Tad Williams

My unmedicated self being once upon a time in a free-flowing panic about a family vacation of any kind, my better-living-through-chemistry self is these days in a happier place to prepare for a road trip with Tad and the kids. Besides, I love their company. So I'm not too haunted by ghost of vacations past when we set out on our road trip from our home in the Bay Area, despite having to tread lightly for the previous two days in order not to rile them.

We're going to a rental house my in-laws have taken in the San Juan Islands, in Washington State. Our first day is up through northern CA and I do something that I love to do in America, namely, watch the endless vistas go by, and dream that I am flying through them. I find it hypnotic. The children are having a great time – they're so happy to be out on the road with us. Also, Tad's bought 'em a DVD player for in the car. Plus earphones. Tad and I get to play music for ourselves and in peace, apart from occasionally being yelled at to turn the music down. When I was a kid my parents yelled at me to turn the music down, and now I'm a parent, my kids yell at me to turn the music down. I'm proud of that.

Tad's driving fast – really rather fast. He vents a lot about the other drivers on the road. It makes me a bit nervous. If driving styles were a condiment, Tad would be a hot n sour chilli sauce. He assures me he's just venting, and he tells me to tell him whenever I want him to slow down or re-pace his own reactions. It's reassuring, and I trust him. On the 199 between Crescent City and the 5, on the morning of the second day, we're traveling behind an RV that's on Utah time. (A family joke, to do with my prejudices and Tad's criminal doppelganger who lives in Utah and who trips us up every time we go through customs. No – this one's a writer – he's never been to Utah – really really!!!) Much of the 199, with its INCREDIBLE scenery, through mountain gorge after mountain gorge, is a single, no-passing lane. And it twists and turns like flung spaghetti. We come to a stretch with good visibility ahead, and Tad speeds up and starts to pass the RV. Then we see there's work on the road up ahead, so Tad drops back and we go back to being law-abiding drivers. When we pass the workers in their orange safety vests, one, a woman, shakes her head at us like she's a math teacher and we're 14 years old. With my shoulders I give her - But we didn't do it...

Once into Oregon, the ghosts of vacations past are with me once more, crowding me in, poking me in my stomach and my mind. The small towns we go through scare me greatly. I have to breathe my way through a certain persistent panic. Besides being a chronically restless person, I'm porous too, and take much of my sense of self from the place where I'm at. I can relax some in the large open spaces, although the gray skies of Oregon are hard going. Portland intrigues me, and by the time we get to the Olympia - Tacoma - Seattle area, I can breathe a little more easily – it reminds me of the Bay Area, where I am so comfortable, amidst the cultural and scientific achievements of Stanford and Berkeley, the history and verve of sexy San Francisco, and the pacey thrilling business world of Silicon Valley. I guess one of the Russian Dolls inside of me is a CalGal. Hmm.

Somewhere in the Olympia region, on the freeway, things break down in the car. Tad's wanting to listen to a Cale-Eno album he loves – but the kids are yelling about who owns what headphones – and the traffic here is very slow compared to everywhere else, or so it seems... There is much shrieking and things have gotten to quite an emotional pitch when behind us the blue flashing lights start.

Why are we stopping! yell the miscreants in the back seats. Daddy's about to get a ticket, I say. They're thrilled, in their punkish fashion.

Tad is so sweet to the cop. We're all mutually ashamed. Turns out Olympia freeway speed limits are pretty slow – 60 mph. And Tad was doing 75 plus weaving around a bit. I wouldn't advocate for the speed limits being any different. But on a day when Tad has discovered he's only 4 years off being eligible for the Denny’s Senior Specials, it kind of feels like Deb n Tad senior specials to be getting a ticket for speed. We giggle our way to Seattle, this time driving by the rules. Since there are cops all over the place (we finally notice), sweeping up speeding drivers like they're netting goldfish from a tank in a pet store, it's the only thing to do.

This is from woods-bum on LiveJournal – he has kindly let me post it here. The Ithaca he refers to is Ithaca, NY.

*

i had a very, very weird experience tonight.

i'm reading this book series called "otherland" by tad williams (it's really good, obviously, since i'm still up reading it) and i'm up ungodly late hooked on it. i'm reading this part where an aboriginal character is telling a story about the Dreamtime, and the magical powers that went along with it. anyways, it was nearing midnight, and the air is all thick and muggy with the heat. suddenly i realize i'm hearing flute music coming in through my window, like wooden flute music right out of some backwater third world village or something.

my housemates are asleep. the entire neighborhood is asleep. i didn't want to wake up my housemates, but i was high on eight hundred pages of science fiction and also dying of curiosity, so i climbed out my bedroom window into the midnight air under the full moon and snuck out across my lawn barefoot.

the flute music was coming from just down the street, and i could see a little bit of light coming from the back yard of an old man who lives on the corner. feeling like an absolute creeper, tiptoeing barefoot across my neighbor's blackened lawns at midnight under the full moon, i climbed up into a willow tree between yards in order to get a better view.

the old man was out in his backyard with his dog, this big wolfish shepardy mutt of questionable origin, and some other man i'd never seen before, and they had started a small fire. they were sitting across from each other, one man singing in a language i'd never heard and the other playing an honest to god wooden flute. and i was perched barefoot in a willow tree on the edge of the lawn. i sat there and listened to them and completely lost track of time; eventually the fire died down, the song ended, and they went back inside. i climbed down out of the tree, snuck back across two lawns and through our hedge, and back in through my bedroom window.

and i looked at the clock, and it's now a quarter to three. i was just sitting in a tree in the middle of the night for nearly three hours. what. the. hell.

if i didn't have tree bark in my hair, i'd be willing to say i dreamed the whole thing.

*

I liked this because I did something very similar once, in St Ives in Cornwall, namely, fall in love with a beautiful piece of music (this being the 70s, it was a synthesizer version of something by Debussy), follow it to its origin, and sit in an odd place for hours listening. Actually it was someone’s doorstep, and they not only didn’t invite in my entranced teen self, but they shut the door behind me! Brit meanies, that’s what they were. It didn’t matter, however. The things itself, the entire experience, was just magical.

And now I’m especially happy this happened for woods-bum whilst he was entranced reading Otherland!