An Irresponsible Adult
Chapter Two

When I’m ashore, I frequently find myself at Wegman’s supermarket in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. I love going there because Monica loves going there. If she’s not a gourmet chef then Wolfgang Puck isn’t Wolfgang Johann Topfschnig. Wegman’s sees folks like Wolfgang and Monica coming, and it is ready for them. I’ve seen produce in their bins that you normally see only in National Geographic photos. In the meat case, they have ahi tuna shipped overnight from Malaysia. The cheese case speaks in dozens of exotic languages. Monica can spend hours and hundreds of dollars in Wegman’s aisles in one visit. She is always smiling at those times, a saintly smile, which is appropriate. Wegman’s has a steeple on its roof. I tell Monica she should genuflect when she enters through the automatic doors. I have dubbed Wegman’s the Cathedral of Conspicuous Consumption.
It was late August in 2006, the Sunday before Labor Day, and we had gone to Wegman’s for an afternoon service. Because I am not a devotee of that religion, I often get no deeper into the cathedral than the coffee bar just inside the front door. Some chain establishments have a Starbucks counter. Wegman’s has the equal, but with its own brand of coffee, its own grinds. I get a cup of Seattle Roast or, when I’m less adventurous, Donut Shop coffee and then take a stool at one of the small tables in the alcove next to the foyer. From here, I can inspect the flow of humanity and sneer righteously. This is because I know the forces that brought the couples – and on a weekend, at least, the crowd comes in twos, like beasts boarding Noah’s arc – through the front doors. I am certain there is a direct link between the Food Network and the success of a supermarket that thrives not on coupons or ten-for-one sales but through your eagerness let it pick your pocket. You’ve seen Emeril prepare the meal. Now you are here to prove you are his equal. And in many cases, you have brought your husband in tow, like a docile elephant, hulking behind you, guided not by his own mind but by his expectation of your next command. This is good, because there may be heavy lifting involved.
I confess that at times, I’m the elephant. But often, I get to wait on a stool, sip my coffee and watch the crowd. And this August visit was one of those times. I cannot honestly recreate what followed, although I can speculate. My guess is that the crowd on this afternoon was not that spectacular, nothing to stir my imagination. On a good day, I’ll see a mother and adult daughter, for example. I can see the same curve in the nose, and although one nose is thicker than the other, just as one neck is wattled more than the other, it is clear that both are packages containing the same ingredients. So I will watch how they interact. Is there fondness or hostility? Superiority or submission? Then I will fabricate their story. This is a pastime I cannot suppress. A young couple with kids comes through the foyer beside me, stops at the fresh corn bins fifteen feet from my table, and I watch to analyze the parenting and assess the future of these children. It’s all very judgmental and it takes a lot of concentration.
But this probably was an afternoon without particularly good candidates for my inspection, so my mind drifted back a couple of weeks, to the trip Robin made from Long Island Sound to Annapolis, Maryland, where she stays most of the time. Monica and I had sailed first to Newport and then on to Rockland Maine in early July. She went home, her vacation time exhausted. I spent ten days in Maine and then, alone, began a series of day trips along the coast. When I reached the Connecticut River, my friend, Curt Michael, joined me on Robin to help for the overnight sail down the New Jersey coast and the two more days from Cape May to Annapolis. It was the longest stretch “Mike” and I had ever spent together, even though we had known each other for 46 years. We met as college freshmen, living in the same dorm. Mike was pragmatic, smart and fun. I was an immature, obsessive loose cannon. We and three other young men developed a bond that has lasted our lifetime. But Mike and I had never spent five consecutive days confined to the same space as we did on Robin. In the long, monotonous hours that Robin motored and motor-sailed along the 300-mile course, Mike and I had plenty of time to talk. In one of the conversations, he told me of the ten goals he had set for himself to complete in his lifetime. Some were boating goals. Mike, a licensed captain, teaches boating and owns a 40-foot sportfishing boat. Among his goals was a long trip up the Hudson River and Vermont’s Lake Champlain. Another was a winter spent cruising down the Intracoastal Waterway. His non-boating goals included building a retirement home – a project that was now under way – and a grand tour of national parks in the United States.
Mike’s words came back to me sitting on the stool in Wegman’s. As I sipped my coffee from its paper cup with plastic lid, I made a quick observation. I had never in my life set goals for monumental achievements. I had established expectations. As a teen, I decided that my primary responsibility in life was to be a good parent. This commandment had guided my life from that point on, forming the basis on which I habitually made all my decisions. Also, I had always wanted to write a book and get it published. That happened in 2002, but while it was an achievement that I found quietly pleasing, it was not the product of goal-setting. Rather, it was the result of years of hard work as a journalist intersecting with an assignment to report on a big story that was worth writing at book length.
But what, I thought, if I had some goals? What would they be? And what if I set a deadline to achieve those goals? As quickly as I had asked those questions, my mind began providing answers. There were, I discovered, pent-up desires, quite easily defined. I wanted to finish writing a novel that I had begun a decade earlier. I wanted to compete in a downhill skiing race. I wanted to sail singlehanded to Bermuda. And I wanted to do all those things in the next 12 months, by Labor Day 2007, the year that I turned 65.