HOME FOR THE HOLIDAY!

Thanksgiving is my day.

Here I am back in Bakersfield, arriving from Hilo, Hawaii on a Quixotic (and more exactly, chaotic) journey only made possible through the kindness of a number of friends.

The emotions are nearly overpowering; chief among them is the gratitude I feel at the opportunity to be here again.

I’ve been in the jungle for six months, in very primitive conditions, and the prospect of actually sleeping mosquito-free on a mattress now has an allure comparable to ecstasy.

Even better, there are no roosters crowing the entire night long. God bless you, Zoning Laws.

Of course, I suppose all these powerful feelings are magnified by 3 hours sleep in two days, and all the crazy and wonderful things that happened on my way back home, most of which I’ll put down for you in a couple days.

I just can’t do it all justice today; I’m floating too high up to write coherently.

But in brief (well, for long-winded me, anyway):

I arrived mid-afternoon after catching the Amtrak bus in LA’s famous Union Station, sat with eyes glued to the window drinking in scenery I thought I might never again gaze upon, wheeled a hundred pounds of luggage onto the good ol’ GET bus when we hit Bakersfield, and then dragged it a mile or so up Union Ave. as cars honked every few minutes at the spectacle.

When I saw my childhood home, I promptly burst into tears.

It’s still there! I sighed my happiest sigh.

The anxiety I’d packed into my gut dissolved into an indescribable feeling of joy, and I knelt down and kissed the dusty driveway.

And wouldn’t you know it – Bakersfield dirt still tastes just like I remembered it.

Part of the emotional wallop is due to lack of rest, but more accurately, the opportunity to see my daughters again, on a holiday like this one, moves me beyond my capacity to express it. So the tears…

I’m here a little temporarily, for a few good reasons relating to family and health; if you’re reading this you may already know about the growth in my tear duct making life a little miserable.

Having survived a pretty stiff bout of throat cancer, I can’t ignore weird health issues that don’t resolve themselves, and the medical system on the Big Island is rural in its sophistication and difficult to navigate in a timely manner.

So I will ask my doctors Patel and Trang, two of the men who helped pull me away from certain death, to give me their informed opinions on what to do. Then I will soon travel to Northern California to help my beloved cousin Jan cope with the sudden death of Rich, her husband and friend of many years.

Rich suffered a massive heart attack at a sports event and slumped in the stands. Everyone thought he had fallen asleep. He had, however, taken the short way Home.

Rich was a musician, like me, and when he heard I had moved to Hawaii to recuperate, and had gone without a guitar, he sent one to me, a sweet little acoustic-electric that he packed with a bunch of strings and picks. When it arrived I sat and played it in the post office parking lot, weeping shamelessly.

I recently learned he was reading my posts out loud to friends and family. He got it. He WAS it.

Rich owned a Pet Shop/Feed Store, and was well-known for extending generous credit to folks with animals to feed and no ready cash to buy the feed with, and his death Saturday night was a genuine shock to his little community.

My cousin Jan is at a real loss, as she loved him so dearly, but the details of such a business are somewhat foreign to her.

She’s a jewelry and makeup artist of the highest caliber, so her understandings lie in quarters unrelated to hay cubes or rabbit pellets.

When I get there we will try to untangle the strands of his business affairs; as is often the case in sudden deaths, he died with a lot of important things he kept only in his memory.

Jan is raising a couple grand-kids that needed close attention, and Rich has been a great substitute dad to them. His absence is hard to take.

But today, I am headed on foot up the Panorama Bluffs to be Dad to my own grown daughters, most of whom are at home with their mom today; this is only possible because of the generous hearts of angels here on earth.

As I said at the top, Thanksgiving is my day. Sometimes I think I am the luckiest guy in the world, but I know that in reality, I have been the beneficiary of many loving hearts and remarkable kindness.

So Happy Thamksgiving to one and all, as I try to count my innumerable blessings, and contemplate how to best pass those blessings on to others. I’m pretty sure that’s what blessings are meant for.

You guys are my very real heroes, and I thank you from my soul for the happiness that is mine today as I walk the old familiar path to be with my family.

Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.