Halcyon Days

Musings of an Expatriate Texan Living on the Crystal Coast in the Off-Season

“Halcyon days.” A period of calm during the winter, when storms do not occur.

Etymology: From Latin, Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus and wife of Ceyx. When her husband died in a shipwreck, Alcyone threw herself into the sea whereupon the gods transformed them both into halcyon birds (kingfishers). When Alcyone made her nest on the beach, waves threatened to destroy it. Aeolus restrained his winds and kept them calm during seven days in each year, so she could lay her eggs. These became known as the “halcyon days,” when storms do not occur.

When we pulled away on that dark night in the summer of 2010, I had wanted to leave. I wanted to leave so badly I didn’t want to get a hotel in town overnight, then leave in the morning. No, I wanted to get on the road; on the road again, to the next place. I thought at that moment I’d had my fill of the place.

Today, it is difficult to understand why.

It had not been a good two years. At least that’s what I was thinking as I pulled out onto NC Highway 24 south and west, with the boys already falling asleep in the back of the truck. They were 14 and 11 at the time. And they had already been through this too many times.

So eager I was to leave that my oldest still had his baseball uniform on; he had just finished his team’s last game of the season only an hour before. He didn’t have anywhere to change.

Back then, things like little league baseball games took on ridiculous importance in my mind. I’d be damned if he did not get in his last game before we got in the truck for a few days and MOVED across the country.

I was an afflicted person. I see that now. But back then, it all seemed normal.

We couldn’t go back to the house, because the movers had already come and cleaned everything out. They had finished up while the boys and I were at the baseball game, and my wife had already gotten on the road herself to our new house in northern Virginia. The house we had just that afternoon vacated was now empty. It didn’t belong to us anymore. We had sold it. So we had no choice; we needed to get on down the road.

So I turned right and we headed down highway 24 in the same direction I had driven every day to work over the past two years, in the direction of Camp Lejeune, toward our final destination for the night, Wilmington. In my mind, if I could just get in at least two hours of driving, that prospect was preferred over languishing in town for another night. Something had soured our time there, and so, insanely it seems now, we drove off into the dark, Crystal Coast night.

Years later, we would ask ourselves why. What had been so bad about everything? Because in comparison to some of what we later experienced, it had been pretty quiet and normal.

The boys quickly fell asleep. An hour down the road, we pulled through some now forgotten fast-food place. This was a way of life back then. I was on active-duty in the Marine Corps, and we moved every two or three years.

Today, it seems utterly ridiculous. But at the time, it was not only normal; it was anticipated. We looked forward to it. The new and unknown was an exciting prospect. We got an itch to move every 24–36 months.

I had one year remaining on my tour, but I was so determined to get us out of our situation I had requested “short tour” orders, because — in my infinite wisdom (or stupidity) — I had believed it would be better for us to get back to the DC area.

I would subsequently learn some painful lessons about the proverbial grass being greener in other places. Sometimes, it is better to be patient to see if a current situation that appears to be going wrong resolves itself. In hindsight, I made a big mistake. But we learn form mistakes and hopefully don’t repeat them.

But at the time, none of these things entered my mind; I was on a mission. We were moving on as quickly as we could. The boys ate their food and I drove into the ever-darkening night, as they fell back asleep.

I made it another hour before we stopped at some nondescript motor hotel on the outskirts of Wilmington. “I’m tired Dad,” came a voice from the back. I parked and walked them to the room as they each carried their own pillows from home — packed by their Mother who was always one step ahead of me. We piled into our little room with a wall-unit that was spewing air entirely too cold for a humid, June night in eastern Carolina.

The boys were out again in minutes in their shared bed, and I carefully placed another blanket around them, making sure they were warm enough and comfortable. I got into my own bed and stared at the ceiling, plotting how early I could get them up to attack the road again the next morning. And I’m all but certain we started earlier than they wanted to.

I was an afflicted person back then. I just said that for the second time. And the account I just told took place almost a decade ago.

I’m a different person today. I’ve changed fundamentally and irrevocably, for several reasons. Life has a way of humbling people.

So there will be some things in this journal that sound like confessions. But those confessions came as the result of realization and transformation.

And the transformed person that I now am just got a second chance that I never in my remotest dreams believed I’d ever have; to return to the place that I was so eager to leave on that hot, humid, dark night in the summer of 2010.

And this time around, things are already much different. Because my perspectives have changed. And I have changed; hopefully, for the better.

To be continued.

Glen Hines is the author of two books, Document and Cloudbreak, available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. He is presently at work on his third book, Crossroads, to be published in early 2019. His writing has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Task & Purpose, and the Human Development Project.