bound by blood, not bloodlines

from Web MD:

"The original meaning of the saying “blood is thicker than water” is that family ties are the tightest of all.

• YOUR ANSWER: True

• CORRECT ANSWER: False

Actually, it’s quite the opposite. In Middle Eastern culture, blood brothers -- warriors who share blood they shed in battle -- are even closer than biological brothers. An earlier expression is that blood is “far stronger than the water of the womb.” Historians think wealthy Englishmen may have bent the meaning to stress the importance of bloodlines and keep money in the family."

letter from my father

excerpt from a letter from my father Herb Cargill, one of the best story teller's I have ever known, save my brother Matthew.

Richard Blake, 1982 Big Sky Magic Enterprises

"I will try to put yesterdays thoughts into words for today.    In one of the pictures with Kent's car, I referred to doing the Coho repair with the chain and the tractor.     To explain the Coho fix I will tell another story.     Jim O. lived at Madrona Beach on Camano for many years.     There was a fellow, Rick F. that lived a few house's from Jim and Kathleen.      When his girl friend, Marla, had enough of his drinking she would kick him out of their house.    Rick would move to living under an overturned boat near what was once the yacht club building on the beach.  

Jim called him the resident troll of Camano Island.    Rick was brought to the Stanwood AA meeting one night by his friend Larry H.    Jim and I decided Rick would be a good project for us.    So we started a 30 day meeting run.    Either Jim or I and sometimes both of us would take Rick to a meeting each day.    Something happened around 30 days and neither Jim or I could take him to a meeting and Rick got drunk.     He then told Jim he was not going to meetings any more but would stay sober fishing in Puget Sound.    That is when Jim nicknamed him Coho.    He can stay sober fishing for Silver Salmon.  

Well his act had cleared up a little so Marla let him  back in the house.    About this time is when Rhoda and I moved to Darrington so I was not very close to take him to meetings everyday.     One day Coho showed up at our house in Darrington.    Rhoda was home from work that day and told me when I got home    She said that Coho asked her to keep his money so he wouldn't loose it and borrowed some toilet paper and coffee..   He was going to camp out near the road somewhere up the mountain above our place.   I got angry and told her if he was drinking, which he was, to shoot him if he shows up again.    He is responsible for his money and we are not his banker.    

The next day  I was home and not a work day.    Coho shows up in the afternoon in his pickup with the bumper and fender mashed against the front wheel.    He can't steer it very well after driving into a tree somewhere.     I have no idea how he got down the road back to our place.   But here he was sitting in our driveway telling us he was not able to drive it and was going to camp at our house.    I told him he was not welcome if he was drinking.   If he was sober I would walk with him but not drunk.   

So Mark and I got the tractor and hooked the same chain to the bumper.   I was not too gentle and rather yanked the bumper away from the wheel.    We gave him his money and I I told him to get going.     We were  watching him back out of the driveway and a radiator hose burst.    Coho was all smiles as he was sure he was now able to stay at our place.     I told him it did not require a new hose and I could fix this one.      I found a plastic water pipe connector in my gravity water system parts supply bag.    I cut the radiator hose cleanly at the break and put the connector into the hose and clamped it in place with two hose clamps.    We all waved goodby again and he left.   

As a foot note, Coho was found dead in his pickup a few months later on the other side of the valley on Squire Creek.   The lone survivor was Whiskey, his three-legged dog.   Coho had shot him many years before in a blackout and the leg had not been able to be saved.    Coho was 42 years old and beat a doctor's admonishment that if he did not stop drinking he would die before he was 40.    He beat it by 2 years.    My hope is someday when I walk on I will find Coho and give him that big hug he deserved that I never gave him.

So Coho is firmly embedded in our lives and the Coho fix is used in respect for him.   He brings smiles to my face.   Jim and I have some stories to tell and Jim in particular as he was just a few houses away.    Coho is one of those people who didn't die sober but maybe left me more memories than some  that did die sober.   When I try to figure it all out it just gets more confusing.    So I thank God for all the people who have walked on the trail with me..."

the coho repair

swimming pools/flip turns/point break

Many years ago, I lived in a coastal town. In the summer, sometimes I would go with my neighbor to body surf. He would body surf while I would swim/struggle past the break, flip over, float on my back and marvel at salt water. One day the tide was higher than usual and was coming in about three-foot rollers.

I am a strong swimmer and an athletic human and managed to fight my way past the break, popping out into a little drift zone. At first it was fun to ride high up on the wave like a bathtub in a comic book, but that didn't last. My neighbor shouted over to watch out for the rip current, because it was right behind us. At that point I was probably in 30-50 feet of water.

I sensed the tide turning, was already worn out and decided to head in. Hot sand and a blue sky sounded nice. I remember thinking, "It will be so much easier to get back in, because I will just ride in on a wave..." Except I didn't take into account waves are reciprocal and tides turn.

I managed to get myself up to the break, but bad timing caught me in the middle of it and I couldn't get past it, which is when I started going through the washing machine. I was a rag doll thrown into a forward roll under water, and would barely surface and start stroking for shore and the tide would immediately come rushing back at me in a tumult.

Conscious I did not want to exhaust myself, I relaxed and let it happen, which is the best way to handle any kind of rip tide or rogue current. There is no fighting, it will win, so let it happen. I heard my neighbor shouting at me to just relax and keep swimming, and I knew eventually I would pop out on the shoreline, or a place I could swim from, so I protected my head and saved my energy and kept swimming when I could and stayed afloat where I did.

Eventually, I made it back to shore, suffering only abrasions on my palms and a few odd bruises. I remember lying down in hot sand on a warm towel and luxuriating in the lassitude particular to physical struggle.The blessing happened days later when I was at the pool swimming laps and I thought, I bet I can do a flip turn, something that had evaded me since I was a little girl in swim lessons.

Up to that point, I had been unable to make sense of the forward roll half turn under water in a flip turn without inhaling water. Having gone the break in a perpetual forward roll, I had a funny feeling I could recreate the same action and apply it to a flip turn. It worked. And just like that I learned how to do a flip turn.

It's one of my favorite swimming stories and I am sure I have told it before. Swimming (today) I was thinking about trust exercises and how, self-improvement-team-building-exercises generally schedule trust exercises with another person, when in fact, a trust exercise would be better served performed as self alone.

"Trust your partner," and "you don't trust me" or "I trusted you and you lied to me" and so forth and corporate group activities where the person has to dead fall into the arms of the person who will "catch" them and I was swimming and I was thinking about the coast and I was thinking, really, as trust exercises go, they ought to just throw a person off a wharf into 100 feet of water and tell them to swim to shore a quarter-mile out, or some other equivalent of survival and faith, because trusting another person means almost nothing. If I trust myself it doesn't matter. I trust I will take care of myself, and I trust I will take care of this or that, or you or me or life in general and so forth. Trusting "you" is almost pointless; a feel good exercise in futility.

Yes trust is profound and I'm not arguing relationship semantics, or the mysteries of faith; but the practical application of trust is best served, when I place my trust in self. Do I trust myself to make a better choice next time? Do I trust I can walk away if I need to? Do I trust that I will love with all my heart? Do I trustin my talents? Do I trust in something bigger than myself? Do I trust me?

My father will say, "faith is not knowing everything will be okay. Faith is knowing I will be okay." Because most of the time, everything isn't "okay." Life on life's terms isn't pretty and perfect and smiling ear to ear with a 1000 Watt day glow smile and nicely packaged for social networking. It's often quite the opposite. But that doesn't mean I fall down with it. It doesn't mean I just lie down in the break and let it roll me out to sea. I might swim smarter instead of harder, but I keep swimming. Faith isn't knowing everything will be okay, faith is knowing I will be okay. Do I trust myself? Yes, I do.

Burlingame High School swimming pool set to 50m