FOOLS AND CHILDREN


They say God protects fools and children. It’s obvious to me that I’ve been operating as one or the other most of my life. After all, life is a risky business.

When I was thirteen I lobbied hard to come up to Washington state and repeat seventh grade with my younger cousin Janyce. I talked her into hitchhiking from Marysville to Everett to ballet class once a week “I’m a good judge of character,” I told her.

When I was fourteen and back home again I used to sneak out of my window at night and ride over to the movie theater on the wrong side of town. I got creeped out a few times, but never frightened enough to stop.

When I was fifteen my mother, younger brother, baby half-brother and I were living in a primitive cabin on a cliff overlooking the Pacific north of Arcata, California. My brother, thirteen-and-a-half, and I had carved out a rough trail down the sandy bluff to the tiny beach 600 feet below. We talked my mother into going down with us for a picnic one day. I assured her I could carry baby Russell. “No problem,” I said. And so I climbed down and back supporting Russell on one hip while clinging to sketchy handholds and bushes. No problem.

At the age of seventeen, having just graduated high school, I traveled to Chicago on my own, found a trainee position, and a tiny basement apartment on Michigan Avenue, promptly got fired, and found a less demanding job as a waitress at Stouffer’s Tearoom. I also, on one of my late night walks, acquired a stalker who wanted to take me to Florida with him. I went home to my mother instead.

Marriage and motherhood tied me down for a few years, and I became an armchair traveler courtesy of the public library, but I never passed up any opportunity for adventure with or without the kids. I wore out a Chevy station wagon in those years.

After a divorce, travel was high on my list of priorities. I picked up hitchhikers on a trip back from Los Angeles (a story for another day). I racketed around the greater Seattle area to singles dances at night after the kids were in bed. I answered singles ads in The Weekly for a while, after which I taught an Experimental College class titled “Playing the Personals.”

On a trip to see a friend in Salishan on the Oregon coast I stopped my car on a steep driveway and had to step outside the car for a moment to push the buzzer to get the gate raised. As the car began slowly drifting backwards I flung the door open and myself inside just in time to brake to a stop. One of the scarier moments of my life!

Other than the trip down the bluff with my baby brother and hitchhiking with cousin Janyce most of my close calls only risked my own neck. Then I agreed to lead a small group of writers on a trip to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. As group leader I assumed responsibility for those who traveled with me, but did not understand how challenging that would be until I encouraged one young woman to ride the subway back to Chapultepec Park after a group excursion there one afternoon. I felt sure she could handle any problems, but four hours later when she still hadn’t returned I was in a torment of worry. After another hour and a half she returned happy and full of stories. “I knew you could do it,” I told her, vowing to be more cautious regarding other people in the future.

I should have understood from that experience how worried my children might be when I began traveling around the states and Canada all alone in a small RV, or took off at Christmastime to travel by local bus without reservations in Mexico and Guatemala. But I was as clueless as ever as I accumulated more adventures and close calls. I even left for seven weeks in South America without much of an itinerary and without any way for my kids to contact me. This was before the age of cell phones and e-mail, but my kids were busy with their own lives and it never occurred to me that it might be important to stay in touch.

Although these days I’d like to think I’m neither as foolish nor as childlike as I’ve been throughout most of my life, the feedback I get from family and friends suggests that I’m still more delusional than not. And when I lock my keys in the car, set off the smoke alarm regularly, or trip over the hem of my long skirt and fall down, it’s a good thing that I can trust God to continue to protect fools and children.