Reflections on Years Gone By

It was 20 years ago that we returned to the Pacific Northwest and the land of my childhood, 20 years ago that we entrusted our possessions to a burly moving man piloting an oversized Bekins truck while we followed in the trusty Honda and the drafty Jeep.

Twenty years ago, we came to call the Key Peninsula home. There are earlier vestiges in our lineage; my father spent his youth in Rosedale, and my grandmother’s sister Betty owned a getaway cabin in Home for many years. It was in March 2006, however, that my family and I, including two daughters, a dachshund, and a goldfish, arrived on the KP, making this the 20th anniversary of our homecoming.

Compared with the deep history of this land, 20 years is not a significant time, but let me tell you, children, I have seen some things. I shopped at Walt’s Market back when it was still Walt’s Market, with Laura’s phone-booth-sized coffee stand out front. I lived through the infamous “Who is Shabel” debate. I ate countless greasy breakfasts at Lulu’s Homeport. I watched the Lakebay Marina go from a silent, lonely structure to a boisterous community hub and back to a derelict eyesore once again.

I never had the chance to visit the Huckleberry, but I did experience the opening of the KP’s first Mexican restaurant. I didn’t get to try out Oliver’s barbecue place, but I was there when Key Center’s first fast food joint arrived. I missed out on the Great Key Center fire in 1970, but survived the Hanukkah Eve windstorm of 2006 that knocked out power for a week and convinced me of the importance of a woodstove and ample supply of seasoned firewood.

Time circles around while time moves on. I witnessed the installation of the traffic light in Key Center, a moment of grave concern for locals worried about civilization’s approach. Today, local social media spaces are quite aghast over the new speed hump on the same stretch of road. Twenty years ago, our beloved Seattle Seahawks were defeated by the referees in their first Super Bowl, and now they have their second Lombardi Trophy. When we moved to Lakebay, our country was deep in the quagmire of a Middle Eastern war. This week, the fires of war are being stoked once again. History may not repeat, but it surely echoes.

Over the past 20 years, a generation has grown up. The sweet little girls who rode into town in the backseat of the family sedan with their multitudinous demands of “Are we there yet?” are now grown and (mostly) fully functioning adults. I confess I am a little surprised that they now possess college degrees and meaningful careers. Their friends are marrying and having babies of their own. Their teachers are retiring. Somehow, I survived the trials of fatherhood and am rapidly becoming, in their world, irrelevant and outdated.

Twenty years. Twenty Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas mornings. Countless picnics and camping trips. The trusty Honda replaced twice over, the goldfish and dachshund long ago laid to rest. Friends made and lost. Gardens planted and harvests gathered. A lifetime of memories captured in a few grainy snapshots stored in dusty cardboard boxes somewhere in the garage.

In early April, we will celebrate yet one more Easter, gathering for the twentieth time in the dusky dawn along the shore of the Salish Sea to remember why we came in the first place: to serve a people and a community and to proclaim a hope that arises even in the messiest of moments. To cling to the promise of life and a future, even when the pathway ahead seems dim. To know that, in this place and in this time, we continue pushing forward, because this is the only time we have, and it matters, it all matters. “He is risen,” we will shout, for it is the God of life who brought us here 20 years ago, and who has sustained us until this day.

On the day we moved into our home 20 years ago, it snowed. Gentle reader, I am writing this column 20 years later, to the very day, and it is snowing. I am glad to report that this time around, I have nowhere to go.

Award-winning columnist Dan Whitmarsh is a licensed therapist and pastor of Lakebay Community Church.