I am going away in August, and for the first time, I’ve hired a dog sitter. I’ll have to clean out the fridge. Scrub three and a half bathrooms, write down the mystery of how the TV remote thingies work. But I trust this woman, so no need to hide jewelry or any of that nonsense, and who keeps cash? Yet weirdly, today I thought of the one thing in this house it would truly grieve me to lose.
In the downstairs bathroom, I have framed the long-expired first passport of each of the kids. My firstborn’s passport photo was taken at seven months old. I’m behind her, propping her baby self up, out of sight. She smiles at the camera, Gerber-baby beautiful even then. Mr. Oliver is presenting a professional paper at the University of Glasgow, and I can’t bear to leave the baby behind. She will take her first steps at the Red Lion Inn, and as I applaud her accomplishment, I will note with prescience that those first staggering steps were in a foreign country and away from me. As an adult she will live in the United Kingdom and build her life there.
My son is five years old in his first passport photo, his document hanging just beneath his sister’s. We were off to Western Australia for the America’s Cup.
For the first time since its inception, America lost the Cup the year my son was born, beginning a new age for the centuries-old competition. Australia’s entry had been secretly sailing with a winged keel. It wasn’t against the rules; it was a master stroke of genius, and when Australia II crossed the finish ahead of Liberty, the Cup went Down Under.
From that moment on, a sailing race among nations became a design race as well, complete with espionage, skirting the keels any time the boats were out of the water, and guards at the compounds. Mr. Oliver was on the design team challenged with winning the Cup back. We were headed for Fremantle and going for broke.
So we applied for my son’s passport, renewed my daughter’s, and prepared to live in Western Australia for two months. We were a family of four: two parents, a boy and a girl. We were very symmetrical in those days. My youngest daughter was an idea I hadn’t yet had.
We arrived in Western Australia after being in transit with a three- and a six-year-old for 56 continuous hours of flights or layovers, and as we spilled out of the plane I was stunned by the liquid gold of Australian light. We rented a car, got to the house the syndicate had arranged for us, and fell into bed.
The movie “Top Gun” had just been released and the next day a huge banner at the Stars and Stripes compound announced our arrival at “Fightertown, USA.” We had lost the Cup to the accompaniment of Chariots of Fire and The Empire Strikes Back. Here, on Gage Roads in the Indian Ocean, Stars and Stripes was towed to the final start to “Top Gun’s” Into the Danger Zone. We lined the rocky bulkheads of the harbor to cheer with 100,000 onlookers, then we moved to the spectator yachts and powered out to the start.
I wonder why all this comes to mind, and realize it is because although the race was in February, it was summer in the southern hemisphere. It feels like now. And packing for a trip has me thinking about what I don’t want to lose.
After weeks of elimination races, and three years of my family’s life spent in the effort, Stars and Stripes won the series in a 4-0 sweep. The America’s Cup was coming home. The team was giddy, joking, as we entered US airspace, singing. I had missed my country.
We went to the White House for a reception, and a few days later we got word that we were to fly to NYC for a ticker-tape parade down Fifth Avenue. Some real estate mogul no one had heard of was hosting the team. We’d stay at his hotel.
His name was Donald Trump.
A year later, I have another baby. We are asymmetrical now. I name her Emily. She gets her first passport at the age of eight, and we are off to New Zealand. We must bring the America’s Cup home once again. Our whole family will love the country, but our teenage son will return to live and begin his family there.
The passports document a desire to give the world to the children, and without awareness of the consequences, the children to the world.
But those you love can’t come home, unless you let them go.
