of the bed through an open window, watching dusk come and go, a violet gloaming accompanied by the not unpleasant rhythm of airplanes on their final approach into SeaTac and the methodical -- but purposeful -- drone of neighboring I-5. 

We walked to a neighborhood grocery in Eastlake and bought frozen pizzas, beer, and wine for dinner the first night. Elise and I ran in the morning on the Burke-Gilman trail and past UW, the kids watched cartoons on the Disney Channel. The next morning we made a pilgrimage through a light Seattle rain to Top Pot doughnuts, then walked back to our townhouse, eating glazed doughnuts and drinking hot coffee. We would go back two mornings later. 

Being back in America after two years produced a set of wonders for the kids. They asked where the water cooler was when we first walked into the townhouse, then expressed shock and disbelief when we told them they could drink the water straight from the spigot. When we pulled up in front of a convenience store in Cheney a few days ago, Clementine asked, "Why would anyone need packaged ice?" The kids are more fascinated with commercials than the program that comes in between them, already memorizing the Fruity Pebbles jingle. 

The kids were slightly unsettled the first few days in the townhouse.  We all were. But since we have moved to Elise's parent's home in Cheney, they have mellowed, falling easily back into old habits, old spots on the couch, old, comfortable places to rest, the arms of their grandparents.  

The adjustment to a society largely recovering from the pandemic after being immersed in a society still struggling through its most difficult moments of the pandemic has been jarring. Many people don't wear masks on the east side of Washington state. This was to he expected, but still took some getting used to. An initial sense of judgment was quickly replaced with relief, a realization the country is healing, albeit slowly. Not something that can be said for Sri Lanka. We're happy to be here. 

A Day at the Aquarium

The first four days of our American adventure were spent in a townhouse in Eastlake, Seattle.  We touched down in SeaTac after a grueling 30 hour trip, a trip that was, however,  made more tolerable by the fact we spent the leg from London to Seattle in business class.

One of our outings in Seattle was a trip to the aquarium with the kids' two year-old cousin.  

Lockdown, Vol 3 - Part Three, Everything is Nothing

In the last few weeks of online school, in the long weeks before we would leave Sri Lanka for the first time in almost two years, Elise coined a catchphrase for these times, "Everything is nothing."

I'm not exactly sure what this means. You'd have to ask her. It is possible she may not even know what it means. But it does seem strangely and apocryphally appropriate.  

I think the term first came into use as we were trying to predict whether or not a government curfew would be imposed or lifted. There was no logic. Except whatever a government official said, the opposite usually held true. A headline proclaiming definitely no lockdown to be imposed, invariably meant we were certain to be placed under a lockdown.  News of a lockdown lifting, would be followed the next day by news the lockdown was extended.  Hence, "Everything is nothing."

Yet, somehow we managed. Inexorably,  the school year ended. Sam made a video of himself cooking a chocolate souffle for French class. He missed honor roll by three points.  Clementine earned six Exceeding Expectations marks. After some initial struggles, Peter put forth an admirable effort in his PYPX final elementary school project on the street dogs of Sri Lanka.

On the last day of online school, Peter heard there was going to be a class party. He joined the class meet as he usually does for his lessons, but no one else was in the chat. Their cameras were off. Their microphones silent. Peter sat, waiting for the party to start for a full five minutes,  before realizing there wasn't going to be a party. In the end, the class party -- like so many other things this year -- had been canceled. The kids were given screen-free time instead. 

Elise find him some minutes later in his room, crying. Disappointment raised its ugly head again. Like a fire-breathing dragon, snuffing out hopes and dreams and thoughts of what should have been, reducing them all to piles of smoldering ash. Everything is nothing. 

But like the great Phoenix of fables of old, it will be from these ashes future hopes and dream and thoughts of what will be are born, stitching themselves together, healing like a wound. 

The last few weeks were tough. I'm not going to lie. When you can't escape the same four walls, it's easy to lose the forest for the trees, because it's all trees. There is no forest. You'd have to get outside to see that. And it's easy to stop trying, to ignore the bickering of children, the chores that need to be done, the dishes that need to be scrubbed in sinkfulls of soapy water and clean clothes that need to be folded and put away. It's easy to just go through the motions, the same motions you went through yesterday and the day before that, and the same motions you will go through tomorrow and the day after that. Tiny anxieties become magnified in the petri dish. 

Despite the lockdown or -- perhaps because of it -- Elise and I took to running up and down our street, two ships sailing past one other in the early morning light, the orange street lights throwing our shadows up against the walls and garage doors, running with impunity past policemen sleeping in their booths and guarding the end of the lane, dressed in shiny aluminum PPE, knights at the watchtower. 

There is a echo in these days. The lines don't move, and the colors don't fade. It leaves you feeling empty, the world gone shallow, gone lean. Like standing on the platform but the train won't leave. We do just enough to stay alive. Everything is nothing. 

After almost two years in Sri Lanka, we're venturing out. The thought is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. It’s scary to leave the place that has sustained us through all this, but the lockdown is forcing our hand. We're past due for a new adventure. 

Lockdown, Vol 3 - Part Two, Vesak

Officials claim the most recent surge in cases comes from those behaving badly over the Sinhalese and Tamil New Years. As a result, the latest lockdown started began over Eid.

Cynics (of which there are many) saw this as the government's attempt to once again oppress the Muslim minority, but when the lockdown was extended to include Vesak, the celebration of the Buddha's birthday,  the government became an equal opportunity party pooper.  

We have yet to see Vesak in Sri Lanka under non-pandemic circumstances,  but I hear it's pretty.  In an attempt to stave off the monotony of lockdown, Elise decided to construct her own paper lantern, emblematic of the holiday. 

It hangs in our atrium still, a constant work in progress. Elise added some fringe to the points of the pyramids and at the bottom a few days ago, and Peter promptly threw a pair of socks at it, damaging the fringe.  

When called out, Peter wailed, "It’s not Vesak anymore!" We challenged Peter, "Do you put the Christmas tree up Christmas morning and take it down Christmas night?"

Peter likely didn't get the analogy, but little changed on a daily basis under government lockdown, so we don't see the paper lantern coming down any time soon. 

Lockdown, Vol 3

The first several days of the third lockdown coincided with a passing through the neighborhood of a cyclone which struck the Indian state of Gujarat,  sinking commercial barges and stranding men at sea along the way.  

The intermittent squalls combined with the confinement, as mentioned, the third since the beginning of the pandemic, made a difficult moment. Weeks later, monsoon rains brought days of torrential downpours and landslides to the mountainous interior of the island, and the depressed mood continued.  

Elise got dengue a few weeks ago. The irony that we have spent much of the last 15 months evading one virus only to be struck down by another does not escape us. This week, Clementine and I also succumbed to the mosquito-borne illness. 

The curfew is supposed to be more serious this time given funeral pyres and mass graves -- like there are in India -- may be in Sri Lanka's future if it isn't. But I'm left wondering why there are still so many cars on the road. 

There was talk of an evacuation like in India and Nepal, but those rumors have died. For now. It took us a long time to decide whether or not now would be a good time to travel with unvaccinated kids. And the current circumstances left us with no choice. We'll travel back to the States soon. 

I don't know if stories from this third lockdown will come to me at some point, but right now there are none. We're tired. For so many reasons. Staying hopeful is exhausting. But the alternative isn't much of one.