It’s 4am and I’m waiting for the sunrise. I can’t remember the last time I did this—perhaps back in college after the season finale of Lost? But right now it’s pitch black outside. I can’t sleep thanks to the jet lag and my body’s stubborn inability to sleep on long haul flights so I’m sat in our hotel room that overlooks the ocean.
Out there in the dark, buoys are bobbing up and down. Their lights hovering in what appears to be the deep vacuum of interstellar space. Trumpet Meditations by Spencer Ludwig hums in my headphones. Along the promenade below a few joggers take their laps. A chap walks his dog. Seagulls plod their feet up and down. A row of houses off to the side are dark and quiet, currently battered by the howling sea winds that thud along the window panes of our hotel.
I’m typing this as my body is smushed against the closest radiator for warmth—a radiator!—and I’m happy to be home.
Coming back to the UK is like putting on an old cardigan sweater, worn into comfort after decades. The kind of feeling that nothing new or foreign can provide.
Words fail to do the trick because this trip already feels cozy as hell. The sounds and accents! The greens of England! The familiar sweets and chocolate! The biting cold and the gas stations that aren’t scary! Public restrooms! The light that meekly putters through the rude and unpredictable clouds above! I missed you all, my dearest friends. I’m sorry I left.
Although, apologies won’t really do. We all know I hated this place’s guts for years. I was boring and relentless in my vitriol as a kid, always fighting, always moaning about the dumbest stuff with every atom. I can’t put into words how much I hated this town growing up, and now I’m trying to remind myself that it’s okay, shhhhh, this is just a place, this is just a place.
We’re in my hometown to see my brother’s family and his kids, to see my niece for the first time. I’m nervous to see them because I feel pressure to be a punk rock uncle, to catch up on the years of being away, to make them laugh and hope they remember me when I come back next time. Last night I saw my four year old nephew act out a scene from A Muppet Christmas Carol as he blushed, turned to us at the dinner table, and said “Merry Christmas, everyone.”
Core memory accomplished!
The pressure is on a little bit though because I don’t know what being an uncle really means. I never had one growing up and so I want to care for these kids in ways I wasn’t. I want my nephew and my niece to have someone to talk to, someone to ask advice, someone to moan at and make silly jokes with. I want to be a role model for these little nerds.
And maybe if I can be a good uncle, I can be a good dad, too.
An almost anti-Californian sunrise appears on the horizon, weak and pale. The wind has picked up and it looks like the world outside is turning into a proper storm. Way out there a cruise ship turns to face me, coming into harbor.
I remember as a kid I took that same overnight ferry crossing but in the other direction—from Plymouth to Calais with my dad. We left super late in the dark, and for whatever reason my dad hadn’t booked us a cabin with beds to sleep in. He decided it would be better for us to bounce around in the abandoned dining area at the bow of the ship. So I tried to get comfortable, stretching out on a bendy seat but it was like trying to fall asleep whilst your body slowly but perilously slides down a rocky embankment.
It was just my luck that there was a terrible storm that night, too. Violent swells rocked the ship back and forth along towering mountains of surf. My dad snored the whole way to France whilst I was a crash test dummy, slamming into countertops and chairs, desperately trying to find a comfy place to rest.
Ah, the first beautiful cloud of the morning! It’s a Toy Story shaped little guy, with hints of orange and curled folds of water vapor, with all the edges delicately pressed and squeezed like a pastry. Seagulls have started hovering above, swooping in to dance their way along the promenade.
That cruise ship on the horizon has turned towards me now, too. It’s puttering and puttering, battling the wind and the sea and whatever else an enormous ferry has to overcome to make that daily trip across the Channel. It’s so close that I can see pixels of light escape the portholes and a great orange beam from the windows at the front of the ship—that familiar, uncomfortable, sleepless dining room from hell.
And now I can almost reach out and touch it.