Troy’s 2024, chapter 12 (March 17-23)

I remembered it was Saint Patrick’s Day as I woke up Sunday, and I found green. I put on my worn, homey Camp Magruder hoodie with the illustration of the lake and the boathouse. It would do nicely for the occasion, as I made the walk to the dining hall to meet our weekend groups for breakfast. I gave the typical goodbye speeches–the “please show your thanks by picking up and sweeping your cabins,” the “here are ways you can support camp and join us for other good stuff,” and of course, “it has been such a pleasure spending a few days with you.” The kitchen really got into the holiday this year, playing an Irish folk playlist throughout the weekend, and planning a lunch with corned beef and cabbage along with traditional Irish soda bread. I always remember Saint Patrick’s Day, but I often don’t do much thinking about Ireland or Irishy stuff. This time, though, hearing the folk music, eating the food, I thought a lot about the Emerald Isle and how enjoyable it may be to visit there someday. The DNA test I took a while back had me almost 100% coming from Ireland/Britain, and I think often about those experiences people have where they go back to their ancestral homeland for the first time and feel like they’ve been there before. There is the memory of memories in this life, and perhaps there are memories of ones previous, maybe even to come.

I remember Saint Patrick’s each year so well, because it’s the day my friend Mark died back in 2002. Every year, I try to hold some sort of observance of how Mark and his spirit have shaped my life. I can’t always take an entire day for something, but I usually manage to carve away some time to listen to/watch something Mark loved, to record an audio letter, to have a drink with my boy. After bidding our retreat groups goodbye, I built a fire in our outdoor firepit on the deck and sat outside warming one half of myself. I showed Aura a few videos I’ve got on my hard drive with Mark. Because he died before smartphones, there isn’t much video footage of him out there that’s easily attainable, so these 4-5 videos I’ve got are fairly precious, though not of super great quality–just a tiny window to what it was like to be in a room with Mark. After Aura was asleep, I poured a glass of wine for me and poured a healthy sip off the back porch for Mark. I sat out as it got dark, under the stars, and recorded an audio letter, where I basically tried to catch him up on where I’m at these days, what I wish he could join me for, how I hope I get to see him again someday. Buzzing from a big glass of wine, I settled in front of the TV and turned on The Big Lebowski. I giggled throughout the movie, quoting most of it in my head and under my breath. I dragged myself to bed late, full of memories, nostalgia, and thoughts about the universe.

I wouldn’t say I was brought down by spending this time thinking about Mark, but I was definitely in a reflective place during the week. I felt a sort of zen-like peace inside, but I moved through the world a little less playfully, a little more reserved. I feel like I was brought to the balance within life–the joy and pain, the knowledge of blessings and losses simultaneously. I was able to feel gracious for the bigness of all I was experiencing, for this life I’ve been able to live and all the incredible connections I’ve made over the years. I was also recognizing the pain living beings go through and how that can make life so challenging even in the midst of blessings. I don’t know how much I truly experience the depth of all this, but I feel sometimes like some part of me has been places maybe I haven’t been, maybe there’s something that’s been passed on to me or some memory I don’t exactly have from this lifetime that is held in some unconscious part of me. Maybe it’s just some form of empathy or imagination, but I also like the idea that maybe I have connections beyond this life on this plane I’m currently occupying. It helps give credence to me talking to Mark, wishing for an answer, to pray to God hoping this binds us in some deeper way. That maybe our lives reach across time and space in ways we just are built to totally perceive.

I wanted to get out this week and use my body. I want to get strong again, to adventure and feel a little more physically alive. I wonder if maybe I came down with some sort of stealthy bug, because I felt really wiped in the first half of the week. It could have been the fatigue of my first big weekend camp hosting gig of the season couple with my attempt to run a few days prior. It could have been my late-night shenanigans with Mark. Whatever it was had me tired in a way I couldn’t easily resist. I took the afternoon off Monday, and there was a favorable enough surf report to get out on the ocean. I haven’t been surfing in months, and I could really feel the longing each time I’d seen the ocean the past few weeks. When I got home, though, it felt like too much to even pack up my gear and get a wetsuit on. I told the girls I was going to take a short nap. Maybe if I got a quick power nap in, I’d wake up and feel refreshed enough to throw on a wetsuit and at least surf at the beach near camp. I laid down and went sleep immediately. I was woken by the girls coming to check on me, and I felt a little annoyed at how they were coming in just as I had fallen asleep. Turns out, though, I had been asleep for about 3 hours. They were checking to see if I was going to eat dinner before Aura’s bedtime.

I shook the bug mid-week and felt alive enough to stay awake through an entire day. Thursday, I trekked up to Astoria to catch dinner and a movie, which I haven’t been able to do in quite a while. I made it to Fort George and ordered the hot molasses wings along with a coconut chocolate cookie stout. I people-watched while picking my wings apart and savoring the drink. I finished with enough time to drop into Buoy Beer to sample some barrel-aged barley wine whose name is so long I can’t remember it. I made it to the Columbian Theater right at show time, got a medium popcorn, and found a seat up front. I watched a foreign film called The Monk and the Gun a foreign film set in Bhutan that felt like passage to a foreign land. I felt transported to a different place, a different way of looking at the world, and a story that defied my guesses at where the plot was going, because I am so used to the way the Western world tells a story. I felt so content with the evening, leaving the movie entertained, stimulated, and full of good food and drink.

I finished work up Friday in the early afternoon. I put the surfboard on the Civic and peeled on my wetsuit. I wasn’t sure how well I or my body would remember surfing with it being some time since I paddled out. The parking lot was pretty empty at Short Sand Beach with the drizzly weather probably keeping many people away. There were only about 5 people out in the water, and I quickly realized it was mostly because the waves were garbage. They were slushy with very few cleanlines. I stayed in the white water, because I wasn’t sure of my stamina, but also because the waves that were connecting looked a smidge to large for my blood. I certainly had enough to get up and catch a ride on, but the rides were not the greatest quality. I warmed up quickly, but also tired quickly. I did completely remember how to surf, though. The pop-up is locked into my body’s memory in a way I don’t think I’ll soon forget.

A few times that afternoon, I looked up at the rock cliffs surrounding the cove, the tall evergreens rising up all around, and the big gray ocean coming in to meet the shore. I know this setting so well at this point–it is likely the place I visit most here at this home of mine for now nine years. Still I try to see it as often as I can with fresh eyes, to be in awe of it the way I might have been the first time I visited Oregon. To be in awe the way someone hundreds or thousands of years before me might have felt seeing it in all its wildness. I try to take in something of all the disparate peoples who have made it to this ocean. The surfers decades back, the travelers on ships, the first people. I wonder if I could take in some piece of the feelings they had too. What would happen if a person like me tried to take all that in at once? What if something of me might stay here for all time too, there to swim and swirl around with the ocean tides, with every bit of life caught in the flow. Could I remember and be remembered in that way. Could I be and have memory that goes on forever?