Dispatch from Mount Soledad

Perspective

SOME VACATIONS don’t turn out well. In late September, my wife, Yolanda, and I set off on a trip to Canada and New England, which included a Quebec City–New York cruise. We always enjoy traveling and especially looked forward to stops in the Canadian Maritime Provinces, which we’d never visited.

Abruptly, everything darkened. On a shore excursion to Peggy’s Cove, a charming port town outside Halifax, Nova Scotia, we got a call from our gardener. He told us what the world was seeing: Soledad Mountain Road was collapsing, and our home and its contents were in danger.

The ride back seemed interminable. To add anxiety, our cell phone’s charge ran out. We rushed to the cabin of our cruise companions, Yolanda’s cousin Irene and her husband, George, who lent us their phones. And there we first saw the CNN pictures of our neighborhood that were flashing around the globe. Frustratingly, the images contained only glimpses of our house, and the news came in snippets. Our son, Dan, had rushed to the area and was keeping us as informed as possible, given erratic phone links. The ship’s Internet connection was even more sporadic.

We wanted to hurry home, but the ship was pulling out, bound for St. John, New Brunswick, and we soon discovered there is no quick way to get here from there. George wisely suggested that, since our house was red-carded and we couldn’t do anything immediately, we wait till the ship reached Boston for an easier connection home.

In the interim, we decided, we’d try to savor the abbreviated vacation. Yet sudden thoughts and incidents intruded on my attempts at suppression: Where did I pack the house keys? Oh, wait. That document is on my computer at home. Oh. Immigration form address: What to write? And we realized that, for who knows how long, each of us was limited to the clothing we had in one big bag and one small carry-on.

Oddly, we didn’t mourn our potential losses, but we frequently grew tearful over the e-mails and calls offering us all sorts of help, including places to stay and cars to drive. Although facing a terrible financial blow, we felt enriched with such caring and generous friends.

Immeasurably more than money, however, this loss leaves a deficit in my heart. I loved that house because it was unique and beautiful, and I had helped make it so. We bought it in 1988, when the home, despite benefiting from a hot real-estate market and a panoramic 200-degree view, had remained unsold for a year. It was dark, badly designed and overgrown. But we gutted it and restyled it to make it bright and airy and to show off the view.

During the remodel, Yolanda and I would regularly sit with the builder in the wide-open back section and plan. During that time, I saw that the house’s bare concrete slab had no cracks, which was heartening because the house was more than 20 years old. Clearly, or so I thought, the ground was solid.

Over the years, we bought furniture that fit the home’s spacious rooms and made more improvements——kitchen and bathroom makeovers, tiled and decorated the front entrance. I would constantly think the house was perfect, then Yolanda would come up with a new——and excellent——idea.

But dwelling on the past tightens my throat and clouds my eyes.

I prefer looking to the future, even though it contains equal parts of hope and dread. Still, whenever I find myself sinking into sadness, I concentrate on an early comment by Dan, describing our treasured 4-year-old grandson: “Vince knows that you’re coming to live with us, and he’s beside himself with happiness.”

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