The Cost of Love

For this morning’s breakfast I carefully prepared the worst pancakes ever. I guess a camp stove just ain’t ideal for such an undertaking, though I’d even brought a griddle. I created misshapen blobs that were charred in the center and gooey at the edges. Not a big hit. Into the trash they went.

Despite our reluctance to spend more time in the car, that seemed the most promising option. Off we went, aiming southwest toward the coast on an incredibly winding forested road. The speed limit, absurdly, was 50 mph. I drove at half that, for safety and to spare Ember’s sensitive system the effects of twisting curves and constant braking. Naturally, as usual I gave her a Dramamine well before we left.

All was fine until partway into our journey.

To back up…

Ember has been having sleepovers with me—from one to ten nights, including the time I took her East with me—for a few years. We’ve always had a blast and there were never any problems.

About three years ago, Eleni and Co. moved to Chico, both out of necessity (Oakland is way too expensive) and because they’d found an old house they loved. It was then that Em’s and my farewells became painful. She would cry for hours or longer after we separated.

Since the start of the pandemic, things have gotten even trickier. She’s begun to experience significant anxiety as the time approaches for us to go our own ways. I well remember her first debilitating episode of despair. It was at a nice Chico AirBnB with a spiral staircase up to a loft, where we’d stayed for four nights. As she stood at its foot shortly before we were to leave, she was suddenly overcome not only with grief but with physical distress—nausea and rapid heartbeat—at the thought of my imminent departure. She felt so horrible that for 15 minutes all she could do was to curl up in a ball on the floor by the toilet whimpering and fighting the urge to be sick. I will never go to that AirBnB again because of this memory.

Recently she decided that all this is so unpleasant and scary that she no longer wants to visit me in Albany.

And now, for the first time, she’s started to get bitterly homesick at the prospect of being away from her immediate family. 

It’s all so hard for her and I don’t know how to help her. Neither does Eleni, who has been looking into ways to give her tools to help her cope. My heart breaks for the complicated little girl. She loves her parents, she loves me, and in an ideal world we’d all live in the same place. I visit as often as I can, in part to try to keep the absences relatively short, and of course also to see the rest of my beloved family there: my firstborn, my goofy young grandson, the new baby, and J-Bird.

Back to my current story: as we wound through the forest, suddenly Ember started thinking about my going home in two days, and once again experienced her crushing grief and nausea, feeling sicker and sicker by the moment, likely a combination of the swerves and the sorrow. It was fortunate that I’d stuffed emetic bags into my glove compartment before the trip. Before I could find a safe place to pull over, she needed one. And then the homesickness full-on kicked in. All she wanted was to be at her house with her parents. She was inconsolable for maybe twenty awful minutes. I comforted and reassured her as best I could. After a brief stop in a turnout, we continued on our way toward the shore.

And then at last, the moment she caught sight of the ocean, she was okay again. 

We found the entrance to foggy Westport-Union Landing State Beach and walked down toward the water. I’ve always loved little streams that cut through the sand on their way to the sea.

Em played chicken with the rising tide.

She made an effort to gather stranded mollusks and return them to the tide, collected shells and feathers, and seemed intrigued by the water rushing toward her and retreating.

And then we worked on a sandcastle that had a square moat.

In all, we spent about an hour and half there, taking a final look around before turning back toward the redwoods.

Near Leggett, on the route toward our site, we saw signs for the “World Famous Drive-Thru Tree.” How could we resist? We pulled up to the entrance station where an old guy asked for our ten dollars. Ten dollars? That seemed a bit steep, so I inquired about what we got for that. “Well, you drive along this pretty road through the woods, and then you reach the Chandelier Tree and then you come to a picnic area with a gift shop and everything.”

Since I wasn’t interested in gift shops or picnic areas or a road through a small patch of woods, I wondered was it still ten bucks just to drive through a tree? Yup. 

Oh, why not, we thought. I paid up. He insisted we’d made a good decision. So off we went through 50 or 100 feet of tree-lined driveway before arriving at the conifer of legend. I squeezed my car through with nary a thrill of excitement. But since I’d paid good money for this, I stopped to document our passage. You can see that Em is just as entranced as I was.

More dollars down the drain.

Once at Richardson Grove again, of course we had more exploring to do. Back to the river for some final rock-skipping.

From there, it was into the woods again, this time further up the Toumey Trail than before.

Soon we reached a seemingly endless series of slippery switchbacks. She bounded up while I dutifully trudged along behind. But when the trail narrowed to a thin gash on a precipitous and slippery hillside, I insisted on turning back, though she was ready to keep at it. She nimbly hopped back down the trail. I followed, doing everything in my power not to slide all the way down on my flat butt.

After dinner, at dusk, we took one final walk not far from our campsite for a last look at the big trees. 

A third campfire entertained us for a while, until bedtime. 

I hope for sufficient sleep before tomorrow’s long drive.