Escape to Malibu: Part 5

Author's note: (This note, again, was posted many years ago now, but does show the reader the history of this story & how it came to be published now...) "This is an ongoing serial story I have posted from time to time about a nurse. The essence of the story is true & written from the wellspring of personal & professional experiences. Names have been changed, however those involved will readily recognize themselves within the tale.

Also I have begun a new newsgroup called Wellspring under dartmouth alt. which is devoted to health promotion & wellness topics. Here it is perfectly acceptable to discuss products, services, & PRICES in health care as the crisis we are facing has to do with what we spend our money on.

Wellspring encourages open, honest, & MUTUALLY RESPECTFUL dialogue. If you disagree about something someone has written, please do so without being disagreeable. Courtesy & good manners never go out of style."

Part 5

Bernie had made a promise to a childhood girlfriend where he had grown up as a preacher's kid in yet another revolutionary town nearby. She, Marta, had graduated from Cally College in Maine with a degree in sociology & bought herself a one-way ticket to New Zealand. Her father's parting words had been, "Please, whatever you do, don't marry a New Zealander", which of course, she promptly did.

Her husband Joshua, (the same name as our firstborn), was a geologist for the city & received cart blanche to do whatever sociologists do.

They evenually moved to a small town in the middle of the north island which had really nothing to distinguish it from other New Zealand towns other than that the train came through & the Waitomo caves were nearby. This fact excited spelunkers; cave men & women who derived great joy in jumping into jumpuits, donning hard hats with mounted lights & wallowing in the slimy darkness of the caves, never knowing when they'd stick a hand into something moving & slimy or come upon relics of old, prehistoric Moah birds. This was a less likely occurrence than finding a bloated cow carcass lying back down, feet up in the air in a stream running through the caves. Te Kowiti was the name of the town where they settled in to a caretaker's house on a sheep farm sharing a teaching job for the local primary.

Bernie's promise pre-me was to come to New Zealand & live with them when he married & bring his bride.

A year after graduating from Simon's & 4 months after Joshua came into our world the natural way, we set out to fulfill that promise one clear, autumn, New England day, packed up in a bright red V.W. bug. Our worldly possessions & conservation-minded gauze diapers were neatly organized in two back packs & a long, custom-designed duffel bag for the purpose of toting a portable playpen made by Sears which could collapse like a set of golf clubs to fit in the duffel.

I had Chad's Canvas in New Hampshire make it out of tough, blue,waterproof nylon. Durable enough for an officer, practical enough to carry all of Joshua's belongings in, including his New Zealand sheepskin which he's slept on since birth. Marta & Joshua had given it to him for a shower gift.

There was no need to bring the size 8 soccer shoes Bernie's first all-girl high school soccer team gave him. I stashed them, along with other personal belongings not used by the renters or ourselves that year in the basement.

We left our house in the care of a young couple we took a shine to who met us the day we brought Joshua home from Emesis Hospital. They had responded to an ad I'd run in the Concord Jammin' newspaper. He was from the Phillipines, she from local. We kept in touch over a year-long odyssey & a frienship formed. They turned out to be living lifelines for me, two people who helped me maintain my identity during the hell year.

But I am getting to that. It wouldn't make sense without the mayo or the swiss. There's symmetry in a well made sandwich you know.