A Visit with to Port Townsend

On Saturday, Howard and I drove to Port Townsend to see Ande who was in the midst of packing boxes, trying to get her life down to the few possessions that could fit into her car for the cross-country trip she was about to embark upon.

Ande and her daughter Aster lived with us for many years when our children were young. She and I co-parented together. Aster was two years older than Gavi and two years younger than Jasper, right in the middle. Those were very lovely years that I remember with great fondness.

Aster is now living in Washington D.C. working at some really well-paid job that’s fairly boring. She took her LSATs last spring and did spectacularly well and is now looking for a law program. My boys, well, one is in a rock and roll band and one is an actor.

We reminisced a lot about when the kids were little, the times we had at the Blaine Street house in Port Townsend. It was so good to sit and talk to her.

Ande is also a cancer survivor, breast cancer and lymphoma. The breast cancer was a minor episode, but the lymphoma was not. She was very proactive about her care and found a doctor that she could work with, one that was primarily a researcher. She and I both have fairly low opinions of doctors as scientists. Doctors seem to want to adhere to orthodoxy. They do not make the distinction between longitudinal studies and randomized trials when looking at research.

The type chemo she did worked on the mitochondria, just the stuff that I’m interested in (see the links on side bar). Of course, these are not fancy new drugs. They’ve been around for years so drug companies can’t make a lot of money from them.

On Saturday night Howard and I went to see Joey Pipia’s show. He has a little theatre in the industrial section of Port Townsend where he does little shows. This was a close-up magic show. Eben and Paul Black happened to show up that night as well. It is a 30 seat house, very intimate. He does a very nice show. I had a lovely time.

After the show we went back to his house and had pie and tarts and champagne with his family and Eben and Paul. It was great to see Jenny and Sophie and Phina again. They have such a lovely little house there.

The next day was Sunday and Ande had to cook a large pot of beans to serve at the fire department’s booth at the county fair so she was continually popping in and out in between stirring the beans and taking them out of the oven and such chores as that. We had breakfast at the Salal Cafe and she popped in there for a while then went back to her beans. Howard and I walked downtown and peeked in a few stores. We drove by the old Blaine Street house which seemed to have been “remuddled” a bit. We finally left in the afternoon for the long drive home after visiting the co-op for lunch.

At some point during the weekend we realized that we really hadn’t left anything behind in Port Townsend. Yet another of my ties to it has been broken now that Ande is moving away. We decided that we missed the salt water. I love the smell of it in the air. But Port Townsend is no longer my town. It was cold and overcast and uninviting. It was good to get back to Portland, to the warm weather and our lovely house teeming with our beloved friends and family. Our life on Blaine Street was a fine life while it lasted but I’m happy to be where I am now.