Prevailing Westerlies

Friday night, my parents came to see me for the last time before beginning the long drive home. Visiting hours mandated that my mom couldn’t come back into the dorm room, so Dad travelled down the hallway alone. I let him in, and he looked around at the newly organized living space, seeming to approve for a moment. “Do you have everything you need?”

“Yeah, I think I’m pretty well covered.”

“Are you feeling any better today?”

“Yeah, I’m doing fine now.”

“Well, come on out and see your mom, so we can say goodbye.”

I flicked the lights off and shut the door behind me, keeping my keys close. We met in the lobby and did just as Dad had suggested. After our farewells, Dad rummaged around his mind, trying to find something invisible. A piece of clarity. A contact lens for me to see this new world through, perhaps. He finally settled on a regret:

“I think one thing you kids missed out on that I had growing up is moving a lot. There’s something to be said for going to a new place, where nobody knows you. You don’t have to be the same person all the time. You can be anyone.”

He meant that I should still be “Me,” of course, but no one here knows who Calvin Neal is. I have no past to answer for. “Me” can be anyone. It is curiously empowering.

-o-

Wind is always a foreigner; it has no resting place of its own. It pays visits to me like the favorite uncle everyone talks about – the one who drops by of his own volition with surprises in his pockets and wild new stories to tell. I can sit for hours and listen to the sounds of the sky bluster by, always rushing somewhere, but never arriving. It is this wind that pulls the cool Canada air southward, lifts the crisp ocean currents, then heads inland until it collides with the Cascades – solitary white peaks that bar its path. The only way to pass them is to go up, dropping dead weight on the people below – a people who don’t even bother with umbrellas any more.

Four weeks ago, I crossed those mountain passes and came to live in a desert. The trees here spread their branches wide, broad leaves facing upwards in their prayer for liquid nourishment. I dread the day when these leaves give up the faith, crumple, and drop to the ground in exhaustion. I dread that day, because I have always related closely to the nature around me. One summer, we bought an RV so we could still attend all five family reunions without severe discomfort. It was always the plan to resell it in the fall, until it wasn’t. This decision didn’t greatly affect me, though, because unlike the rest of the family, I still slept outside, closer to nature. The red-winged black bird knows just when to wake me and the wind breathes itself into me. I am alive.

-o-

I have never felt entirely prepared for the “Real World”. The skills my parents taught me were practical, for sure: I will forever be a master dish-washer and toilet-scrubber. Despite this, the feeling I’m often left with is that I don’t know enough about the world to make sense of it. I resolve to ask Dad.

I come into the den and make eye contact with Dad, who sits in a large black swivel chair, working on his laptop. The room is a collision of office and intimate. A single ceiling light fixture casts its yellow-tinted glow about the room. A single row of wallpaper marks the boundary between ceiling and wall – its blocks showing faded caricatures of continents, outdated maps with no countries or boundaries. The walls are a rich beige, and the carpet deep green. The centerpiece is a massive, red oak desk that only fit in the room after Dad and I removed the door and sanded away bits of the door frame. This is weighed down by stacks of file folders, loose pages, and a single accounting calculator. Paintings cover the walls: a print of Howard Chandler Christy’s Scene at the Signing of the Constitution, a rendition of the Capital Building in Washington DC where Dad served his mission, and two nature scenes done by his father, John Calvin Neal, who hunts, fishes, and admires Kinkade. Behind his chair is a massive window that looks out to the trees and a dark night sky. To the left is a steel file drawer.

“Are you doing anything right now?” I ask, unsure of how to start the conversation.

“Not really. Do you want to talk?” An invitation.

“Well, I’ve been wondering how a 401k works…”

Not the deepest of philosophical topics, sure, but this is something we can connect on. For over an hour, Dad and I talk about taxes and retirement, and I learn for the first time that we can talk about anything. A cool breeze rustles the branches outside.

-o-

Westbound I-84 closes after harvest as farmers burn their fields and the wind dances its autumn rituals in the smoke. A dry gust whips over plateau and effortlessly sails to one of the Blue Mountains’ many peaks where it perches to watch the engine in my grandfather’s truck overheat, then it races down the opposite side, trekking eastward.

I went walking through my aunt and uncle’s neighborhood on my first day in Utah, looking at the houses as I went. Their fences began to tug at me until they finally seized my attention. Each new fence was a stark contrast to the last: metal links, plastic slats, false picket fences, and cast iron gateways. Strangely unsettling was the absence of the one material that should make up most fences. Where is the wood? I asked my aunt about this and she reminded me that lumber is an expensive commodity – a sure reminder that I’ve come a long way. Three days later, I head south again.

An alien landscape surrounds my new home. This is truly a mountainous civilization. Everything is made of stone. Even the threshold of my floor’s public bathroom is white marble. Where there should be rolling hills draped in pine and fir, I see only barren, rocky bulwarks. A brown, foreign landscape. And yet, these hold their own beauty when the sky turns red, and the rainbow of a faraway storm splashes across them. These are their own cathedrals, echoing perfect voices singing prayers to their Lord.

-o-

For most of my childhood, the same portrait hung over the family room couch. We were slow to replace that photo of a young family. Dad had a dark, full beard then, and my mom’s red-rimmed glasses were matched only by her equally-red hair. My brother and I smiled in front, hair combed and shirts pressed. I wore a black turtleneck.

Last summer, I grew out my beard in a last-chance effort before BYU and before my mission. For a time, rekindling the habit of shaving was difficult, but now I shave every morning again. Dad once told me that while he was courting my mom, he would shave twice a day: once in the morning, and again at night, before a date. Every afternoon now, I stand in front of my mirror, wondering where this extra stubble came from.

-o-

A storm came in the afternoon. After two weeks of living the exact same sunny, cloudless day, I took the chance to go outside. I barely remembered where I had been walking to, but I reveled in the experience of the storm. Wind had arrived, and it electrified me.

Young trees took on their customary bows as air rushed through them and water pounded down. Sidewalks revealed their hidden designs, rich brown lines beneath their drab grey exteriors. The raindrops greeted my uncovered head and shoulders, filling me with moisture. This rain was warm and soft, though. I miss the stinging sensation of raindrops never quite frozen, tumbling from a blanketed sky. The wind has transformed, but so have I.