West Coasting

Phase 1…

Last month, my friends from high school and I gathered to Ramble™; this time in Oregon. Our first Ramble was in 1997, and we’ve done it every other year since. That’s 15 Rambles over 30 years.

We arrived in Portland. We spent 2 days getting food and gear and putzing around. Then we got on the river in canoes and made our way down the Willamette. The river was flying from spring melt off, so we got to our site in less than 2 hours. We beached the canoes, spent an hour unloading all the supplies, set up our tents, and for the next 48 hours we really didn’t venture more than 100 yards.

We’d wake up one by one and slowly collect around the fire pit. We’d drink coffee, wrapped in blankets and hoodies. Eventually, Chief would make breakfast, chorizo and scrambled eggs on tortillas. We’d clean up, drink more coffee, switch out of our sweatshirts as the sun grew warm. We’d move the chairs over to a spot by the river and hang out there a while. We had icy Rainer Lagers and they went down cold and easy. No rush.

Before long the sun would be touching the treetops. We’d get our warm gear back on and leisurely start the fire, sliding in closer as it got darker. Maybe get dinner working. Then sip beers and bullshit until we were ready to turn in.

And then a few days later, we paddled out, unloaded our stuff and went back to Portland. We went to a couple of waterfalls along the Columbia Gorge. We went to the hotel where The Shining was filmed. But all of it low key.

When we were in high school it was fun to do everything together. Especially once we could drive. Run an errand. Go to a basketball game. Come over and watch TV. All of it new and fun and novel and joyful. To this day when I think of Binghamton, where we grew up, I light up because I loved it so much. And the first few Rambles had that euphoria. Everything was new; we were young and brimming with excitement. Excited to share and connect and compare and spark.

But they changed. Our lives got filled with wives and kids and jobs, and Rambler trips became a much-needed outlet for adventure. We went winter camping in the Adirondacks, backpacked in Utah, hut-to-hut mountain biking in Colorado. We were free and had to make the most of every moment.

This trip…we sat in a field and listened to old, weathered country. We canoed, but didn’t really like it. We liked the field. We liked the solitude. We liked the moments of intimacy and the howling roars of unfiltered laughter.

The afternoon before we left, Hal and I spent an hour running errands. We got a few missed food items, and he returned a tent he’d bought. We just shuffled around town, talking about nothing in particular. And for some reason that hour is a highlight for me. Perhaps we’ve come full circle where just being together is fun again. Perhaps it’s less about doing something together and more about just being together. Maybe we have more to offer at this stage of our lives. Maybe we’re just quieter and more in the moment. We know what’s out there and we don’t have to rush to grab it.

We watched a movie our last night. That would have been unthinkable in previous years. But on our final night together we got takeout, opened the last remaining beers, and sat quietly around Ford vs Ferrari.

The next morning everyone was out early. I drove the van to the airport, switched to a rented jeep, and headed south for the second phase of the journey.

Phase 2…

I drove south across Oregon and into California. I climbed Klamath Point, scored a permit for the Tall Trees Trail in Redwoods National Park, wound my way up and over the Northern Coast Mountains and there was the Pacific. I hiked Salt Point State Park next to crashing waves, ate dry chicken at a dive bar in Petaluma, slept in a Home Depot parking lot in Milpitas, kayaked among otters in the Elkhorn Slough.

My God it was breathtaking. And at every turn I found myself thinking the same thing: “I wish Shani was here to see this with me.”

I eventually made it to Los Angeles where we were having a mini family reunion. Which leads me to…

About My Idol

This post is part of the Donna G Project. It is written to and for my boys.

The hosts of the reunion were my Aunt Mary and Uncle Coddy, who live in LA. Coddy is almost 80 and wears it. He goes to dialysis three times a week. He walks with a cane and struggles with balance. His eyes are messed up. His ears too. He had a heart attack last year.

When I was a child, Coddy was this mysterious and magical figure at family reunions. He’d join the kids in basement for hide and seek, or take on all of us in a grand wrestle off. But more than that he emanated an aura that every family member responded to. He was funny and engaging and had a voice that you just knew was kind the second you heard it.

He was an enigma to me in some ways. He was so masculine – he was a brick layer for God’s sakes. He loved beer and meat and sports with an infectious joy.

But at the same time, he would play tender love songs on his guitar and sing in a vulnerable tenor voice. He’d tell stories about crying when his son was born. He adored his wife, and let her and the world know it.

We went out to California when I was in 9^th grade for a family reunion. Coddy and Mary hosted again, a big horde of folks on their hillside property. The first night there, my mom and Coddy got into a long conversation, and when we got in the car to go back to our hotel my Mom announced: “He just makes you feel so good about yourself.”

The following day was marked by a big gathering, including a horseshoe pit over to the side of the driveway. My brother and I took on my Dad and Coddy. I’d never seen my Dad have so much fun as when he was with Coddy. The two of them spent the match complimenting each other and calling each other “brother” with such fondness. Needless to say, they kicked our ass.

The final day they hosted a party. My cousins and I were talking to Coddy about some friends of his we’d met.

“John and Mark live together,” Coddy said to us.

“Wait, you mean they’re fags?” I responded.

He paused a moment. Just a moment.

“They live together.”

From that precise instant forward I was a supporter of gay people.

And this is gonna sound crazy, but I went home to the East Coast a different person. Not just the gay thing. Way bigger. Because from that point on, I consciously emulated this man. It was an active and daily choice on my part. I tried to emulate his open kindness, his curiosity, and yes, the way he made people feel good about themselves. I tried to talk like him. I dressed like him. I weirdly assumed Coddy’s personality as my own. And somewhere along the next few years, I did it so well that this imitation became who I really was.

After I graduated college, I moved to LA and spent 6 months living with Coddy, Mary, and their two sons, Max and Sam. For me it was like getting to go to the Harvard of parenting schools for free. I saw how much work it was to be a parent, and that being a good parent was a deliberate act. It was a thousand lessons. To this day I think the best parenting advice I’ve ever heard came when my Aunt Mary told me: “They’re going to be who they are. All you can do is make it easy or hard for them.”

Aside from the parenting lessons and the free place to live, they also hooked me up with a friend of theirs who got me a job working at Disney. Which essentially launched my entire working life.

And then, just when you thought Coddy’s impact couldn’t be greater. In my 20s Coddy wrote me a letter in which he casually said…

“Life isn’t something you figure out. It’s something you live.”

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You read that correctly. My Uncle Coddy literally told me the meaning of life.

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Mic drop, right?

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Well, almost. Hang in there for one more second.

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The reunion was a blast. Lots of sitting and laughing and catching up. Lots of ham sandwiches. Lots of hugs. Lots of watching kids ram around. My Dad and Coddy whipped me and my brother in cribbage.

But the main event was when Coddy and I broke out the guitars. We’d spent the last year working on a song from me to Shani. I wrote the lyrics, and he wrote the music. We’d snuck practice times over Zoom for months when Shani went into the office. And now was the big premiere. It’s called “I found myself falling in love.”