Turning 50! (Celebrate with me)

50! Milestone birthday for sure.

For years, I was fishing on a boat somewhere on my birthday. I was lucky when friends planned a celebration for me.

This year, I am home. With my now adult daughter. Getting ready to switch things up a bit. It is time to get the party started!

50, baby, and I ain’t sitting on my hands this year doing nothing!

Our family fishing boat, the Saint Jude, is heading in and it looks like my husband and son will be home tomorrow too. I have not seen either of them for weeks. That is the nature of us being a commercial fishing family. They will not only be able to celebrate my 50th birthday with me tomorrow, on August 23, but my daughter’s 18th birthday too!

As a fishing family, our important events tend to get celebrated in a cluster fashion. When everyone is together.

Today, truth be told, I started off wanting to get the house cleaned up more for my husband’s arrival. Boring. Conventional. I chose to write instead. I told my husband this on the phone today and he gave his blessing. He said he’d pitch in around home when he got here. I like that. It seems to mean our marriage is in a good place. That we have both learned that there is much more to life than a perfectly clean house.

I also want to spoil myself, one last day, before my son is home to get ready for the school year. When my husband goes back fishing, when the weather settles down, I will be seasonally single-parenting once again. Granted, it is much easier now than when the kids were younger and a big outing was a trip to the grocery store to buy diapers.

These days, I have a lot more time to myself. It is a transitional time, ripe with possibility.

I want to live the rest of my life with little or no regret.

Turning 50 gives me a chance to reflect on how to go about this.

Things I regret NOT doing in my first fifty years of life:

1. Not working as a Registered Nurse for at least awhile. Why? 2 years of pre-nursing college classes and 2 years of Nursing School is a lot of time commitment to have never worked in a field. The money was good, for that stage of my life when I was in my early 20’s, and it would have built confidence. I also learned it is not good to let myself get talked out of doing something that is in my best interests. It is a trap for letting resentment build. About 11 years ago, I took a refresher course to try to renew my license. The field had changed so much, by then, that I could not do this. So I will remain mandatorily retired from professional nursing and lose the resentment.

2. Not paying automobile insurance for 6 months while commercial fishing when first married. Why? Insurance companies frown on this even when a car is not being used and it is tricky getting reinsured.

3. Not hiring a housekeeper more when the kids were younger? Why? I would have had more quality time to do more with the children when they were younger and have been way less tired. The quality of our life would have been better and we would have had more people over to the house. I could also have used other skills I possess for doing things that would have had a more positive impact in my life and that of others. Like writing.

Things I don’t regret:

1. Supporting my husband with his passion of commercial salmon trolling. Why? It makes him happy.

2. Having a family home built before the kids were born. 27 years ago. Why? At one time the 2,500 sq. feet and over an acre of property seemed too small. We have used every inch of space in the house. We have had lovely celebrations. Even through tough times during the recession, while dealing with some expensive medical issues when salmon seasons were drastically cut back for 5 years in WA, CA, and ORE, the house provided sanctuary. I was 22-years-old when we had our home built. It is fun to share.

3. Owning the Saint Jude with my husband. Why? Taking a baby fishing on a commercial fishing boat for 5-6 months is challenging. The Saint Jude has seen us through some tough weather and tough times. She is all aluminum and easy to maintain. She is also lot of fun and I can tell our son enjoys her a lot.

4. Having pets. Why? They keep me humble. We will also remember them long after the objects we own, including our boat and home, become no longer useful to us.

5. Having kids. Why? They keep me humble. They also, just by their very existence, force me to grow. To live better, learn more, be more. I want for them to be happy.

6. Raising kids in Sequim, WA. Why? We are rural and there is an abundant amount of natural beauty here. A lot of people at the stores and other places know my kids, remember them when they were in preschool, ask me how Al is doing when he is away fishing. Folks trade us for fish sometimes. This is how we get our Christmas tree, some professional services, sometimes other food for our table. There is a lot of heart in our small community and it is close to my hometown, Port Angeles.

7. Getting help when needed. Why?  I have been fortunate to find out fairly early in  life that is important to not get run down too far. Not good for self to do that, not good for family. Self-care is important.

8. Listening to others. Why? My current world is fairly small. I still stay at home a lot with the kids especially when Al is away fishing. This is changing once again as they are growing older and getting more independent. I want to broaden my world view through more travel, reading, education, physical activity, socializing.

We are all different. Some things we all have in common. I like getting to know people and trying to find the common ground.

To get started, on my Facebook page today, I asked folks to share the title of a favorite book they have read, and/or favorite place they have traveled, and/or their favorite swimming pool or ocean they have swam in, and/or the most radically silly thing they have ever done.

Here is what I have to share with you so far:

My favorite book: Trinity by Leon Uris

Best place I’ve visited: Alaska and traveling by boat up and down the Inside Passage

Best Swim: Lituya Bay, Alaska

Most radically silly thing I’ve done: Swam in Lituya Bay, Alaska – more than once on different days – it’s really cold!

What is your favorite book? Most awesome place you have ever visited? The favorite pool or ocean in which you have ever swam?

What is the most radically silly thing you have ever done?

Are you living the life you want to be living? I’d love to hear!

 

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Where Is Home?

 

Notes from a fish wife asking the cosmic question: Where is home?

Fishing Season 2014 – Week 2

My husband, Al, is out on his second fishing trip. As he said he planned to be. Still, I got up early this morning, made a quick cup of instant coffee, and dialed the boat cell phone. Just in case.

I love talking with Al, about fishing, in the morning. When the kids are still in bed. On week-ends, when there is not the rush of getting breakfast and everything ready for a day of school. If I’m really lucky, he is actually fishing and I’ll talk a King Salmon into biting for him. That’s just boat talk and fishing lingo. Radio chatter. It can’t really happen quite that way. It’s just how fishing partners speak to one another. Even long-distance from hundreds of miles away, I feel as if I am in that wheelhouse, watching a spring pump back up near the trolling pole. Listening to the cowbell ring. Hoping for a clatter, where more fish bite all at once.

This morning though, I quietly sipped the coffee made too strong, and thought about where the boat was. Robotic automatic voice mail messages do not make for good conversation.  The view out to the backyard, of a newly leafed-out Katsura tree, a freshly scrubbed deck, and snow-topped Olympic Mountains gives way to the sun-kissed sparkle of a blue sea. In my mind.

For years, I intentionally kept my mind off of the boat.

Instead, I took college classes, finished an associate degree and picked up a Bachelor’s degree. I volunteered here and there and I worked part-time. Some of the time. I contemplated careers that would work with Al’s fishing.

The one career that seemed to make the most sense would have been nursing. I had the associate degree. I just needed to refresh to reactivate my license.

That would not happen. The book studying went fine. The clinical evaluation in Spokane was okay. The actual working with clinical evaluation in a hospital was a dismal failure. 20 years of not working in that field was too much. There was no way I would be able to be competent without going through an entire nursing program again.

I continued to focus on raising the kids at home. Devoted more time to marketing fish. (You can check out our fishing family facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/DungenessSeaworks  )  That is where things have been for awhile.

Til last year. When I was on the boat. For a couple weeks. It all came back!

There was no feeling of incompetency. No lag in decision-making. It was almost as if I had never left.

Trying to remember dozens of medications and nursing procedures compared to remembering how to land a King Salmon. How to put the auto-pilot on u-turn. How to clean a fish well enough for the white tablecloth market.

It was easy to tell where I have spent most of my life. Those that have known me better in recent years would perhaps think that I have been taking a back seat to the fishing and  embrace being a stay-at-home mom, a “seasonal single-parent”, for the best part of my life. They are partially right.

The other best part of my life has been on the deck of a boat. As a commercial fisherman’s wife, it is true, I’ve been “seasonally single parenting” for the most part of the past 15 years.

Before that, though, I fished. A lot.

Starting off as a boat kid/deckhand at 12-years-old, I fished at least part of every salmon trolling season (except two, as a kid, when I needed to have and to recover from bone surgeries) until I was pregnant with my first-born. At 31-years-old. Even then I fished up until 4 weeks before the due date! After my  daughter came along, she and I spent two full seasons on board the boat.

I came to appreciate the nuances of fishing and boat life better than I have ever come to understand full years on land in the past 16 years or so. 

Part of that is my fault. It is easy to get addicted to the sea. To the thrum of sea life that is everywhere. Birds, whales, dolphins, otters. To get used to the relative isolation from everyday worries. To enjoy the comforts of having another adult around, most of the time, to pitch in with the work. To waking and working beside my husband, every day.

To me, that is home. “Home (Where I Wanted To Go)” – Coldplay

 

 

Home, here on land, is something that has always made me feel a little uneasy. Especially when Al is at sea, without me.  I feel a little like a fish out of water. I have to make it a point to focus on everyday tasks. How to interact with others. How to keep track of time.

This is seldom the case on the boat. Time has little meaning throughout the average fishing day. It starts at sunrise and ends at sunset. Mostly. Everything seems to fall into a rhythm. The primary focus is to catch fish!

Folks that hang out on the docks, also, seem to understand that people that have been at sea are not often particularly articulate.

In my experience, we are all a little quirky.

Quirkiness is hard to adjust for on land. Even the standard for personal hygiene has a different protocol for my home on land compared to the boat life. If I don’t shower for a few days, here, people will notice. On a boat, it simply means a freezer trip has recently begun. No one cares! It is more important to conserve water to make it through what could be a two week trip or longer.

Still, I am grateful for being able to spend so much time with the kids on terra firma. To step out on a warm cedar deck with bare feet. To feel warm sand, at a beach, between my toes. To admire the colorful flowers planted around the house and to watch one of my children water them.  To walk with a friend who is only a phone call and a few minutes car drive away.  To smell the freshly cut grass. To hear the breeze rustling the new Spring leaves in the trees. To help my son with his homework in a quiet room with every conceivable comfort close at hand.  To watch old McGyver episodes with the kids on a Saturday night. To shower with plenty of hot water and freshly laundered towels that don’t smell even a little bit of boat.

These are privileges in my life as a land-lubber.

I’ve made a bet with Al, for the past two Springs, on where the best fishing spots would be for the King Salmon openers. I can no longer keep my mind off the boat. All those years of fishing experience seem to be roaring to the surface from some latent part of my being. When Al tells me where he thinks the fleet is catching the most fish, I am rarely surprised when it turns out to be true. Often, it is where I told him where I thought the fish would be.

Maybe I was not meant to spend a lot of time working in the halls of a hospital or nursing home. Maybe things have unfolded exactly the way they should be unfolding. Maybe I am meant to fish. With my husband.

My husband, wherever he is.

“Home is wherever I’m with you” – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

 

 

Singing, ” Home is when I’m alone with you”.

 

Where is home for you? Is it where you want to be?  Do you have more than one home? Do you imagine living somewhere else?