Rapprochement is always difficult; when distance has grown over the years, it's sometimes impossible to overcome. Yet, horseback riding together offered my parents a way to do just that, and little by little my parents seemed to enjoy a budding sense of renewal between them.
My brother continued to live his carefree existence. After graduation from college in 1987, he and a friend went to Europe, and bicycled around Spain, France, and Italy for nearly a month. Upon his return, he shared stories about the adventure before taking a trip to the mountains to go white-water rafting.
In August, he began working full-time as a commercial real estate broker; he continued to date energetically. He brought a different girl home every couple of weeks to meet our parents, and every date seemed crazy about him. In time, my mom called me with the news that he'd brought a particular girl over twice. For Micah, that was just about the closest thing to a steady girlfriend he'd had in years. And when he brought her by a third time, I think my mom knew it was serious.
At Notre Dame, I was edging toward a degree in business finance, with the hope of attending law school after graduation. In March of 1988, a few friends and I decided to drive down to Florida for our final spring break. Because one of my roommate's fathers owned a condominium on Sanibel Island, we opted to go there instead of the usual destinations like Daytona or Fort Lauderdale.
On our second night there, I noticed a woman walking with a couple of girlfriends through the parking lot of the condominium.
She was attractive--but so was practically everyone after an evening on the town--and she quickly passed from my mind. A moment later, however, when my friends and I had almost reached the lobby, we heard voices calling down to us from the external hallway on the sixth floor.
"Hey, are you guys staying here?"
When we looked up, we noticed the same three girls.
"Yes," we answered.
"Well, we're supposed to meet a couple of friends, but they're not here yet, and we really have to go to the bathroom. Can we use yours?"
"Sure!" we shouted. "We're on the eighth floor."
They came up and introduced themselves as seniors from the University of New Hampshire, and we let them in our room to use the bathroom. A moment later, the three of them stood in the kitchen, but my eyes were glued to the woman I had noticed earlier. Up close, she had the most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen, so unusual in color they almost looked unreal. It was all I could do not to stare.
"Hi," I finally said. "I'm Nick."
She smiled. "Hey Nick. I'm Cathy."
I would love to tell you that the initial attraction was mutual, but I'd be lying if I did. The girls stayed in our room for a half hour or so and invited us down to their friends' place. While we were there, I got their phone number from one of Cathy's friends and promised to call the next day to see if they wanted to hang out at the beach behind the condominium.
When they decided to join us the following morning, I was palpably nervous about seeing Cathy again. I hoped I'd made a good impression on her, and when I saw her and her friends coming toward us on the beach, I quickly rose to greet them.
"Hey," I said eagerly, "I'm glad you could come."
To which Cathy replied, "Oh, hey, I'm Cathy. I didn't meet you last night, did I?"
Despite the ego bruising, I wasn't about to be deterred. We ended up talking for hours. When they mentioned that they were going out to a nearby nightclub, I talked my reluctant roommates into going and immediately sought out Cathy. After dancing with her for an hour, I leaned in and said, "You know, you and I are going to get married one day."
She just laughed in disbelief and said, "I think you need another beer."
How could I tell so quickly that she was the one for me? It was an odd intuitive moment, but I can honestly say that I knew.
We had a lot in common. Like me, she was a senior who was earning a degree in business. Like me, she was Catholic and went to church every Sunday. She was also a middle child, though one of four. Like me, she had an older brother and a younger sister. Her parents, like mine, were poor before attaining middle-class status, had never been divorced, and--how's this for coincidence--shared the same anniversary as my parents (August 31). She was an athlete (a state champion in gymnastics). She wanted children, as did I, and she wanted to stay home to raise them, as I hoped my wife would.
But most of all, what really attracted me to her was her manner. She laughed a lot, and it's easy to fall for someone who can find humor in any situation. She was also intelligent, well read, and well spoken, willing to listen and confident in her beliefs. And most of all, she was warm. She treated my friends as if they'd been her friends for years, would wave and smile at both children and the elderly. She seemed genuinely interested in everyone.
I had noticed all of these things about her, and as we were dancing, it struck me that she was everything I wanted in a lifelong companion.
When I got back to Notre Dame, I called my brother.
"Micah," I said, "I met the girl I'm going to marry."
"Where? When? Weren't you just on spring break?"
"Yeah. That's where I met her."
"Dude," he said, "you were on spring break. What the hell are you thinking about marriage for?"
"Just wait until you meet her."
"But it was spring break!"
"I know," I said gleefully. "Isn't it great?"
In the two months leading up to graduation, I wrote Cathy a hundred letters. She came out to visit me at Notre Dame twice, and on the day of my graduation, my parents came to visit Notre Dame for the first time. While I showed them around the place that had been my home for the previous four years, I talked mainly about Cathy and how much she'd come to mean to me in the previous two months. After graduation, while my parents flew back home, I traveled to New Hampshire to see Cat graduate. I was introduced to her parents, and ten days later I brought her to Sacramento to meet my parents.
My mom and dad greeted her with immediate hugs, and Cathy remained in the kitchen talking to my mom for an hour. That night, after Cathy had gone to bed, my mom declared, "Cathy's wonderful. She's even better than you described."
I thought my heart would burst. "I'm glad you like her, Mom," was all I said.
After graduation in May 1988, my first thought was, what now?
For years, I'd been a student and an athlete and had pursued those goals with an unwavering intensity. I had done as I was told, I had followed the rules. Yet, all of a sudden, both worlds were behind me, and I found myself adrift. I had no idea who I was, what I wanted to do, or where my future would lead. I'd always believed that because I'd followed the rules the world would beat a path to my doorstep. But the world didn't seem to care at all.
Despite graduating with high honors, I wasn't accepted to any of the law schools to which I'd applied, and so that door was closed even before it opened. All my friends had taken corporate jobs in New York or Chicago, but those jobs also tended to be close to the places they'd grown up. I, too, wanted to go home, and with my head filled with foggy notions of the future, I found myself on a plane back to Sacramento. My first job was waiting tables. Even with a degree, I found myself earning minimum wage.
In the meantime, I began exploring careers, trying to find an area that interested me. Though I was confused, I wasn't particularly worried, and by the time Cathy moved to Sacramento in August, I'd finally made the decision to try my hand at appraising real estate. Around the same time, Micah and I purchased two small rental houses in a run-down area of town, repaired them, and were renting them out as well. In the little spare time remaining, I wrote a second novel, titled The Royal Murders, an old-fashioned whodunit. I knew, however, it wasn't good enough to be published.
I began working for a local firm as an appraiser's apprentice by day while continuing to wait tables and write at night, and eventually saved enough money to buy a small diamond ring. On her birthday, October 12, 1988, I proposed to Cathy on bended knee, and she said yes.
A few days later, I asked Micah to be my best man, thinking that not only had he been by my side throughout our youth, but that he would continue to be by my side, no matter where the future took us.
CHAPTER 12
Angkor, Cambodia
February 4-5
The temples at Angkor, Cambodia--an area encompassing nearly 120 square miles--were built from A.D. 879 to 1191 when the Khmer empire was at its zenith. More than a hundred temples have been discovered, and they were once surrounded by cities, from which the kings of the empire ruled over a domain that covered a vast portion of Southeast Asia, including Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, southern China, and Cambodia. Their rule lasted nearly five hundred years, until 1432, when the Siamese (Thai) sacked Angkor, and the capital was moved south to Phnom Penh. Angkor never regained its former stature, and eventually drifted into obscurity as the jungle continued its never-ending encroachment. In time, Angkor passed into legend--people who saw the ruins claimed they'd been built by the gods--and a few adventurous explorers from Europe circulated stories about the famous ruins among their peers. It wasn't until 1860 that the French explorer Henri Mouhot brought Angkor back to the world's attention.
The French were enchanted by the ruins and began an extensive restoration effort. Yet all that remained of Angkor were the temples themselves, which are regarded as one of mankind's greatest architectural achievements. The cities, whose buildings were constructed of wood, had long since decayed and vanished into the surrounding jungle.
The vast majority of the temples in the Angkor region are Hindu in influence; the remainder are Buddhist. At the time of their construction, both belief systems were prevalent in the empire, and as rulers came and went--Buddhists replaced by Hindus, and vice versa--temples were constructed to reflect the changing times. Still, the architecture varied only slightly; most contained a temple-mountain-like structure in the center, surrounded by square or circular walls or platforms, and enclosed within either a moat or perimeter wall.
Angkor Wat, literally "City Temple," is not only the largest temple in the Angkor complex, but the largest religious monument in existence. Constructed during the first half of the twelfth century by Suryavaram II, it's regarded as the high point of Khmer architecture. The carvings on the outer walls depict important scenes from Hindu literature, as well as events from the reign of Suryavarman II, in exacting, intricate detail. To study and fully understand the relief carvings--on walls twelve feet high and spanning over a kilometer in length--would take years. Entire books have been written on the subject of the carvings alone, and it's far beyond the scope of this volume to even attempt to comment on them.
As they say, you must see it to believe it.
The flight to Cambodia was another seven hours, and I began to grasp what a feat traveling around the world really was. In the end, we would fly 36,000 miles and spend nearly three full days in the air.
I wasn't sure what to expect when I reached Cambodia. Though I'd traveled to Hong Kong and Korea for track competitions, I wasn't prepared for the city of Phnom Penh when we landed. In a strange way, the land struck me as being both hopeful and tragic. The main thoroughfare bustled like cities around the world, but instead of cars, people drove scooters. Beyond the tenement housing were shiny new high-rises; for every man in a business suit, I saw another who'd lost a leg from the land mines that still dot the countryside. Everywhere I looked, I saw the contradiction of the country; a country struggling to put its past behind it in order to secure a more prosperous future.
Our stop in Phnom Penh was a short one. We would go to the National Museum and the Royal Palace before going straight back to the airport for our flight to Angkor.
The National Museum, I thought, was also representative of Cambodia. Outside the gates were numerous beggars, pleading with tourists for pocket change; inside were other reminders of the war that had raged for decades. Though the museum was filled with collectibles and statues of various Indian gods (Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma), there was no glass in any of the windows. Everything inside was thus exposed to the elements; the windows had been destroyed in the war a quarter of a century earlier and there was no money to replace them. Few, if any, of the items on display were bolted down; instead, objects had simply been set on pedestals. Most of the statues were broken, and bullet holes dotted the crumbling plaster walls. The ceiling was lined with water marks, and stains ran down the walls. The floor was bare concrete.
Yet the guides spoke with pride in their voices about the museum, the culture, and the spirit of their people, and by the time we left, both my brother and I were subdued. Of all the places we'd been to up to that point, Cambodia seemed the most foreign and incomprehensible, and we both felt out of place.
We then toured the Royal Palace, which is actually a series of roughly twenty buildings and temples inside a walled compound the size of a city block. One building is the palace itself, where the king lives; another building is the Welcome Hall, a magnificent structure with high painted ceilings, long red carpet, and soaring columns, where dignitaries are brought when they want an audience with the king. In a nearby temple, still on the palace grounds, we saw the giant Silver Buddha. Unlike many of the cultural artifacts, it hadn't been destroyed in the war and it seemed to occupy a central place in the heart of Cambodians, surrounded as it was by hundreds of small offerings of flowers.
Our stop in Phnom Penh was less than three hours, though it seemed far longer. With the weight of the past bearing down on us, we set off for the jungles of Angkor, where we would arrive just after sundown.
The main road from the Angkor airport also leads to the temples, and massive hotels sprouted amid what was once jungle. The splendor of some of these establishments was dizzying (in any country in the world, they would be regarded as five-star hotels). Gleaming structures were surrounded by lavishly designed and softly lit landscaping. Towering palms and lush ferns bordered winding entry roads; flowers sprouted everywhere the eye could see. Half a dozen hotels boasted rooms that cost more than the average Cambodian earned in a year; some had health and beauty spas, and all had upscale restaurants that required jackets.
All this, while on the road out front people rode bicycles or scooters.
At our hotel, we were informed that an excursion to Angkor Wat was planned at sunrise. Most people, including Micah, opted out. It was the first and only time on the entire trip that Micah and I weren't together to see a sight. And aside from only a few moments here and there, it was the first time we hadn't been together in nearly two weeks.
On the bus ride over, I was asked by one of the members of our tour group how we were getting along.
"Fine," I said. "Micah's easy to travel with."
"Doesn't it bother you? I mean, that you're with him all the time?"
I thought about it, finally realizing how odd it must have seemed. "Actually, it doesn't. We always seem to want to do the same thing--I guess we're just in sync."
"That's amazing," he said, shaking his head. "You guys get along better than most husbands and wives. If you watch closely, you can tell that some couples are already starting to get a little tired of each other."
I was anxious to see Angkor Wat. The structure itself--square with a towering temple-mountain in the center, three concentric quadrangular enclosures, and surrounding walls approximately 275 yards in length, all surrounded by a giant moat--is reached via a long causeway, and we made our way toward the outer walls. Just beyond them, our guide told us to stop. In the darkness, we could see nothing at all.
In time, the sky behind the temple began glowing red, then fanned out in vivid orange, then finally yellow. Against the changing sky, the temple was outlined by shadows, the features invisible. Yet I couldn't look away. Even from a distance and despite reading about it, the size of Angkor Wat nonetheless gave me pause. Had it been built recently, it would be considered massive. When it was built eight hundred years ago, it must have defied comprehension.
We stayed
long enough to watch the sky turn from yellow to blue, and then climbed back onto the bus. As we drove, the countryside of Angkor began springing to life. The roads became crowded with scooters, zipping nimbly around the lumbering bus. There seemed to be no driving regulations; people drove on either side, wove in and out of traffic, and veered at the last second, but somehow it seemed to work.
The scooter riders were, in their own way, as impressive as Angkor Wat. We learned that most of the scooters had been manufactured in China and cost around six hundred dollars. No bigger than a moped, they were Cambodia's version of a Chevy Suburban.
"There's four people on that scooter!" one person said, and everyone on the bus would pile toward the window to see it.
"Over here, there's five!" another would shout, and we'd all move to the windows on the other side of the bus.
"I see six!"
"No way!
"Back there! Look!"
We did. I blinked at the sight of a scooter with six people on it; it was moving slowly, but moving nonetheless, veering like everyone else.
"You're not going to believe this," someone finally said. "Up ahead of us. Take a look."
"What?"
He pointed. "I count seven on that one."
And there were. A man was seated in the middle; on the scooter were what seemed to be his kids. Two little girls were seated behind the father, three more little kids were in front of him. And riding on his shoulders was his son, the youngest of the bunch, a child who looked to be about five. All were dressed in uniforms; it seemed obvious that dad was bringing the kids to school.