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| Kenji's urgent request of his Grandma Carol |
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| Mama Carol being beaten in junior pictionary by Kenji, 6 |
With Bill gone for a month to help his son Jim in Boise,
Idaho prep some real estate that was
paid to them by a client for their new office, I am with my daughter Trisha’s
family in Seattle trying frenziedly to finish my book, tentatively titled
‘Cruising to a Life Together, Becoming an American’ . Between cooking for
Deejay, Trisha, Yeye, Kenji, and sometimes Krishna and playing with Kenji, I now have all of one month
to finish 6 additional chapters to the four I had previously worked on. I am actually just polishing the fifth! Here are annotated excerpts of
Chapter 1:
‘Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson came just in time! They
brought the phrase bucket list front and center to my prefrontal cortex. Bill and I were just starting to date. We
took this 13-hour drive from Seattle to San Francisco to visit my sister
Cherry, her husband Rick, and daughter Zan.
Throughout the length of boring I 5, Bill did not get a chance to slide
his John Legend cd into the player of my Honda Civic nor was he able to turn on
the radio for even a minute. That drive produced our initial list of 88 places
to see and 48 things to do before we die!
That was five years ago! And in the past four years we have
logged a total of 70,000 miles on Star and Vino (our first 24-ft. Class C
motorhome/blue Yamaha scooter combo) and M’A ‘turn (our current Mountain Aire
37-ft. motorhome/ little red Saturn). We have travelled all of forty-nine
American states (we don’t know of any way to drive our RV to Hawaii), nine
Canadian provinces, and six Mexican states! And that proverbial bucket is still
filled to its brim. As a matter of fact, it gets filled with new entries faster
than we can make visits to the original ones!
Though Manila and Seattle are ten thousand miles apart, Bill
and I had lived strikingly similar lifestyles. In one word, in our not so
distant past, we were both very driven.
Board meetings, doctoral dissertations, government consultancies,
industry conferences, and global meetings filled my days. As a single parent to
three daughters, it was truly a daredevil dive that left me completely burned
out by the time I turned 50, which is when I had planned on retiring.’
I share a little bit more of my life in the Philippines and the
transition to being a US immigrant.
‘Soon I was not only baby-sitting in the day, teaching at
Seattle Central Community College, Renton Technical College, and Central
Washington University in the evenings and weekends, volunteering as a business
counselor at SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives), and attending 2 book
clubs and 2 toastmasters clubs. My psychological pattern was again wreaking
havoc on an otherwise relatively stress-free life. Enter a new knight in
shining armor!
Bill’s career had also meant national sales campaigns, buying
and growing his own franchise business, participating on the board of national
industry associations, taking leadership roles in church councils, and getting
involved in political organizations. And the US is a much more complex and
bigger marketplace to play in. Sadly, his wife of 29 years, the beautiful
Judith Ann (Judy A) died of colon cancer.
Two and ½ years later, Bill married Judith Barbara (Judy B), but this
second marriage, despite all the determination to make it work for 8 years,
finally ended about the same time as mine did.
Even if I was not a Judy C, he was willing to try! Anyway, I
was, as a matter of undeniable fact, a C. All he has to do is to drop the Judy
trap! Clearly, our lives were dovetailing into one unmistakable dizzying direction:
a different kind of necessary pause in our busy lives and a not so usual
punctuation in our narratives. For me, it was another daredevil dive, this time
into a late-age biracial partnership in a foreign land. For him it was his
unsinkable belief in coupledom. And, after all, America thoroughly believes in
the maxim: 3 is a charm!
.
At first, I did not want to go out with Bill. His profile on
match.com was headlined ‘Looking For Fun’.
I thought, ‘Who would want to consider any man like that?’ He was a year
older than my cut-off age of 62 and 3 inches taller than my cut-off height of
5’7”! Besides, he was wearing dark glasses in his profile photo! What was he
hiding or who was he hiding from? Despite these cobwebs, I continued to write
back because there was an obvious kinship in our work and travel experiences
and thought processes.’
Then I talk a little bit more about how we actually decided
to meet.
‘When he walked into the room, he could not believe his
utter luck! I was his absolute dream
girl (smart, sexy, sweet)! Kidding
aside, it was I who literally fell off my ivory tower chair. He came dashing
in, this distinguished old gentleman, emphasis on old, hopefully meaning
mature. He was oozing with charm and
good looks! (Later on, I found out that he slept in and had a facial before
coming). All my cut-offs were quickly
redrawn!’
Finally I talk about how our relationship progressed, from
activity partners, to steady dates, to an engaged couple, and the grand wedding
on a cruise ship.
‘It was a cruising to a life together…of cruising. After all, it was not going to be a life of
raising kids, building a home, and saving for retirement. This IS our kind of retirement! We will be cruisers in the last third of our
lives. We will not buy expensive floating
homes or huge mansions a la Gates. We
will travel many bridges that connect cities, countries and continents. We will revisit books, objets d’art, and
places that made/make history. We will
be entertained in sports, theater and other art forms. We will drive endless roads, fly boundless
skies, and sail many seas. We will
commune with all kindred spirits, and we will have the beauty of nature and
man’s achievements as a backdrop to a life of leisure and payback.
This is what the cruise meant to us, this is what weddings
should be made of, this is how marriages should begin. And the quote we love which we have also
printed on our wedding invitation, ‘We
may not have it all together but together we have it all!’ now finally hangs as
a cute little art work on our door. It
was the finest way to start getting it all together.
In six short months, Bill sold his company to a group of
local businessmen looking to expand. Then we went on a delayed but extended
honeymoon. First I took Bill on his first visit to the Philippines. Then we
moved on to Taiwan where Bill’s friend Alan teaches English as a second
language. We were flirting with the idea of doing the same thing and funding
our travels around Asia on weekends. We
did the rounds of the centers for teaching English. But we found out that to
get working visas, we would have to teach for at least 4 days a week, leaving
us only 3 days to travel. We thought, ‘That would not be as much fun!’ So we
left Taiwan with crushed dreams.
On the 18-hour flight home, we thought…there is really no
need to work. After all, our children have told us to die poor! We talked about
the opportunity of cruising full-time in an RV! Bill owned an RV before and
would take fun weekend getaways with Judy A. But I had absolutely no idea
because there are no RVs in the Philippines (the roads are too narrow and the
infrastructure just isn’t there!). But I’ve seen those celebrity homes on
wheels! And, I said, ‘Why I can be like a celebrity, too!’
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| Yeye' baked some fresh de luxe cinnamon rolls for breakfast! |
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| Yeye helping in the cooking |
Chapter 2 talks about our trial RVing, visiting our kids
from Seattle to Denver to Boise then Calgary and, finally, Anchorage. Chapters
3 to 8 talk about our 6 criss-crossings in North America. Chapter 9 discusses pros and cons, stages, and issues in the
RV cruising lifestyle. And the final chapter discusses how I slowly became an American as a result of the cruising. Good thing I haven't lost my Filipino roots! I have now completed Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 and am currently polishing 5.
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| Krishna cutting Kenji's hair |
What do you guys think? I am very interested to know!!!
