Chapter 21

Heads or Tails

Sydney, Australia

June 8

I can’t believe it has been five months since my last message. I apologize for the long hiatus, but time has flown by since we settled into reasonably normal, everyday urban life here in Sydney.

My last dispatch trailed off in a very obscure place: the middle of Australia’s 1,500-mile Nullarbor Plain. Everyone should drive across the Nullarbor once in a lifetime just to experience its pure desolate beauty. Once is enough, though. Not only is the highway monotonous to the point of hallucination, but the facilities along the way are basic, to say the least. Our map promised a little town with a colorful name like Balladonia or Cocklebiddy every 200 kilometers or so. Somehow I pictured these places as frontier settlements with quaint pubs and general stores, but they all turned out to be nothing more than a single cinder block compound with a few gas pumps, a dingy diner, and a primitive ten-room motel. The only “inhabitants” of these towns were employees ferried in by van to work two-week shifts.

You wouldn’t patronize these places by choice, but of course, there was no choice. You could either eat, drink, and fill your tank in these God-forsaken little way stations or perish by the side of the road. The food made McDonald’s look like cordon bleu, and the service was amusing even by Australia’s lax standards. Once, a very pleasant young waitress completely screwed up our order despite the fact that we were her only customers. By way of excuse, she said, “Awww, ah’m really sorry, but ah haven’t gotten much sleep laitely.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, thinking maybe a pack of obstreperous dingoes had been baying outside her window all night.

With no hint of irony she replied, “Ah, there’s just been too many pahties to go to.”

Now, remember, there weren’t more than a dozen living souls within a hundred mile radius. So either she had a Bell Ranger helicopter parked out back, or the local social scene consisted of a very small crowd mustered around a very large keg. I strongly suspect the latter, but you do have to admire the Aussie instinct for revelry, which flourishes even in this unbearing wasteland.

Anyway, it was with some sense of accomplishment that we crossed the Nullarbor (hey, we got the bumper sticker) and rejoined civilization on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. We sampled Ceduna’s famous plump oysters, toured Port Augusta, and discovered a large lake full of bright pink water—apparently due to some sort of algae infestation. I guess the locals had grown accustomed to this startling phenomenon, because when I asked a waitress if the lake was always pink, she replied rather indifferently, “Naw, sometimes it’s orange.”

We arrived in Sydney—surely one of the fairest cities on earth—on a bright, summery January morning. We knew we were going to settle here for a while because it had now become imperative to get Kara and Willie some proper schooling. Before we left home, Devi and I were fully confident that we could homeschool our children on the road. It didn’t even occur to us that we’d fail in this area—but fail we did, and dismally. First of all, Kara and Willie were endlessly creative in weaseling out of the lessons. The slightest excuse—a knock on the door, a bug on the ceiling, a piece of lint on the carpet—and their attention wandered. Even when we did manage to focus their attention, albeit briefly, on math or phonics, Devi and I simply didn’t have the patience to do the job right. I don’t know how the many people who homeschool their children manage it, but the third time I stopped myself just short of calling one of the children an idiot, I knew in my heart of hearts that real schools and professional teachers existed for a reason. We decided that we didn’t want to ruin our once-in-a-lifetime trip with two hours of pure hell each day, so we packed up the books and resolved to put the kids in school for three or four months when we got to Sydney.

With the help of some old publishing friends, we found a well-regarded public school—North Sydney Demonstration School—and a furnished sublet nearby, at one end of the Harbour Bridge.³² We even found a cute nursery called Little Branches for Lucas, and one day, Devi and I faced the bittersweet moment when our last little cub toddled off to school. Lucas wore a multi-colored surfer hat and carried his blankie and stuffed bear in a yellow Bananas in Pajamas³³ backpack he got for Christmas in Perth. After spending twenty-four hours a day with his family for eight months straight, Lucas looked slightly stunned when we abandoned him amid the blocks and finger-paints. Fortunately he didn’t cry—which is more than I can say for Devi.

Kara and Willie were also stunned by their new school, but for a different reason. After eight months of freedom, they were suddenly dropped into a no-nonsense regime where discipline was a serious matter and lessons were imparted with a firm hand. To make matters worse, they had to wear admittedly nerdy yellow-and-blue uniforms.

“No way I’m wearing that,” announced Kara, when she saw her new blue culottes, yellow polo shirt, and sun hat.

“You better take that up with the school,” I replied, delighted that someone else was laying down the law for a change. And lay down the law they did. In Australia, the school year starts in early February, and the opening assembly for new children and their parents was a real eye-opener. Back home in Marin, educators spend a lot of time talking about “nurturing our children” and “giving kids freedom to be creative,” but in Sydney, a stern headmistress stood under an equally stern portrait of Queen Elizabeth and set her young charges straight.

“When I get up in the morning,” she declared, “I groom myself carefully and put on clean, neat clothing. This is my uniform, and it indicates my intention to work. You, too, will wear clean, neat uniforms. You will bring your assignments and text books to class every day without fail, and you will mind your teachers to the letter.”

She even made me a little nervous, but this boot-camp approach worked particularly well for Willie, who had slumped back into functional illiteracy during his long sabbatical. And guess what? After only a few months at North Sydney Demonstration School, our previously shy Kara was self-assured enough to emcee a school assembly. Of course her confidence was bolstered when everyone kept telling her how cute her American accent was. Still, it was amazing to watch her lead the entire school in the singing of the Australian national anthem!

The Dem School, as the relentlessly abbreviating Australians called it, also offered an after-hours sex-education class. So one evening Devi and I bit the bullet and finally trundled Kara and Willie off to learn about the birds and the bees. At one point, the teacher asked several people to stand up and hold large signs bearing the names of various sexual organs on them so the kids could differentiate the male and female components. Since I was so obviously embarrassed by the whole discussion, she naturally chose me to be a sign-bearer. “Would you mind being the scrotum?” she asked politely. Now, what could I say to that? Still I defy any one of you to stand before a group of thirty people—including your spouse and children—and maintain any semblance of dignity while holding a huge sign with the word “SCROTUM” scrawled across it.

Anyway, Kara and Willie seemed to be completely nonchalant—practically uninterested in the whole grand revelation. They didn’t ask one question on the way home, and when we asked them about what they learned, they answered monosyllabically. Still, I think they got the picture, and I only pray that the image of their father standing in front of a large group of people with the word “SCROTUM” brandished across his chest doesn’t linger.

One day, on the way home from Sydney’s wholesale fish market, I struck up a conversation with our cab driver, a recent émigré from Poland. “How do you like living in Sydney?” I asked.

“Everyone here is very happy,” replied the cabby in heavily-accented English. “And if they’re not, they’re stupid.”

That about summed it up. We found Sydney to be a clean, civilized city ensconced in a gorgeous natural setting with wonderful restaurants and shops, superb beaches, and dozens of distinctive neighborhoods. The surrounding countryside also had its share of attractions. When visitors like my parents or Devi’s mother showed up for a few weeks, we toured the rugged Blue Mountains, Hunter Valley wineries, and the posh horse farms around Scone. We even flew up to Port Douglas for some unforgettable scuba diving amidst the delicate coral formations and fabulous Day-Glo fish of the Great Barrier Reef.

It was on one of these expeditions, and a rather routine one at that, where we faced the most terrifying ordeal of our entire round-the-world trip. After all the outlandish places we’ve been, you wouldn’t think we’d find trouble in homey old Oz. But I suppose that was just it. In Africa and India, Devi and I were constantly on alert—always checking and double-checking that the kids were safe. But in Australia, everything seemed so familiar, I guess I let my guard down.

It all began pleasantly enough. The kids were on Easter break, and a friend of mine from Melbourne graciously offered us the use of her family’s oceanfront condo in Surfer’s Paradise—a resort town on Queensland’s sunny Gold Coast. It was too good an invitation to pass up, so the whole family, including Devi’s mom, piled into our old Mitsubishi Starwagon and drove five hundred miles north.

When got to Surfer’s Paradise—the Miami Beach of Australia—we found it mobbed with tens of thousands of auto racing fans who had come to see an “Indy Car” race run through the streets of the city. Most of these people were far more interested in the big race and the bacchanalian street parties surrounding it than they were in the sand and the surf. So on the windy, overcast morning when Kara and I went out to ride the waves, we had the beach entirely to ourselves.

I’d already taken the fearless Willie out body-boarding several times, but Kara was far more cautious, and it wasn’t until our third day in Surfer’s that she worked up the nerve. That morning, she surprised me over breakfast by saying, “You always take Willie out boogie-boarding. Today, I want you to take me out—just us.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, glancing out the window at the choppy grey ocean. “It looks a lot windier than it was yesterday.”

“I’m sure,” Kara said confidently. “Let’s go.”

Our first few rides, close to the beach, went pretty well. So after a while I took Kara out past the sand bar where we could catch some decent waves. When the first set rolled in, I said, “Okay, Kara, get ready. We’ll jump on the next big one.”

“Okay,” she said, shivering on her board, “I’m ready.”

When the wave closed in, I kicked hard with my flippers and caught it right in the curl. I rode the foam all the way back to the beach, and when I rolled up on the sand, I looked around to see how Kara had fared. But she wasn’t there. In fact, she hadn’t caught the wave at all, and she was still bobbing around on her board out by the sand bar. That happened a few times with Willie, so I figured it was no big deal, but then I noticed that Kara wasn’t where I left her. She was about a hundred yards downwind and a good deal further out to sea. Furthermore, she seemed to be drifting away from the beach at a forty-five-degree angle. Kara was obviously caught in some sort of current or riptide, but she didn’t know it. She was just lying on her board waiting for me to come out and get her. Unfortunately that was beginning to look difficult because Kara was gathering speed rapidly.

I grabbed my board and stumbled clumsily through the shallow water in my flippers. Then I worked my way out through the breakers. I used to swim competitively as a kid, and I was kicking as hard as I could, but even with my flippers on, I couldn’t seem to close the distance. After five minutes my thigh muscles began to burn, and I was gasping for breath. By that point Kara had drifted a quarter mile down the beach, and was further than ever from shore.

“Damn,” I thought. “This isn’t fooling around anymore.”

I glanced back at the beach to see if there was anyone who could help us, but there wasn’t another soul on the sand. At that moment, I realized that Kara could easily be washed out to sea.

“Okay. That’s it,” I said to myself. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose her this way.” I put my head down and kicked with everything I had.

I don’t know if I ever mentioned this, but Kara was born with a congenital birth defect. When she was two months old, a pediatrician held a stethoscope to her little chest and heard a telltale whooshing sound. It was blood rushing through a hole between the chambers of her heart—an atrial septal defect. The doctors said they could fix this anomaly with “garden variety” heart surgery, but even the garden variety involved sawing through Kara’s breastbone, stopping her heart, and sewing up the hole.

There are so many harrowing moments when your child needs a serious operation—the body blow when you first hear the diagnosis, the cruel practice of informed consent, the long hours in the waiting room—but for me, the most difficult part of the process, the part I’ll remember for the rest of my life, came just before surgery. That’s when Devi and I carried our baby into the scrub room adjacent to the operating theater. There were seven or eight doctors and nurses there, washing up and milling around. Suddenly, one of the nurses walked up to me and tried to take Kara from my arms.

“Wait. Just one minute,” I said, a little too loudly, and I began to choke up. Then Devi, who was pregnant with Willie at the time, said, “Look, if you’re not going to hold it together, neither can I.” I swallowed hard and handed Kara, kicking and thrashing, over to the nurse. That was the single worst moment in my life.

Four hours later, Kara was wheeled out of the operating room. She was unconscious and ghostly pale with tubes and electrodes running all over her body and a red-stained patch of gauze over her heart. She looked so tiny and frail. In the end, though, she was fine. Everything went smoothly. Her heart was stitched up like new, and her only souvenir from the whole affair was the faint zipper scar that still runs down her chest.

Now, eight-and-a-half years later, my baby was in danger again. I felt a wild surge of adrenaline and kicked like a maniac. I could close some of the distance while I was kicking hard, but if I let up even for a second Kara slipped further away. So I kicked without relief, and when I thought I couldn’t go another inch, I found the same current that Kara was in and closed the last hundred meters quickly. I caught her board breathlessly.

“Hi, Daddy,” Kara said casually. “What took you so long? I’ve been out here for ten minutes.” She still had no concept she was in danger, and I figured there was no use telling her.

“Listen, honey,” I said as calmly as possible, “we’ve drifted pretty far from shore.”

“Oh, yea. We have,” she said looking up.

“Do me a favor. Put your board on top of mine. Jump up, and I’ll swim us in.”

“Okay,” she said, “I want to go in anyway. I’m getting cold.”

At least I knew enough not to fight the current. I kicked parallel to the beach at an easy pace until we finally slipped out of the current. Then I headed toward the beach at an angle so I wouldn’t have to fight the wind. It took an unbearably long time, but eventually we made it back to the beach. When I finally felt sand under my feet, the adrenaline receded. My legs wobbled and I could barely stand up. The waves kept knocking me over.

“These damned flippers,” I said to Kara, “I can’t walk through the surf with these things on.” I stopped and pulled one of the flippers off, and then it struck me. I didn’t usually wear both flippers for just this reason. It was too hard slogging through the shallow water. I usually wore one flipper when I body-boarded like the Hawaiian kids do, so I could swim and walk.

But today, for some reason, I put both flippers on, and because of that insignificant twist of fate, I was able to kick hard enough to catch Kara and pluck her from the current. Isn’t it funny what the course of your life turns on? A crummy twenty-dollar piece of rubber. Wear it. Don’t wear it. Save your kid or lose her. Heads or tails. It tends to make you value every moment.

³² Tourists can enroll their children in Australian public schools for up to three months. We stretched it to four, and no one seemed to mind.

³³ Stars of Australian children’s television