​            I didn't realize how much Sherrill wanted to take a canal boat trip in England until she dropped the stack of magazines and newspaper articles, as well as several books, in front of me.  Canal Cruising, Discovering Canals in Britain, Guide to Waterways South, Guide to Waterways Central, English County Cruises.  Obviously, she'd been thinking about this for a while.  Although England was crisscrossed with canals—all of them built centuries ago to move animals and goods—she had chosen the one we'd cruise along and where we'd rent the narrow boat and join the canal. 
            "It'll be fun."   She pushed the stack my direction.
            And it was. 

​       Sherrill had chosen the most picturesque canal for us to explore: the Llangollen Canal into Wales from a village near Chester in western England. Taking the boat across aqueducts and through locks to Llangollen and back might be a challenge for two of us alone, but if Simone and Paul went along we'd manage fine—and it would be more fun.  As usual, she'd thought it all out.   
          As we moved around the London of 1986 before going on to Chester, we noticed that it had changed here and there since our previous visit on our way to France and Italy in 1978—replaced or remodeled buildings, new restaurants, construction work in progress—however, the city felt the same.  During our nearly five decades of visiting London, from 1968 to 2015, Sherrill and I watched it evolve from lingering war-blackened buildings and empty lots with broken foundations to the glamour of the twenty-first century "Shard" and "Gherkin" towers, and from deserted East End warehouses to the Docklands light railway and Canary Wharf's glitzy financial towers.  To us, however, it remained the comfortable, semi-shabby collection of neighborhoods that we grew fond of when we were in our twenties.  

​            The walled city of Chester, one of the oldest in England, going back to Roman times and filled with black and white half-timbered medieval buildings, seemed an appropriate start for our new adventure.  The canal, itself, opened in 1805, carried commercial traffic until the nineteen-thirties.  After the war years, the old canals were rediscovered for pleasure cruising and the old towpaths that ran beside them soon were used for hiking and biking.  For a while, Sherrill and I dreamed of cruising on all 3,000 miles of canals, but became sidetracked by the rest of the world.            
            We'd been sent a booklet with maps showing every twist of the canal, every road, bridge, towpath, lock, fuel and supply stop, village, and pub.  Sherrill had annotated these maps from her reading and had calculated when we should get to certain points and where and when we should moor for the night.  Everything was perfect except that when we picked up the boat it was raining and rained all the first day. 
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"Will the whole trip be like this?" we wondered mournfully, but by mid-morning on day two the sky was clear.  

​            Our boat, the Goldeneye (named after a local bird), could have accommodated six adults, so the four of us were comfortable in two little bedrooms with a kitchenette and dining area.  Magically, it seemed, Sherrill had brought us to an earlier, simpler era in which traffic moved no faster than a horse pulling a load could walk.  Since the boats were limited to four or five miles an hour, most of the time ours didn't seem difficult to operate, except when we had to maneuver it through the locks.  (Was this why the brochure recommended that ladies wear trousers?)  We quickly learned that there was more to canal cruising than watching scenery go by while keeping one hand on the tiller, but whatever problems we encountered could be forgotten at the end of the day in one of the old pubs built to service the boatmen of old and now catering to tourists. 

​            Occasionally, we stopped to buy homemade baked goods and jams from cheery local women who had set up shop on planks next to the canal.  
            "I made that loaf myself, love.  Cake, too.  Don't forget the jam to go with it."
            How could we resist?
            Sometimes, we tied up and ventured into one of the canal-side pubs for a meal and a half pint.  The walls were thick and the windows small to keep out the weather, the furnishings ancient and comfortably worn and welcoming, everything in shades of brown—whatever color they may have started out.  We experimented with pasties, toad-in-the hole, Scotch eggs, fish and chips, and Yorkshire pudding—even bangers and mash—plus varieties of ale and brew.  We passed on blood pudding, though.
        The cruising was fun, as Sherrill had promised, and the four of us were having a good time together, but as usual I worried about whatever was at hand to fuss about.  Accidents and catastrophes could happen any time, from tripping and falling off the boat to earthquakes and floods.  Well, maybe not an earthquake there, but something....  Traveling is dangerous, after all.  Of course, these thoughts weren't rational.  Sherrill refused to let me be gloomy.
          "Don't worry!" she often told me, forefinger pressing against my nose.  "Don't fuss!"

​            The locks to take the boat up or down, depending on the direction, could be a challenge, however.  We had  a tool called a lock key to open the gates that held back the flow of water.  After unlocking one side, we had to run across a narrow foot bridge to do the same on the other side of the canal.  Usually, one of us unlocked each side, a third drove through, and then the first two closed and locked the gates after the Goldeneye had passed through and jumped onto the boat.  We got the routine down fine, but after Paul and Simone left us for some adventures of their own, it became more challenging for two of us, turning into a comedy routine.  

  
            Sherrill steered and I did the running back and forth, hurling myself up and down ladders, and unlocking and locking the lock gates.  With all of that deadpan hopping around, it probably looked more like Buster Keaton than Charlie Chaplin—although in my heart I usually saw myself as Groucho Marx.  

​       It all went smoothly until near the end, when the Goldeneye got caught in a whirlpool below a weir and Sherrill had to struggle to stop the boat from spinning in circles, while I stood helpless and stupid on the side of the lock, waving my arms around and making incoherent noises.  Ignoring me, a determined expression on her face, she finally managed to liberate both herself and the Goldeneye.
         "So," I asked her when we both stood exhausted on the deck, "now what?" 

              "Sew buttons your pants!" she came back at me.
          One of the rejoinders that she'd picked up as a kid when she was living with her grandparents in Reno, useful in any situation when she wanted to get down to business without any more delay.  She had a ready supply of them.  
            The highlight of our journey was the 1805 Pontcsylite Aqueduct, a skinny 19-arched brick structure that carried the canal 120 feet above the river Dee.  A towpath with good railings protected us on one side, but only a few inches of cast iron on the other, which gave us the precarious sensation of floating through air.  Some folks in other boats were lounging on their cabin roofs as they put-putted across, but that wasn't my idea of safe fun, despite the spectacular views.  We survived the aqueduct and made our way into the town of Llangollen, where we moored and did some sightseeing, including a large half-timbered house surrounded by a handsome garden.      

​            Looking back at our expedition on the Goldeneye, I'm impressed by all the work Sherrill put in to learning about canal boating and then planning and putting together an adventure that we'd never forget.  Catastrophes inevitably have come along since then, including losing Sherrill, but Simone, Paul, and I still thank her not only for these memories, but for all the memories she gave us--and for the humor that saw us through many a situation. 

To be continued....  
         
​   If you enjoy these posts, please share them with anyone else you think also will find them interesting.  And why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels.   

    You also might enjoy reading the new bargain-priced e-edition of my North Beach novel, The Night Action.  It has been called the last great novel of an era.  Click on the title for link.  The book is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

​            People asked us why we traveled so much.   
            "We haven't really started yet," we sometimes replied with a shrug and a smile.  The more we traveled, the more we wanted to do it.  I sometimes wonder if we were trying to catch up with ourselves—past and future, too.  Motion isn't only through space, after all, but through time, as well: our time and the times we live in, the past but also the future, as it becomes present and past.  As we traveled, it blurred together.  And, sometimes, even just a day with friends could feel like a trip to another place and time, leaving us rich with memories.  

​            In 1984, our Thanksgiving holiday took us into a world that was of the imagination as much as geography.  Part of this trip was a journey into the mind and art of Jose' Clemente Orozco, perhaps the greatest of the Mexican muralists, certainly the one whose work spoke to Sherrill and me the most.  Guadalajara is one of the most beautiful cities in Mexico, maybe the world, and among the lush gardens and colonial architecture the riches of Orozco's genius waited for us to savor.  
            One reason Sherrill and I were drawn to the Mexican muralists, I suspect, was because they didn't compromise.  Their art hurled truth as they saw it right in our faces.  The past, we learned early in our travels, is more than a colorful theme park—and nowhere is that more evident than in Orozco's murals.  In building after building, we found walls and ceilings covered with his fiery paintings of human suffering and the struggle to escape it—and along the way, we also were immersed in the beauty of Guadalajara.  

​                                                           *           *          *
            The next year, the three of us returned to England—and to Stonehenge, since Simone had little memory of walking among the giant stones when she was three.  While we were in the area, we stopped at the broken monoliths of Avebury Circle, some Neolithic burial mounds, and recently excavated remains of ancient Roman villas—mostly mosaic floors and outlines of walls, but evocative of past times and lives, nevertheless.  We also discovered some medieval stone farm buildings in remarkably perfect condition.  We almost could smell the farm animals and the sweat of long ago farm hands.
            Driving through the fertile green hills and farms of the Cotswolds, we were tempted to stop and use all of our film (people still used film then) on one picture-perfect country scene after another.  The golden stone buildings of Castle Combe and the other Cotswold villages seemed to glow as if lit from inside when sunlight hit them.  On the outskirts of one village, we stopped to watch men re-thatch a cottage roof, doing it as their ancestors would have five hundred years before.  

​            On the road below the gothic magnificence of Arundel castle, we discovered in a gray stone Victorian house a museum, a warren of dusty rooms filled with glass cases, each displaying a diorama: quaint scenes of a genteel ladies' tea party, men carousing in a pub, a wedding, a band playing, a school room, a duel.  All of the characters in these scenes were stuffed animals, kittens, guinea pigs, rabbits, squirrels, puppies, and other small, once living creatures, the work of self-taught Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter, who began creating them when still an adolescent.  On occasion, he varied the scenes by grafting body parts from one animal onto a different species. 
            As we traveled over the years we saw how people everywhere work to create something that will last after they're gone.  The men thatching that roof could point to it later—as their children and grandkids would be able to in the future.  A thatched roof can last fifty or more years.  The carpenters and stonemasons who built the manor houses, churches, and castles were leaving part of themselves behind.  Why did Walter Potter devote his life to stuffing those tiny animals and arranging them as he did?  Why did Orozco hurl himself into the backbreaking effort of covering walls and ceilings with his vision of life and death? 
            Similarly, I also remember the times when adults, even into middle age, came up to Sherrill in stores and on the street and in libraries to introduce themselves. 
            "Mrs. Reeves?  You don't remember me, but my mother brought me to your preschool story hours.  I loved those times.  Because of you, I learned to love books.  Thank you."
            The words varied, but the message was always the same.  

​            My father was proud of the elegant tile work and mosaics that he left behind.  "Ancient Egyptian tile work," he told me, "is as beautiful today as it was thousands of years ago.  A man like me did it."  I thought of him, sometimes, when visiting cathedrals, palaces, and museums.  Craftsmen, architects, stained glass window artists, tapestry needlewomen, and painters and sculptors, even Walter Potter: famous and unknown, rich and poor, whether they thought of it that way or not, their work was a road to being remembered. 
*           *          *
            Across the English Channel in the low countries, we found a vivid, colorful world, one in which people were happy to talk with us and help us.  Even then, most of them seemed to be fluent in English.  Amsterdam was where we first ate in an Indonesian restaurant and indulged in rijsttafel, the "rice table" meal that we came to love.  The bowls of rice with a dozen or more appetizer-size dishes of seafood, meats, vegetables, nuts and fruits, and more overwhelmed us at first, but how could we resist the tantalizing rainbow of sweet and spicy, salty and sour flavors?  

​            The countries that colonized the world have a lot to answer for, but one benefit of cultures mixing was a blending of cuisines.  The British brought Indian dishes back with them, just as the Dutch returned with Indonesian.  When we were in Syria, we discovered that the food there had been deliciously influenced by French cuisine.  Today, with world travel so easy, many people grow up familiar with dishes from across the planet, but when we traveled then we often encountered unfamiliar foods, sometimes with ingredients we'd never tasted or seen.  Ever curious, we never refused a dish unless part of it tried to crawl off the plate.
            Sherrill loved boats of all kinds, so when we could we explored Amsterdam, Bruges, and other cities on their canals, passing narrow old houses (including one the width of a single window) with their steeply peaked roofs.  One of those gaunt Amsterdam houses was where Anne Frank and her family hid during the Nazi occupation.  We read about such terrible times, but nothing brings them to life as vividly as being in the place where they happened.  Standing in those small, cramped spaces, we wondered why the family didn't lose their sanity and why it took as long as it did for them to be discovered.  Anne Frank's diary ensured that what she and her family suffered would not be forgotten. 

            One of the pleasures of traveling in much of Europe was the trains, from the high-speed distance trains to the slower local ones.  Along with the buses, they made it easy for us to get around between cities and towns and even villages.  Sherrill also appreciated that she'd remember the scenery instead of the road ahead.  The transportation systems in the cities were easy to use, as well, and the train stations were usually in the city center, so we could walk many places.  Whether we wanted to visit the Rijksmuseum or Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam or a history museum in Ghent or explore Brussels, it all was possible without a car.  
             Traveling, I think, taught us to appreciate the moment, maybe because we knew that  we'd be moving on.  Maybe, without realizing it, sometimes we were happy and sad at the same time.  We could appreciate simultaneously the beauty of Orozco's work and the horror it represented or see the beauty of ruined abbeys and Greek temples and at the same time the fact that the worlds they were from were long gone.  Later, we were to see on television and in newspapers the destruction and loss of places we'd learned to love, such as Syria and parts of Iran and Italy and Southeast Asia, whether because of human beings or natural causes.  We didn't dwell on the sadness, but increasingly became aware of it.
            To be continued....  
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            If you enjoy these posts, please share them with anyone else you think also will find them interesting.  And why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels. 
​

​               Sherrill and I visited together more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 years of marriage.  This is number 22 of a series about our lives and travels. If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.
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            The next morning, we woke up inside a volcano.  The Neptune was encircled by shattered fragments of the ancient island of Thera.  The largest of these islands was Santorini, thought by some to have been home to the city of Atlantis. The ship felt very small riding in the center of this vast broken soup bowl.  The crew helped us into tenders, that, tilting and bouncing on the waves, somehow got us to the island, where we climbed onto a waiting bus for the ride of our lives.  During the night, the sea had been rough, so Sherrill had doped herself on Dramamine.  Lucky her.  

​            The three of us settled on the back seat, where the bus extended beyond the rear wheels, we began climbing toward the white buildings stacked on the rocks and cliffs far above.  To navigate the steep ascent, the road zigzagged from one sharp switch-back to another.  At each one, the driver had to back up to position the bus for the next climb, our seat cantilevered into space beyond the cliff edge.  Still groggy from the Dramamine, head bouncing on the seat back, Sherrill had no idea that our lives were in peril at every twist of the road.  I kept staring at the little shrines decorated with artificial flowers that marked places where people had died—at least one at each switch-back. 
            "The driver doesn't want to die," Sherrill would have told me, if she'd been conscious.  She always did.
            Finally, still breathing, we reached the white and blue town at the top of the cliffs.  Continuing across the top of the island, past orchards of silvery-green olive trees, we eventually saw the remains of the Minoan city of Akrotiri sprawled beneath protective canopies.  Walking along ancient streets between houses and shops still being excavated, many as tall as three stories, walls decorated with frescoes visible again after four thousand years smothered in ash, we could imagine the people and families who lived here and their horror when the mountain they lived on destroyed itself.  

​            Later, back on the other side of the island, we gazed down again at the Neptune, a toy boat bobbing in the dark water, surrounded by the fleshy earth of the volcano's broken walls.  It had brought us here and would take us to Ephesus and Rhodes and beyond.  We could have walked or ridden donkeys down to the sea, but rode the new funicular, Sherrill and I in the last seat, Simone wedged into the first with an enormously fat man and his tiny wife.
            History and fun and games: the Neptune's staff kept them alternating so no one could be bored.  Daily lectures on upcoming sites, morning gymnastics, Greek dancing lessons, music and dancing most evenings, a Greek Night show with entertainment by the crew, and more.  Every time I walked into the dining room with Simone and Sherrill I felt privileged.  On costume night, Simone disguised herself as a ship's waiter, including red vest and black moustache.   
            One lesson of this trip was that civilizations come and go.  Some people believe that survivors from Akrotiri reached the island of Crete to the south. Whether that's true or not, we were impressed by the partially restored palace complex at Knossos with its confusing maze of rooms.  The ancient city may have lasted for two thousand years, but in the end it collapsed, probably after a series of earthquakes. 

            The vast remains of Roman Ephesus (according to legend, founded by Amazons) in Turkey underlined the lesson: no matter how grand or powerful, nothing was forever.  Much had been uncovered and pieced back together so we got a vivid sense of the ancient city.  Visitors from around the world were maneuvering with their cameras along stone streets and on nearby hills, trying to capture perfect shots of the city—one way, maybe, for it to last a little longer.  When we reached the island of Rhodes a few days later, the magnificent Crusader harbor, medieval fortress, and battlements looked as if they could endure to the end of time, but weren't even a thousand years old, yet. 
            Nothing is forever even though we tell ourselves that it is, will be, can be.  We pretend it is, but know it's not.  The people in our lives aren't forever, either.  They change, become somebody else, turn into memories. 
            "There used to be this little girl who lived with us," Sherrill once said to me.  "She was a cute little thing, but she's gone away and instead we have this young woman that we love, but I miss that little girl, too.  Why can't we have both?" 
            She was right, of course.  We never can keep anyone.  It's as if all of us are made of smoke.  It was strange, hearing Sherrill talk like this.  She was so practical, the sensible one of the two of us.  I'd always been aware that a lot went on in her head, but usually she was private about her thoughts.   
            I think we both felt the same thing years later whenever we looked at our handsome grandson and remembered that this brilliant grown man living his own life once had been a lively toddler.  The process, of course, was gradual, but inevitably we'd be startled by the sudden realization.  Now that Sherrill is gone, I find myself caught between past and present in a different way.  It's sad but also, in its way, appropriate that time refuses to stand still—nor, when we think about it, would we want it to be frozen.  Happiness has its bittersweet moments, too, as life gives with one hand and at the same time takes away with the other.
           Back on the mainland, after saying goodbye to the Neptune at Piraeus, we rode through the Greek countryside, past more silvery olive groves, to Delphi, home of the notorious oracle.  There, people came from around the Mediterranean to see the eternal flame in Apollo's temple, to watch the sacred games (almost as popular as those at Olympia) every four years, and to hear the priestess predict the future through her trance.  Even before this, the mother goddess Gaia was worshiped there.  Walking among the partially restored buildings, I remembered when I talked with a carnival fortune teller when I was a boy.  I wanted to believe in her power, but as she tried to extract bits of information from me to add plausibility to her words, I realized that she was as much of a fake as the others. 
            Epidaurus, home of Greek drama, with its two thousand year-old theatre, was solidly real, though.  Perhaps the most impressive site, however, was the complex at Mycenae, with the imposing Lion Gate and royal tombs shaped like enormous stone beehives.  Although excavations were still in progress, we felt as if we'd fallen backward through time into the world Homer described in The Iliad and The Odyssey.  
            Athens, ancient and modern, brought our adventure to a sedate close, leading us from restaurants in the old Plaka district to the wonders at the Archeological Museum, from the Theatre of Dionysus to the Parthenon and other treasures on the Acropolis.  I don't need to describe these places, but being there, experiencing the feeling of history and past lives, did stir something in us.  Nothing is forever, but does that necessarily matter? 
To be continued....  
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            If you enjoy these posts, please share them with anyone else you think also will find them interesting. 
​

​            Sherrill, my wife of 52 years, and I loved to explore the world together, eventually visiting more than 60 countries and most of the United States.  This is number 21 of a projected series about our lives and travels, many of them with our daughter Simone.  If you've missed any, you'll find them in the Archives sidebar, starting with May 2017.  
 
            "Why don't the three of us do this?"  Sherrill handed me a clipping from her travel files. 
            Her idea was to explore the Greek islands together, along with part of historic mainland Greece, plus Istanbul and ancient Ephesus.
            Remember flights that were comfortable, no matter how long?  Maybe you weren't around in those almost mythical times, when seats were spacious enough, good meals and all beverages were included, and airlines competed to give the best service, but that's what we got from TWA to and from Athens, no upgrade needed.  It was the Athens airport that needed upgrading, but we didn't linger there.
            The port of Piraeus may not have been exactly as we saw it in the movie Never on Sunday in our college days, but it wasn't hard to imagine Melina Mercouri  and her pals cavorting around the docks in their sling-back high heels.  The ship waiting for us, however, was a surprise.  It was supposed to be the French-built Renaissance, but we got a smaller, older ship that had been given a name change to Neptune.  At least, as a good will gesture from the Epirotiki Line, the shore excursions would be free.  

​            Neptune may have loaned his name to our ship, but nevertheless he tormented us with seas that turned our stomachs upside down and made the tenders roll and toss every time we tried to leave the ship.   
            "Unusual weather," the crew told us, but maybe they always said that.
            Anchored in the choppy waters offshore, we had a perfect view of Hydra's crescent-shaped harbor fringed with white buildings under orange tile roofs. We were eager to explore the island, but even the sturdiest crewmen had to struggle to get some of the passengers, their arms, legs, and torsos moving as if disconnected, into the tenders without losing them to the waves.  Eventually, it was our turn.  The island was beautiful, alright, and no cars or motorized vehicles were allowed, only horses and donkeys.  Mostly, I remember the colors: green and blue and white and orange, with red bougainvillea and the yellow of lemon trees.  Mykonos the next day also was beautiful: whitewashed stone cottages, tavernas, and churches, and the beaches for which the island was famous.  Somebody seemed determined to make us relax, whether we wanted to, or not. 
            Delos was more exciting, at least to us.  One of the tenders carried us to this tiny island of the gods, a dry outcropping  that couldn't permanently support a human population, but that had been home for more than one religion, including Gaia, the Great Goddess who reigned supreme before male gods were invented.  Sherrill and Simone de Beauvoir, after whom she named our daughter, no doubt would have agreed that the world was no better off after switching to male deities.  Later, Delos was claimed as the birthplace of twin gods Apollo and Artemis.  

            Hiking around the arid, sun-bleached hills and terraces of this stark UNESCO World Heritage Site, we didn't see why any gods would choose it as home, but their idea of homey probably would've been different than mine.  The widespread remains of shrines and temples showed that it must have been an important religious center for a long time.  We admired the austere beauty of the broken columns, fragments of statues, and mosaics scattered across the rocky landscape, but wouldn't have wanted to try to survive there on our own. 
*           *           *
            "They only had the clothes they were wearing," one of the other passengers told us. 
            A couple on their honeymoon had arrived in Greece without their luggage, which seemed to be on another continent, but nobody was sure which one.  Other passengers were rallying to help them, loaning them whatever they needed to get by.  At midnight, the Neptune entered the narrow passage of the Dardanelles, on the way to Istanbul, where the newlyweds planned to wander through the great bazaar and add to their wardrobe—bargaining for everything, of course.  

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​            Sherrill, my wife, and I were married 52 years, during which we visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States.  (Friday would have been our 53rd anniversary.)  This is number 20 of a projected series about our lives and travels, many of them with our daughter Simone. If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017. I hope you enjoy these glimpses into our lives.  Older posts are about much later travels.
              
               Coping with practical reality isn't much fun, Sherrill and I had discovered yet again.  Lately, we'd been nose to nose with it more than we liked.  Why hadn't we learned useful trades, like roofing or laying carpet, instead of becoming a writer/editor and librarian?  Recently, a little apartment building that we co-owned with friends had needed a lot of work that we either had to do ourselves or pay out money we couldn't afford to get done.  In addition, the library branch in Oakland that Sherrill managed had been broken into and vandalized, windows smashed, Xerox machine destroyed, books and furniture hurled around.  It wasn't the first time, but the worst.
               "I'm getting to know the Oakland police department very well," she told me.   
            Now, however, we were going to get away from hard reality for more than a week.  No more thinking about roofs and carpets or smashed windows and police reports.  Sherrill and Simone and I and two other families were renting a houseboat on Lake Shasta in northern California for a week.  Sherrill and one of our friends bought supplies at the Canned Food Store.  The cans were only slightly dented and most of them still had labels.  We all contributed additional ingredients to round out the menus, as well as an assortment of beverages.  It had taken five years for our three families to coordinate schedules, but now it was happening.   

​          We grownups may have been tobogganing into varying levels of middle age, but we all were determined to be young for this week and the kids were eager to get together again.  Once, we'd all considered forming a commune together.  This was a chance to see how well we'd do living together for just a week.  Inflatable plastic boats, fishing rods, sun block, a stack of paperback books, and plenty of alcohol guaranteed success.  The lake was almost full, the sky was blue, and all we had to do was pack up supplies, drive to the lake, and have a well-earned good time and rest. 
​          "It hasta be Shasta!" the kids sang on the way north.
            The girls did love the lake; they loved splashing in the cold water and spotting curious deer on the shore and whiskered otters in the foamy creeks feeding into the lake.  They loved rowing their plastic boats and fishing for trout and bluegills and watching the clouds of bats that swarmed over the lake at night, but maybe we adults felt the lake's magic even more than the kids. The sun and space and fresh air seemed to peel away the armor encrusted on us by years of hard reality.  We were lucky, we agreed, the weather was perfect—sunny, but not too hot.  Nevertheless, we'd made sure that there was enough refreshment to keep us content, indoors as well as out: a case and a half of bargain champagne and a variety of wines and cocktail ingredients and nibbles to go with it—plus all those meals.
            We had our books and games and I'd brought work that I needed to finish by the time we returned, but we also talked a lot and explored the meandering fingers of the lake.  From time to time, we passed other houseboats, large and small, one on which the sunbathers were as bare as they were tanned.  One steep-sided red-rocked channel shrunk until it wasn't much wider than our houseboat.  Whichever one of us was driving it then turned off the engine and let the boat nudge into the bank, then we leaped off and pounded in stakes and fastened ropes.  Spindly pines leaned over the naked orange earth above the receding waterline.  
            Was it this time or another when the three girls went off in the little plastic boat to explore more of that roaming finger of water?  One time, when they went scouting, we adults were too busy celebrating something—it may have been the eleventh anniversary of somebody's twenty-ninth birthday—to notice how long they'd been gone.  When we did realize the time, we sent off a search party.  Of course, eventually the girls were found, but we had a nervous hour or so first.
            "It hasta be Shasta!" the kids sang.  "It hasta be Shasta!"

​*              *             *
            It wasn't easy during those years for the three of us to get away together, but several months later, Sherrill and Simone flew off again to Honolulu to stay with Pat, Sherrill's mother.  They didn't have any difficulty finding things to do without me.  Pat's condo was small, but it was just three blocks from Waikiki beach.  One day, they went snorkeling at Hanauma Bay, the circular remains of an ancient volcanic eruption.  Many movies had been filmed there, with stars ranging from Elvis to John Wayne.  When Simone told me about it, I did envy her swimming with those multi-colored fish and the other exotic marine life, even friendly turtles.
            Simone also wrote a lot of letters, she admitted, to the young man back in Berkeley that she later married.  After she and Paul graduated from high school, they celebrated with a trip to Europe.  It was a good trip, she said, but they did have their adventures.