Alaska 2023 - Day 3 - Landfall in Ketchikan (and Jennie's Birthday)

     Our first port was Ketchikan, AK.  One thing about cruising Alaska is that you arrive early to your ports and have to be up and at it.  I did not marry a morning person, but she did a job of getting up and out the door on time.  In addition to the views we would see, Jennie wanted to see three things;  bald eagles, bears and whales.  When I went outside to our balcony, I saw a bald eagle sitting on top of a cross right across from our room.  I told Jennie to come outside and we were amazed at how long it sat there.  We were off to a great start on her list.

    We had no excursions planned for Ketchikan so took a walk into town to see what we could find.  One of the places we wanted to visit was Creek Street.  This is a historic boardwalk, perched on pilings, along the banks of the Ketchikan Creek.  It was famous for all the brothels that lined the street and was known as the place where both men and salmon swam upstream to spawn.  Since we were off the ship early, we had the place almost to ourself.

    We walked back to the port area and decided to take a 90 minute tour of Ketchikan.  The tour would drive us out to a few viewing areas and allow us to see most of the island.  The tour was good, albeit a bit boring.  We did manage to see another eagle in the trees as well as some deer.  We were still missing the bears and whales for our list.  After arriving back at the pier, we went to a restaurant for clam chowder and fish/chips.  The waitress put us in the back corner where we had a great view of the snow covered mountains.

    The sail away time for Ketchikan was at 1400, so we were back on board by 1300.  Tonight was the night we were going to eat in the Crown Grill for Jennie's birthday.  We had a few cocktails before dinner and checked in for our reservation.  The manager of the restaurant said, James and Jennie from the Block.  She thought I put him up to that, but it was all him.  After dinner they brought a birthday dessert for Jennie and sang happy birthday to her.  We ended the night relatively early as our wake up call tomorrow was 0455.

Alaska 2023 - Days 0, 1 and 2

     Several months ago, Princess Cruise Lines was offering $1 deposits for upcoming cruises.  I decided to place my deposit on a 7 day Alaska Inside Passage cruise before consulting Jennie about this.  She always said she did not want to take a cruise as she was afraid of motion sickness.  She took the girls out to Oxnard, CA and they took a boat ride out to the channel islands, a 35 mile journey.  When she said she did fine with that trip, I knew she would do fine on a huge cruise ship.

    In the weeks leading up to our departure we kept checking the forecast and it looked like rain was in our future.  One week before departure every port day showed rain and temperatures in the upper 40's/low 50's.  We packed rain clothes, warm clothes, boots, gloves and hats.  In fact, we packed so much that Jennie's bag was overweight when we checked in at Phoenix Sky Harbor.  After much rolling of my eyes, we transferred enough weight from her bag to mine to avoid paying any excess baggage fees.

    We arrived in Seattle to sunny skies and 65 degree temperatures.  After we arrived at our hotel, we walked across the street to the pub for some food.  After lunch, we walked down to the boardwalk to find Pike Place Market.  Unfortunately for us, we navigated around it and ended up walking an extra 2 miles before we found it.  By the time we arrived, things were shutting down and we didn't get to see the fish tossing.  We walked back down to the water and found a place for dinner named Elliot's Oyster House.  We pushed our anniversary dinner from yesterday until today so we could celebrate it in Seattle.  We sat outside with a view of the water and enjoyed good food and better beer.  After dinner we walked the pier and took an Uber back to the hotel.

    The next morning, Day 1, we were up and out of the hotel by 1100.  We took an Uber to the ship and got our first look at the Discovery Princess.  At the time of our sailing this was the newest ship in the Princess fleet.  She is 1,080 feet in length, has 19 decks, 3,600 passengers, 1,346 crew and is 145,000 gross tonnage.  The boarding experience was the best that I have experienced over many cruises.  From the time we stepped out of the Uber until we stepped foot on the ship, no more than 45 minutes had elapsed.  My last cruise out of Long Beach took at least 2 hours to board.  Since this was Jennie's first cruise, she was amazed at just how big the ship was.  And since this was her first cruise, I was hoping they had huge stabilizers to keep the movement away.

    Our room was not ready when we boarded, so we headed up to the Lido deck for some food.  We walked around the adults only area of the ship, visited the Sanctuary and booked a 1/2 day for our last sea day.  Around 1400 our room was ready and we got our first look.  The room had nice decor and was a decent size.  We unpacked our stuff and got ready for the sail away.  As the ship left Seattle I realized that cruising the Pacific Northwest has a different feel, temperature wise.  That 20 knot wind blowing across the deck made it very cold for the desert dwellers.  Even though the pools were heated, there was going to be no use for the swimwear we packed.  We went to dinner at the Skagway dining room and headed to bed.  Late night party people we are not!

    We woke up for our first full day at sea and the slightly choppy waters of the Pacific were making Jennie queasy.  We went down to the Skagway dining room for breakfast and spent most of the sea day taking it easy.  Princess brought an Alaska naturalist on the journey to give a 4 part talk on Alaska.  We went to his first talk today.  He was full of great knowledge and fun to listen to.  We bought a map from the gift shop that showed where our best chance to see wildlife would be while underway.

    We ended the first sea day and looked forward to our first port, Ketchikan at 0600 tomorrow. 

Time Keeps Marching On

     There has been a battle in our house with haircuts.  When Ryan was younger, I would take him to the barber and get a clipper cut, 8 & 6.  It seemed long enough to me, especially since I do a 3 & 1 clipper cut.  But it was something he didn't like.  The last haircut he had was sometime in the early summer.  As the weeks rolled on, he looked to be growing a mop.  It was just not a fight that I wanted to have to get it cut right now.  Imagine my surprise when he emailed me and said he would go to the barber today if I would transfer the money.  I made the transfer and asked for a picture when he was done.  This is what he sent me:

    I texted him back that it looked great.  As I was driving home from work, I forwarded the picture to my brother with the words "Boy went and got a haircut on his own".  Sitting at a stoplight, half way home, my mind started wandering to the fact that Ryan will be graduating high school in 19 months and moving on to the next phase of his life.  He is holding a 4.0 GPA and doing great in school.  He is driving, he has a job and is absolutely crushing it.  And as I sat at that light, thinking all of those thoughts I nearly had a breakdown.

    I thought of all the moments he and I have experienced since Theresa fell asleep in the Lord.  I thought of the end of the year school rock concerts he's participated in since moving to Phoenix and how I would start to get emotional thinking that one day soon it would be his last one, his graduation and how much it sucks that Theresa isn't going to be there to see the fruits of her well laid foundation.  

    I am 19 years into my Dad's dying, 6.5 years into Theresa's and a little more than 1 into my Mom's  and I still have these little moments with all three.  I can't even think about all the future moments:  high school graduation, first day of college, graduation from college, first job post-college, marriage (or priesthood!).  All I really know is I wish time would slow down a little bit, and perhaps we could get one more time for his Mom and Grandparents to see how good he's doing.

Before the cut

 

    

Toxic Parents - Why Some Kids Escape and Others Don't

 

    There is a saying in my line of work that it is up to the person to break the cycle of abuse that they have experienced in their life.  Sadly, most children who grow up in an abusive family are unable and/or unwilling to break that cycle and they repeat the sins of their parents.  Any of my coworkers who work sexual abuse cases on the reservations could tell stories all day long of this sad phenomena.  Growing up in the middle of the country, we were raised to be thankful for our parents, regardless of how unworthy they may have been.  It was always said that things could have been worse, just look at those kids in shelters.  

    My first wife Theresa was born into a toxic family.  Her father, Jerry Colley, was a bitter and angry man.  Her mother, Ellen Colley, was a typical 70's Southern Illinois wife.  Little education, no work experience and no marketable skill.  Everything that she had in her life was tied up in her husband.  He went to work, he brought home the paycheck and it was his way or the highway.  Theresa's parents came into my orbit in 1987 when she became my high school girlfriend.  I was in my senior year and had started making plans to attend college for a degree in accounting.  Jerry, being the jackass that he was, never liked me.  When I first met him he said that he I reminded him of someone he didn't like and therefore he didn't like me.  To my young high school mind I could not comprehend that sentiment.  To my adult mind, having worked criminal cases involving broken people, I understand why he was that way.  His life was an absolute disaster, married to a horrible woman, working in a dead end job and living in squalor.  He also had the traits of being a child abuser.

    This all came flooding back to me this week when I was sent photographs of the "estate" that I am responsible for selling.  Ellen died in 2015 and Jerry died a few years ago.  He died intestate, leaving his estate to his heirs.  Since Theresa died in 2016, her 50% share belongs to our son.  The remaining 50% belongs to Jerry's son, Wes.  As I scrolled through the sad state of that house, I had to wonder how Theresa was able to break the cycle while her brother was not.  This was the pile of shit that was left when Wes was evicted from the property.

    They say that we should not speak ill of the dead.  That thought has its origins in an outdated belief that the dead might retain some active influence on the living, and that one might re-encounter them either in this life or a putative next life.  I hold no such belief and feel compelled to speak about the toxic world that Theresa grew up in.  When she was a junior in high school, she went missing.  Ellen called my house to see if I knew where she was.  I had not talked to her that evening and had not idea where she was.  I started to drive to some of the places we had been and I found her car on the side of the road on a backroad outside of town.  Her doors were locked and she appeared to be passed out in the car.  I banged on the door and was looking for a rock to break the window with, when she reached up and unlocked the door.  I found a bottle of brandy along with an empty bottle of sleeping pills.  I put her in my car and drove her to the nearest emergency room.  Since this was the time before cell phones, the ER was the first to contact Jerry & Ellen, while I found a phone to call my parents.  

    My mom and dad arrived as did Jerry and Ellen.  As his daughter was in the ER having her stomach pumped after a suicide attempt, he lashed out at my family.  She did this because of your son is what he kept saying.  My Irish father was about to knock him into next week when the hospital security got involved and separated everyone.  After her recovery, she entered into a counseling program and was able to express some of the physical abuse that she endured by Jerry.  The counselor suggested family counseling but Jerry's pride would have none of that.  She continued living under his roof until one summer night in 1989.  Jerry was out drinking and came home with venom on his breath.  He started screaming at her mom, pushing her to the ground and started beating on Theresa's bedroom door.  She decided to leave the house, opening her bedroom window and crawl out.  Jerry broke the door down and threw a hammer at Theresa's head, missing it and leaving a hole in the wall.  She ran to a neighbors house and they called the Bethalto police. 

    Domestic violence was treated much differently in the late 80's than it is today.  The police ended up arresting Jerry on a charge of battery/causing bodily harm and took him to jail for the night.  Ellen left the house with Theresa and Wes and went to live in a battered women's facility in Granite City, Il.  Ellen worked up the courage to file for divorce from Jerry and started the process.  However, Jerry was able to reach her and pleaded with her not to divorce him.  She was a woman with no ability to support herself or her son living at home, so she relented and went back with Jerry.  Theresa moved out of the house at that point, even though she was under the age of 18.  It was one of the last times she had interaction with Jerry and Ellen, but it certainly was not the last time she had to deal with their toxic ways.

    The last time we saw Jerry and Ellen was in the early 2000's at the wedding of Wes.  We were living in Omaha, NE at that time and Theresa wanted to be their to support her brother. We ended up sitting at the same table as Jerry, but no words were spoken.  I had an intense desire to knock his teeth down his throat, but I was a few months away from swearing in as an FBI Special Agent and did not need that to derail my goal.  As Theresa and I sat on one side of the table, across from Jerry and Ellen, it was interesting to see the vastly different lives we lived.  You had Jerry, an angry old man working in a dead end job with his wife Ellen, a broken woman with no life skills.  She was trapped in her own personal hell and it showed on her face.  You had their daughter who was working in corporate finance for the largest bank in Nebraska, having come from working for one of the largest accounting firms in the world.  Theresa was earning nearly double what her parents did and lived a vastly better life than the miserable people across the table. 

    Deep seated trauma is sometimes buried and repressed in a person and bubbles up at seemingly strange times.  The FBI sent us to Tucson, AZ for our first duty station and our son was born in 2006.  Theresa was a great Mom and provided excellent care to Ryan.  However, when Ryan turned 3 or 4 years old, her personality started to change.  She became very sad, withdrawn and ended up taking anti-depressants.  We tried to work through that period of time but it was clear that something was wrong and she ended up finding a Catholic counselor to discuss things with.  What came out of that counseling was deeply troubling and a low point in her life.  While I am going to leave out all the sad details, she had a flashback to her childhood when she was about 4 years old. A memory came flooding back one night when she was giving our son a bath.  She remembered Jerry in the bathroom abusing her and saying that he had to do this because Ellen didn't turn him on anymore.

    I had always wondered if there was some history of sexual abuse in her past but she insisted that it was purely mental and physical abuse.  Once that came out, so many things about her became clear.  It was like a road map had finally been given to us and we could see our path forward.  The husband and protector in me wanted to fly back to Illinois and put a bullet in his head.  As she continued to work with a counselor, she was able to get off of the antidepressants and move forward in her life.  The last thing that troubled her was trying to reconcile the commandment to honor your father and mother with her decision to cut them out of her life completely.  She struggled with that until our spiritual father gave her this nugget of wisdom.  He said that we are called to forgive others for what they have done to us, but we are not required to forget.  The abuse that you endured made you decide that your parents will never have contact with your son and that is absolutely the right thing to do.  That provided the final piece of healing she needed and she was able to move forward with her life.

    Sadly, that also came around the same time she was diagnosed with breast cancer and having her life cut short 10 months later.  She was tested greatly when she received a call from an aunt that Ellen had died in December 2015.  After she hung up the phone and told me the news I asked her how she felt.  Her response was a very Patrick like response...I feel sad that she suffered but I feel nothing else.  She was further tested when Jerry wrote the obituary and decided to leave Theresa and Ryan out of it.  She was hurt by that omission but she did what a good Catholic should do.  She had a Divine Liturgy prayed for the repose of her Mom's soul and our priest took us to the local cemetery to lay flowers at a statue of an angel.  I have no idea what Ellen's spiritual life was like, although I suspect there was none, but Theresa did "honor" her mother by praying for her soul.  Jerry went on to eternal life in December 2020 and left behind a broken son, Wes.  This was evidenced by the obituary he wrote choosing to leave his sister Theresa and her son out of. He was not given the grace of a Divine Liturgy as Theresa had reposed in 2016.

    It was the above photo that brought back all those memories for me.  Another hole in the wall of a house that was filled with hate and anger.  Ellen and Jerry's daughter was able to break the cycle of hate/anger/violence and lived a great life, leaving behind a strong son.   Ellen and Jerry's son has followed in the footsteps of his father, having a criminal rap sheet several pages long (according to the Madison County Clerk of the Court).  When I heard that Jerry died intestate and that Ryan was entitled to 50% of the estate I smiled that some good came out of that house of horrors.  Whatever amount of cash that house generates will be used to pay for Theresa's son to go to college and build a better life.  As for me, it was the ultimate fuck you to Jerry knowing that the heir of his hated and abused daughter is taking a portion of his estate away from the messed up child he left behind.  I'm not quite at the forgiveness level that Theresa was.