We talked about going back north and visiting the Mexican ports we had missed. The Sea of Cortez sounded like quite a paradise. Maybe we could leave the boat there and go live in the Mormon colonies in Colonia Juárez.
We also talked about today. We talked about these memoirs. We talked about telling Jimmy and Peter everything that happened and why. Kristi especially wanted them to know that we sacrificed a lot for them. She wanted credit for her sacrifice. I didn’t understand that then. I do now.
I was often confused during these talks. It was as if she had my talent for seeing the future. It was also odd to me that she always assumed that she would be dead and I would be alive. The threats had always been against me or our sons. She had never been threatened. She was seventeen years younger than me. Why was she always preparing for her death when I was always preparing for mine? So, about half of those talks were based on the assumption that we would return to the United States, one of us would die, and the other would be reuniting with our sons — who would be in trouble as they became adults. That’s pretty amazing. But the rest of the details are very blurry. I think we usually assumed that they would be struggling with addiction as the trouble they would be in.
So, we all had finances secured. The challenge the survivor would have was how to make sure the money we secured for their future wasn’t used to speed their demise (i.e., spent on drugs). We never considered that they could be abducted by my mother — or Kristi’s family. How could that happen? We never considered that they could be brainwashed and not even want the survivor’s help.
Or maybe we did. We included them in some of the discussions. We told them about Samuel and how he was preparing a place on the other side. We told them how we had gone from country to country with one of us always going ahead to prepare the way. We talked to them about our family values and how we thought they might have to defend them during a separation. We pledged loyalty to each other. We made them promise to stay together and help each other during a future time when we might not be there. We promised them that wherever we were, we would be preparing a place for them.
We often told stories about those future times and discussed what each of us should do. We promised each other we would. So, despite all of the plans for Marmaris, Haifa, Barcelona, Quito, Marquesas, and other paradises, we knew that we had already decided to return to the United States.
I started a job search. I didn’t really need a job, but it would be safer if everyone thought the money was gone. Having a job was evidence of that. Plus, it was on my bucket list. I wanted to work with a creative team of software engineers again. I wanted to have no need for that job so I could take any risk and be able to propose things at the business level that could double or triple their profits. I wanted to influence the current generation of coders to think like we used to. There didn’t used to be a scope to what we did. We were creators and there were no boundaries. I wanted that again in the corporate environment of that day.
I think I also wanted to work in the real Silicon Valley. I never had. However, I did my job search nationwide. I figured we would be safer if we landed someplace away from California and Utah.
Kristi started floating trial balloons with her family to see how they would react to our return. The results were favorable. Amy, especially, reminded us that we had already paid for our safety in the United States by giving Amy our Fruitland property.
I taught Kristi spy technique, though — how to track alliances and how information (disinformation, in this case) spread. We were disappointed to see that our two families were in communication. I was even more disappointed to find that Jason and Joalea were gossiping with both of our families. That seemed bizarre, but there was no sign of alliances or conspiracy to do harm. It was just bizarre that they gossiped about us after we had been out of the country for five years.
It did make me focus the job search away from California and Utah. One contact in Austin came close to an interview. We leaked that to Ryan and Jennifer. He was doing a residency in Austin. Once again, it seemed that we would be safe there and would even be able to go to concerts with them, etc. But they gossiped with Amy and Jason and Julia.
Jason basically told me to come home.
“You are welcome to stay in our home as long as it takes. Just get here.”
I spread out to a worldwide job search. An Indonesia-based international software development company had me go through code tests. We came close to a job offer. It was on an ex-pat island with a world-renowned bay surrounded by cliffs where they held weekly performances. It was truly paradise. The entire island was set up to be an international paradise with treehouse communities in the jungle just a kilometer away from a fine dining restaurant. We kind of decided that the results of the job search would determine our destiny. It was a bit of just putting our faith in God. We knew our fate. It was probably time to face it. So, I just went through the motions of applying for jobs worldwide and accepting that an offer would determine our next step.
Near the old Balboa branch of the Church was a biblioteca (library) that had children’s books in English. I started to read to the children in the afternoon before we closed for the day. It was Jimmy’s turn.
Daddy; what’s a stranger?” Jimmy asked.
They have those in the United States,” I told him, and kept reading.
It bothered me, though. The text was teaching fear and divisiveness. It wasn’t doing it directly — it was just the underlying theme of the story. I read slower and kept wanting to correct the lessons it was teaching.
“But Daddy; I know they have strangers on that island, but what is a stranger?”
“Well… it just means someone you don’t know yet.”
“Why wouldn’t you just introduce yourself, then? You’d be friends.”
I tossed the book aside and picked up another.
“Tell me more about that island. What else is there? Are strangers dangerous — like barkanals?”
o, we began to talk again about the island — where they were born, where we were all born. Kristi and Peter joined in, and we talked about the good things: amusement parks, snow, Mexican food, Greek food, Indian food, snowmen, skiing. We promised to take them to an amusement park and to see and feel snow.
“We are going to that island soon; aren’t we?” Peter asked.
We nodded. “Yes. Very soon.”
But what about the strangers?”
“Strangers are just people we don’t know yet. You just introduce yourself and then you are friends. It’s family we have to worry about.”
“But we are family! We’re a forever family. Nothing can hurt us. We’re on the same team. We help each other.”
“Yes. But we have families we grew up in, and they don’t help each other. They are dangerous.”
“I’ll blast them with my *pew!*” Peter said — and they launched into a game of pretend, shooting each other with finger laser guns. “*Pew, pew!*”
So that became our family plan. We would boldly return to the United States, introduce ourselves to all of the strangers — making them friends — and *pew pew* all of our family who attacked. And we would go to amusement parks, build snowmen, and eat lots of ethnic food unavailable in Central America. That was the plan.
James D. Brausch is the author of the above excerpt from his memoirs entitled I am Daddy. He can be reached at jamesbrausch@proton.me or via snail mail at P.O. Box 1502, Carmichael, CA 95609-1502.