The Waiting Time

What do you call that time when you’ve made a decision but you can’t yet act on it or start it? When there is a big change coming, and all you want to do is fast-forward to that change but can’t? When you’re stuck squarely in between the past and the future and are too impatient to be fully present in the present? The In-Between Time? No Man’s Land? Purgatory? Hell for Type-A Personalities? The Impatient’s Person’s Patience Training? Life? I’ve just settled on The Waiting Time.

Roasting in the 100 degree heat of Bahia Concepcion and overwhelmed with Dylan’s erratic behavior, we made the decision to head south to La Paz quickly, plug into 50-amp power at a marina so we could use our air conditioning, and send Dylan home with his Pops, who offered to come down and pick him up. These were all desperate measures, none of which were in the budget, and all of which were the best decisions we could have made.

We tied up in a slip at Marina de La Paz, promptly turned on the a/c, and headed out to Harker Board Co to treat ourselves to IPAs and wood-fired pizzas. The best medicine! So we were now in La Paz for a whole month before our departure instead of the week we had planned. Andy, Demon the Cat, and I would fly north together, while Tom would await his friend Ian from Edmonton who was going to help deliver the boat north to Puerto Peñasco at the north end of the Sea of Cortez (we needed to take the boat out of hurricane territory per our insurance requirements and per common sense).

The first two weeks in La Paz were among the most relaxed I’ve been in years. We slowly did a little work. We slowly ticked off a few items from the to-do list. We took naps. We did puzzles. We ate amazing food. We strolled the malecon in the cooler evening temperatures with hundreds of other La Pazians. We huddled together in the functional a/c of the aft cabin until we got the forward unit fixed and had our run of a cool boat.

But as time went on, we began to get impatient. Andy and I were impatient to get on our plane back to Washington. Tom was impatient to nail down a temporary job and to get going on the big boat delivery north. We were all impatient to get out of the heat and to get started on our brief land-based life, with high hopes that it would be a chance for us all to reset. We were ready for the change to happen, change that had to wait on those pesky airplane ticket reservations. And so we waited impatiently, filling up our days with projects, puzzles, and a whole lot of perspiration.

Dylan, Andy, Demon, and I arrived back back in Anacortes weeks before Tom. In between nailing down schedules for events at the library, the Pacific Science Center, the Skagit Children’s museum, and swim and gymnastics lessons, I slept. A lot. It was the college spring break effect; you work really hard for months, head back home to spend time with your expectant parents, but all you can do is catch a cold and spend the entire week asleep on the living room couch. We had arrived, but we hadn’t really gotten into any sort of rhythm. We were still waiting.

We waited for Tom to finish his delivery, for the boat to be hauled out and decommissioned. For Tom – Daddy – to get home. Home to Anacortes, at least, while our home on the water waits for us in Mexico until cooler weather moves in.

Tom is home, and now its his turn to sleep a lot. And we’re still not done waiting. We’re waiting for Tom’s job to start. We’re waiting to get settled. We’re waiting for all the answers to how to raise spirited children without going insane. And we’re already waiting for that time when we return to Korvessa. When we not only return to Mexico for some new adventures, but when we embark on the next huge leg of our journey across the equator and south Pacific islands and atolls. A waiting time that requires research, preparation, planning, persistence, and a few really deep breaths. And for that waiting time, I am grateful and patient.

Informational Addendum: Hurricane season in the eastern north Pacific officially starts May 15 and ends November 15, but most hurricanes come through in August and September. Our insurance requires that we be north of a certain latitude during this season. We could have gone to Guaymas or San Carlos, but they still get hit by hurricanes periodically, so we made the decision to take the boat as far north in the Sea of Cortez as possible to be out of hurricane zone.

Tom has secured a job that will start in a week and help us replenish the cruising kitty. We are settled in my parents’ house, which we will keep an eye on while they continue their own travels. We will spend longer than expected back in Anacortes not only in order to earn back some of the money we’ve spent this year, but also because we have no intention of returning to Mexico until the temperatures have dropped back down to bearable in November. For my part, I plan to manage the kids, relax if I can, hopefully publish an article or two, and continue to work on the book that is beginning to write itself. Okay, books don’t write themselves, but I can at least be proud of the measly 1,500 characters that have made their way onto page, awaiting more time and inspiration.

We’ll also get Tom to the keyboard soon to retell his own stories of fishing, boat maintenance, and captaining, some of which have happy endings and some of which climax in strong desires to burn down the boat. They are stories he can can narrate far better than I; I just need to force the keyboard into his busy fingers, or at least put a tape recorder under his chin.