Chances Are

The following is a true story.

One evening my husband was working with a client in downtown Seattle. For exercise, I decided to walk a mile and a half down the big hill that we live on to get a massage in our little suburban downtown area. My husband believed that his Seattle meeting would not be a long one. It was agreed that what I'd do is call him when my massage was done so that he could pick me up and take me home. The last thing in the world that I wanted to do after a relaxing massage was trudge up a steep, heart-pounding hill.

I called him as I left the masseuse and was surprised to find out that he was still in town with the client. I cursed him in several languages and told him that I'd start walking towards home, and that maybe he could still pick me up before I went up the big hill.

After about 15 minutes of walking, I came to the first road where there was an option to turn towards home. It would take me through muddy woods, and I didnt' really want to do that. So I called my husband's cellphone - no answer - and left a message telling him of my progress and wondering aloud where he was in relation to me.

About 15 minutes later, I got close to another route home, this one via sidewalk but by far the steepest route that I could take. I called him again - no answer - and left a message telling him that I was abandoning this route altogether and heading for another little strip mall area further away from home that was a downhill trek. There was a bar there where I knew I could go to the bathroom (now necessary) and wait for him.

Three blocks from the bar, I was startled as a whitish bird flew past me. We watch birds all the time, and this one was unfamiliar. Peregrine? Dove? The bird floated to the road, landed, and fell on its side. I looked up the street. A bus was coming.

I ran to the bird and tried to shoo it out of the path of the bus and realized it was a parrot of some kind, clearly someone's pet. I put my finger out and it hopped on. The bus slowed down and the door opened.

"Hey," the driver said, "somebody up the street was looking for their pet bird yesterday. That might be it."

I looked back up the street. "Up the street" included about 20 houses that I could see and another 20 on cul-de-sacs that branched out from the street.

"Do you know which house?" I asked.

The traffic was backing up, and the driver said he was sorry, but that he didn't know which one. The bus door closed and he drove away.

So there I was with a bird on my finger and its home somewhere on this surburban street of 40 homes. I was still in a post-massage fog. I had to go to the bathroom. I didn't know where my ride was.

That's when my husband drove up. He told me later that given my forced march he'd expected some kind of activity regarding my finger and a bird, but not a bird on my finger. He came up beside me and rolled down the window. I explained the situtation and decided that I'd just need to knock on doors until I found someone who knew where Polly lived. I passed three or four houses and picked one to start at, rehearsing my speech for whoever opened the door. ("Hi there. How well do you know the neighborhood?") I knocked.

"There you are!" the mother said to the bird, and soon the entry was crowded with happy and excited family members welcoming their errant pet home.

Now what are the odds? For this to happen, I had to decide not to take any of the roads that would have me walking up the hill. My husband's cellphone had to be in a place of poor reception which made the messages go straight into his message box only to be found later. If he'd answered, I would have taken one of the routes I'd proposed and he would have picked me up and I would have missed the bird's flight and fall. The timing on the bus had to be perfect. A minute later and the bus would have passed without seeing me with the bird. The bus driver had to care enough to stop in the middle of the road and let me know what he knew. And I walked straight to the right house when the odds were about forty to one.

Cool ...

Saying Goodbye to Whidbey

In the end, after much discussion of the pros and cons, we put our place on Whidbey Island up for sale. We had an offer after one day on the market. Then that fell through because the other party got heart palpitations. Within two days we had another. Added bonus: the buyer wanted all the furniture. We'd purchased that home furnished, and we had fervent hopes that we could sell it that way as well.

But even without furniture, it's amazing how much we're having to take from there and put in our suburban home of modest square footage. There's no more wall space here for our art, and in fact we had to take the largest and most expensive piece that we'd ever purchased - hung horizontally at the cabin - and hang it vertically at home in order to keep it on display. I actually think that I like it better vertical, and the subject matter allows for it.

Once mother died, the cabin became the depository of all of her things that we didn't have the heart to toss, including her. Her ashes sat on a small china cabinet that she'd played with as a girl and kept as a curio holder. Old "Look" magazines from the thirties were stuck in the bookcase, topographical maps were stuck behind it. Grandpa was a pattern-maker and dabbled in his own art, and flying birds and fish that he created now swim and fly on the spare walls here.

There's an old saying that the happiest two days of a boat-owner's life are the day that he buys it, and the day that he sells it. I'll admit to the happiest day of that equation in regard to the cabin. It was probably one of the nicest things that we ever did for ourselves other than falling in love with each other and having a masseuse come to our house every two weeks. I'll also admit to a certain relief in letting it go. We paid people on the island for upkeep and yard work. When the winds blew down the throat of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, they took a slight turn and then headed straight for our place, so when we watched storm warnings, we always took special note of central Whidbey conditions and would wonder about electricity and roofs and trees.

If Mother were still alive, we would have kept the place. She adored it, and loved taking friends and relatives there and pretending that it was her own. But she's gone, and the grandkids are in their teens and into other things, and the kids are in their thirties and into their careers and traveling further afield than Whidbey. And we are in a different place as well. It was once a retreat, and in fact when we wondered what to call it (another family member has a cabin on Whidbey, so to say "the cabin on Whidbey" was not enough), we decided on "The Sanctuary." I was a sales and marketing manager, a position of high stress. The Sainted One owned a business. We used to stand on the fantail as the ferry shuddered away from Mukeltio and laugh and say, "Try to find us now!"

But these days we're self-employed and have no need or desire to escape in the same way that we used to. "Escape" now has a tendency to mean places with strong February sun.

Whidbey will always remain special to us. We've made friends there. I had a column there in a paper for six years, and still send things in to it periodically. I'll always attend or present at the Whidbey Island Writer's Conference. And I will have mussels at Toby's and the occasional dinner at the Oystercatcher in Coupeville. We've given up the place to lay our heads, but not the right to still claim these things as ours.