April 26, 2004

• OLIVER PLATT AND SAILING

  This book cracks me up!

  
  The Boat That Wouldn’t Float
  by Canadian Farley Mowat

  This would make a great sailing movie! WITH OLIVER PLATT!!!! I love Oliver Platt.

  For those that are wondering, Matt and I are moving to the Texas High Plains, close to Amarillo.

  People I run into ask me, “Where are you moving to?” all the time. And I happily tell them! And then they look at me with wonder and ask, “Why aren’t you moving back to California to be with your parents?” That is such a dumb question, I really don’t think it merits an answer. So I simply say, “I don’t like California.” That usually shuts them up.

  There was one spring, my dad was mowing our lawn. We were still living in Arkansas at the time. He found a two baby birds in the grass under our pine tree in the front yard. We debated what to do with them. Finally we decided to get a ladder and put them back in the nest.

  The mother took them back and cared for them.

  And then a week later, another wind storm came along, and again, my dad found a baby bird under the tree. Same spot. This time it had most of its feathers starting to grow in.

  (Obviously this mother bird didn’t know how to build a proper nest.)

  So, we figured we wouldn’t put it back in this time.

  We fed it bugs and rice. It grew and was happy and all its feathers came in. And finally, I decided it might be time to let it go. That day, I let it run around in the backyard. It couldn’t fly. And the neighbor’s tomcat came by, and scared the shit out of me. I was certain he’d pounce on my little baby and kill it before it could figure out it could fly away.

  So I called to it to come back to me so I could take it inside “where it was safe.”

  It came back. Hesitantly. Almost as if it knew. . . .

  I kept the bird (he was no longer a baby) for a few more days, and I was scared to let it try to fly again, because the tomcat was always around. But during those three days, the bird’s health deteriorated rapidly. He had his taste of freedom, and he was dying.

  Looking back, I know I should have just let him go that day. Perhaps the tomcat would have eaten him, but it would have been nobler death to die, than to die in my house, pining for the green grass and the wind and trees.

  So my mom and dad call me up sometimes, and say, “Why don’t you come back to California? You can take over your dad’s practice. You can stay in our house and we’ll get a new house for ourselves.”

  And I say, “No, thanks, Mom and Dad. Matt and I are doing what we want to do.”

  And so I really admire my cousin Joy because she’s probably the only one of my relatives (close to my age) who understands what it’s like to leave home to make a life for oneself. It takes a lot of gumption to not go back, when your parents are calling you back. You have to tell yourself, “I can lick that tomcat.”

  
  HE EVEN LOOKS LIKE FARLEY MOWAT!!!!
  (well, okay, sort of. . . in a Rorschach inkblot kind of way)

  • 9:45 am
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