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Maile and I left our mostly empty cottage and, with quite a bit of nervousness, began walking up the two-track lane towards the “big house on the hill.” I say our cottage was “mostly empty” – it was actually still rather full of homesickness and uncertainty. But we don’t give much credence to unseen things, no matter how real they might be.

We probably walked slow. We probably didn’t say much – we had only been married for about two years at that point, and in the early days of a marriage it is easy to believe you are still your own person, capable of smoke-screening your emotions. We probably held hands, and the protected area, inside our palms, would have grown warm while the October air laid a thin screen of coolness on the exposed portions.

The drive took us between two sheep pastures lined on all other sides with forest. The tips of the trees were turning colors, like the edges of a piece of paper just starting to burn.

The countryside watched in near silence as we rose up the side of the hill, walked the driveway behind the large stone house. We had never seen it up close before: ivy covered the house on all sides, a rising flood of green threads; a large retaining wall defined the forest side of the lane, kept the hill and the trees mostly at bay, uphill from the house; cords and cords of split firewood lined the one side of the house, stacked neatly outside French doors. The wood’s flesh was the color of honey.

Three German Shepherds came skidding around the corner of the house, offended and howling, their nails scratching on the now-cobbled drive. Their greeting (slobbering snouts thrust into my palm, as well as every other nook and cranny) was rough and questioning. They barked and whined at us until we walked up to the front door and rang the bell, at which point they ran around to some side door, looking to make their own entrance, perhaps preparing to guard the house from us yet again.

We stood there, the two of us, shrugging and raising our eyebrows at one another as if to ask What are we doing up here? or Crazy, huh? Small town USA was about to collide with high-English culture. Who knew that friendship could result?

I pushed on the buzzer door-bell. Only silence. I looked at my watch. We were right on time. We rang the bell again. Still nothing.

Then an upstairs window flung outwards. We looked up. A gentleman, probably in his late 50s, leaned out through the large window. His hair was wet and he didn’t have a shirt on. I could see a towel wrapped around his waist.

“You must be Shawn and Maile?” he asked, the broadest, friendliest grin on his face. We nodded. He lifted his shoulders as if to say, What can I say about the state you have discovered me in?, then he laughed out loud. He ruffled his wet head with one hand, his other hand holding his towel in place. “Please, come in. Make yourselves comfortable. V and I will be right down.”

He pulled the window closed, waving one last time. “Five minutes!” he shouted again, and in the sound of his voice I detected something familiar, like the crunching of leaves underfoot, or wind blowing through well known trees. Don’t misunderstand me – I had never met J in my life. But he spoke to us as if he knew us, or had at least already committed to getting to know us.

I pushed on the door latch and the heavy thing swung open. We stepped into a small foyer area. An endless hallway stretched to both our right and left. Through a large window in front of us I could see the daylight beginning to fade.

(continued here: A Story of Four Forks, and a Surprisingly Empty House)

(to read the first installment about my life in England, click HERE)

I sat with the three men on a porch in San Antonio. Glaring rays of sunlight raced from the western hills, parallel with the ground, blinding where they slipped under the trees. The floorboards of the large porch creaked as the men shifted their weight.

“So who did you serve with?” C asked the other two. C was balding, forty-ish, with a bear-trap handshake. He had recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan – this explained the glassy eyes, the ingrained “yes-sir,” and the feeling that some part of him had been pretty badly sand-blasted by the middle eastern deserts.

Both men replied “Navy,” although both served longer with the SEALs than as regular servicemen. There’s something about SEALs, even retired, who divulge just enough information to be polite, and no more.

“Right on,” C replied, leaning back in his chair.

“And you?” K asked. K was tall: 6’ 6” at least with broad shoulders and a stride that easily matched two of mine.

“Army, sir.”

“We won’t hold that against you,” K said, laughing.

“That’s for sure,” C retorted, a sarcastic glint in his eyes.

The other SEAL, A, smiled gently. His Native American heritage gave itself away quickly: coarse, black hair; dark brown eyes the color of rattlesnake skin; his affinity to talking about the wind and the spirits. But his peacefulness wrapped around a part of him, as if there was something broken that was just growing back, and he wanted to protect it.

A had traumatic brain injuries taken in the line of duty. His left side worked, but only with some coaxing. As he talked, he gesticulated with both hands, but the fingers on his right hand often had to go over and adjust the fingers on his left hand, or reposition his left arm. Only after spending the day with him did I start to realize he was trying to keep me to his right – all vision to his left was gone. And he wore a beret – it looked sharp, added to his image, but also served to round out the caved-in side of his head, where he had been shot.

The three men shared short snippets of battle stories. K’s conversation prodded C for any signs of PTSD. Nothing surgical, just innocent questions. The men laughed too, and when they did I could see them drinking it in, the same way my children drink grape Kool Aid.

“There was one guy on my team,” K said, “and when the bullets started flying, he wasn’t worried about being killed. He didn’t experience fear. But one thought flashed through his head: ‘This is why my mom wanted me to be a banker.’”

This struck them all as being hilarious, but their belly-laughs slowly died down into silence.

“It’s the wives who get it the worst,” K said. A nodded.

“Yeah,” C said. “When I got him from my first tour I opened all the cabinets in the kitchen and just stared at them. My wife came in and said, ‘What the heck are you doing?’ I told her, I just couldn’t remember where stuff was. I told her I had to get my old memories back.”

“Life is therapy for everyone,” A said, adjusting the fingers on his left hand so that they formed a fist, then laying the fist down on the table. “We’re all born broken.”

It seems that when a discussion is going on between men who have seen war, the quiet spaces between the spoken words are longer and more meaningful. There isn’t a rush to fill the peace with just anything.

C excused himself, said how proud he was to have met them, and broke all their fingers with his handshake before driving off in his truck.

“He’s got the eyes,” K said, his mouth a flat line of regret.

“There’s a lot going on inside that man’s head,” A said quietly.

“He talked about his wife but he’s not wearing a wedding band,” K observed.

“It’s the same old story, over and over and over again.”

The two retired Navy SEALs sat quietly in their chairs, staring at one another as if they were communicating without words. Then K leaned back and looked up at the porch ceiling. A stood up and walked off the porch – his left leg obeyed him better than his left fingers, and he walked with only a slight limp.

“I got his number,” A said over his shoulder. “I’ll call him sometime.”

“Don’t push him,” K said. “Don’t pry too hard.”

The San Antonio wind raced over the lake. The sun dropped behind one of the green hills, turning the sky purple and orange and pink.

The first time we saw V she was hefting a dead sheep into the back of her Mercedes SUV. Maile and I, in England for less than a week, still felt jet-lagged and homesick.

I hadn’t figure out how to use the radiators – nights were cold, especially after the wood fires burned out. Our little cottage was mostly empty. And we were still sleeping on the floor. There’s nothing like sleeping on the floor to make you miss home and wonder what’s so great about adventures.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I said, persuading Maile to put on something warm and join me for a jaunt through the foreign countryside. We walked away from the main road and back our lane toward the gardener’s house. Yes, there was a gardener.

Just past the courtyard (where we would park a vehicle, if we ever got one) was a fence, and on the other side we saw a small lady in Wellington boots shuffling among the sheep. Her SUV was backed up into the pen, and she was in the process of lifting what looked like a giant sack of wool.

“Oomph,” she grunted. The back of the Merc dropped with the weight. Then she saw us. A smile the size of the Atlantic lit up her face. Her icy blue eyes sparkled.

“You must be Shawn and Maile,” she said in the most perfect British accent I had ever heard. We both sort of nodded.

“Oh dear,” she said, laughing at herself and throwing her work gloves into the SUV, on top of the dead sheep, “I am a mess!” She held out a small hand, which I shook, and it felt more alive than bare electrical wire. She immediately came in close for a kiss on both cheeks, which I must admit I hadn’t been expecting, but I think I played the part reasonably well. Maile, forewarned, executed a much better English greeting than I had.

“Look at you two. Are you getting any rest? Do you like the cottage? It’s frightful, isn’t it. We have some furniture that Stanley can bring down – have you met Stanley? He’s the groundskeeper, lives in the house at the end of your lane.”

We kept nodding. I didn’t want to talk, certain that my American accent would sound clumsy and oafish next to her silken threads of speech.

“Do you need a hand?” I asked, nodding toward the vehicle carrying the dead animal.

“No, thank you. We will dispose of it properly. Now, on to more important things. What are you doing tonight?”

“Tonight?” Maile asked. “Nothing. Why?”

“Then you must come to our house tonight, 8 o’clock. We’re having a dinner party.”

I wanted to refuse, just because I am mostly an interminable humbug and homebody, but we had no excuse. Not only were we not doing anything that night, we weren’t doing anything any night any time soon.

“Excellent, see you at eight,” she said, flashing one of those approving grins that made you feel like she was your best friend in the world, or your mother at her proudest moment.

We turned to continue our exploration, but she shouted at us before we had gone fifty yards down the lane.

“Do you have a car?”

“No!”

“We have an extra in the garage,” (she pronounced garage like gare-ahhh-j). “I’ll put the keys through your mail slot.”

We shrugged. There was no way I was driving one of her cars on the wrong side of the road.

“See you at eight!” she shouted.

(continued here: The Undressed Man)

Arriving in London that day was like waking up in a new world. We had taken the red eye from Newark, where the earth breathes smoke through its cement-covered skin. I had watched the sun set behind smokestacks and the outlines of factories and artificial clouds. When we woke up the next morning, the hum of the plane’s engines tried to put us back to sleep, and sunlight streamed through the windows. We struggled to wake up while flying over Ireland, and then Wales, the greenest pieces of land I had ever seen. They were like giant lime lollipops floating in a sea of blue raspberry kool-aid.

Ben and Shar picked us up from the airport. Soon we were leaving the city on a massive highway – west, and out of London, was an easy direction to go during morning rush-hour. The cars on the other side of the motorway, heading into the city, crept along. Then, without warning, we were off the highway and on to small country roads and roundabouts. We passed old, mostly brick, houses that seemed to grow in groves, like trees. Finally, roads even more narrow, where passing cars were forced to slow down and both slide over into their respective ditches just so that they could get by.

Maile and I were so tired. Everything felt like a dream.

Then a quick left into a at-one-time-invisible-suddenly-appearing driveway. The iron gate was wide open. A sign on one of the ancient trees said “Rocketer”. We didn’t know it at the time, but this was the name of the estate. In the US, nice houses have big addresses, like 20964 Merchant Mill Terrace, but in England they just have names like “Rocketer”.

A fork in the driveway, and we went off to the left, drove a few hundred yards, then parked in a small cobblestone courtyard surrounded by horse barns and storage sheds. If we bent down and looked through the trees, we could see the main stone house on the massive estate, gardens pouring down the hill in front of it. Three large German Shepherds snarled and played with each other in the distance, rolling over in the lush grass. A flock of sheep ate their lunch, nothing moving but their slowly rotating jaws.

Our new landlords lived in that house, but on that morning all was still. The large windows were empty. No one stirred.

“Here we are,” I told Maile. “Welcome to your new life.”

We walked toward our small cottage through one of those beautiful English, October days: windy, bright and green. The tall hedgerows made every road or path feel like a hallway in some never-ending house.

The lane was full of potholes. There was a small greenhouse just down the hill – escaping grape vines still held marble-sized pieces of fruit. We turned the corner around the small cottage, entered through a side door.

The kitchen was tiny. A year or so from then I would surprise Maile and replace the floor while she was back in the States. The bathroom was nothing more than a lean-to off the kitchen – the shower head was at the lower end, so we had to crouch to get under the weak flow of water. The fireplace in the living room warmed the radiators. The fireplace in the other room was so shallow that the fire seemed to be out in the room with you, yet the smoke was magically drawn up the narrow chimney.

Ben and Shar said good-bye. We walked upstairs. Suddenly feelings of adventure were replaced by feelings of insecurity and homesickness. We pulled one of our blankets from a suitcase and spread it out on the carpeted floor in one of the small, empty bedrooms. There were only a few pieces of furniture. We wrapped ourselves in the blanket, exhausted. Maile cried for a little bit, missing home, then fell asleep.

I looked out the window at the sky, thinking that, somehow, even the clouds looked different in England.

(continued here: A Dead Sheep, and a New Friend)

Only the extraordinary is valuable. It’s not worth doing something unless you are in the top .1%. The only interesting thing about you is how you are different from everyone else.

These are the lies that bounce around inside our brains and rob us of our creativity.

* * * * *

We fight to the death with anything that would render us “the same.” We want to be the one-off, the unique, the only of its kind. We want to be the one in a million on American Idol or the .8% of high school players that eventually get drafted into the NFL. We want to be the Nobel Prize winner or the President of the United States (wait – does anyone still actually want that job?).

We want to be great.

Is there anything wrong with wanting to be unique? The best? The most renowned in our field? Is there anything wrong with wanting to climb to the pinnacle and shout some primal scream out over the expanse?

Probably not. But we also want it now. Therein lies the problem, because often when our desire to be extraordinary is not achieved TODAY, then we quit. We give up. And in quitting, we lose the very thing it takes to reach the mountain top: stick-to-it-iveness, perseverance, and, most importantly, TIME.

* * * * *

I can only speak for writers. Actually, I can only speak for this writer.

But sometimes my desire to write as well as John Steinbeck can be paralyzing. Or my lack of publishable work at the age of 33, er, almost 34. Or the fact that most days just putting one…word…in front…of the other…is so…difficult.

Most days I don’t feel extraordinary and am confronted by the fact that I’m more likely to walk on Mars or grow eyeballs in the inside creases of my elbows than I am of ever winning the Pulitzer or the Nobel Prize or, let’s be honest, publishing one more book.

This is when my obsession with being unique IS NOT GOOD. Because it makes me want to quit.

* * * * *

“Only writers, it seems, expect to achieve some level of mastery without practice.” Stein On Writing by Sol Stein

* * * * *

Some of my favorite novels of all time have been written by folks in their 60s and 70s: legends like Jose Saramago and Umberto Eco and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I think I will write a great novel when I am in my seventies. I’ve always thought I have an old soul, one more suited to melancholic reflection than heroic or spontaneous action. Perhaps, when I am in my 70s, I will be extraordinary.

But the only way that will happen is if I set aside my insistence on being marvelous today and become comfortable with who I am, the work I am producing today.

* * * * *

I’ve never climbed a mountain, but I can’t imagine you would get far if you constantly peered up at the summit. Most of the time you can’t see it anyway, you know, since it’s all shrouded and everything. I’d imagine that at some point you’d have to stop staring up, and start looking at your feet.

And start taking one…(somewhat boring)…step…at…a…time.

Besides, the extraordinary people who get majestically lifted by fate and flown via helicopter to the top of the mountain, seemingly without effort, normally don’t have the strength to weather the storm at the summit. They usually get blown off.

Abra has her little white kitten (a stuffed animal) sitting beside her, and she just keeps saying, “I can read all by self,” then she turns the page and says, “I can read all by self.” She’s been going on this way for about 30 minutes.

It’s quiet in the house tonight. Maile took Cade to his dentist appointment and then lassoed him into a few shopping trips on the way home: groceries, cooking supplies, a late dinner for just the two of them. So it’s a still night here in Paradise: Sam fell asleep around 7pm, Lucy is coloring at the kitchen table, and Abra is on our bed, convincing herself that every page reaffirms her ability to decipher the words.

* * * * *

The lamplight in the living room is dim, and outside it’s dark. I mean really dark. A little bit of moonlight back here in the middle of no where can turn an ordinary night into a silvery kind of dim day, but add a little cloud cover and the only way I’ll walk outside is with my hands extended in front of me.

* * * * *

You can hear the footsteps of God when silence reigns in the mind.  ~Sri Sathya Sai Baba

* * * * *

There is someone else here with me in this silence. Two people actually. I can sense God in the shadows cast by the low lights, in the echos of quiet, in the resigned sound of my exhale. But right there, alongside God, I can also sense myself. A self that gets so lost and scrambled by the noise and busy-ness and constant movement during the day.

It seems that God has never been more apparent to me, and this in the sound of my own breath. Or the lonely turning of the page in a child’s book.

* * * * *

At thirteen years old I went camping with a bunch of guys. We hiked up into the mountains. Our leader took us along a narrow, well-worn trail through trees so thick it felt like walking a narrow alley between high rises. Then we came to a two-foot wide bridge over a deep pool. We dropped our gear, stripped to our undies, and jumped in. The spring water was so cold my heart convulsed, my lungs didn’t want to breath and I swam for my life to the edge of the water.

On the bank, in the sun, I realized I had never felt so alive.

* * * * *

Stillness evades me these days. I spend so much time trying to write, or find that next project, or rush the children off to ballet or baseball or tennis or bed. I wait to wake up until I hear Sam stirring in his crib, retrieve him with a smile and a kiss, then go to the kitchen and start breakfast. There are so few moments like tonight, when all is still. It actually feels like my soul is taking a deep drink. It feels like the only real part of me has just swam like mad for the edge of an icy cold spring of water and has pulled itself up into the warm sunshine.

* * * * *

Is silence extinct? Have we recreated ourselves in an image of noise and bluster and debate and the constant tinkering with worthless things? Are we worried that silence will lead us on a broken path through the wasted ruins of our lives? Would we rather close our eyes and hum loudly to ourselves than be confronted with all that could be rebuilt within us?

* * * * *

“Soon silence will have passed into legend.  Man has turned his back on silence.  Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation… tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego.  His anxiety subsides.  His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.”  Jean Arp

*photo of Abra compliments of Simply.S.Photography