Our contest judge, Kelli Agodon, wrote this of her first choice piece in the fall/winter 2018 writing contest:

Judith Barker Kvinsland’s essay, “Disturbing the Calm,” explores how sometimes, despite the ease of our lives, we need to take a risk. It is a thoughtful exploration of family, responsibility, and location, where the author learns something about herself. From beginning to end, I could not stop reading, as I wanted to see if she would keep her job and situation in the Northwest or move to Oakland and find a new job there. Engaging and honest, “Disturbing the Calm” shows, through story and images, the thought-process of changing our lives, the importance of family, and different seasons in our lives — where we begin in one place and end in another. A delightful read.

The author wrote these words to me after I’d notified her of her win:

I wrote “Disturbing the Calm” as a remembrance to celebrate my grand daughter ’s middle school graduation (this June). I want her to know how life-changing her arrival was for me.  I am happy to learn the essay also had a bit of traction for another reader.

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I remember Annie Lamott saying in a keynote address that as a writer she always imagines a particular person to whom the novel she is writing will be a gift.

And that kind of gift ends up being one for all of us.

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Disturbing the Calm
by Judith Barker Kvinsland

“The Lobster Shop or Marzano’s, tonight?”

After more than thirty years of active parenting, our nest in Gig Harbor was finally empty. I no longer needed to make frantic calls from the road to check on my children’s welfare, because traffic on the Narrows Bridge was backed up. If I needed to work late, I did. After work, my husband and I met for dinner. Our favorite restaurants entered into our conversations again.

We enjoyed movies after dinner. We often ran an errand or two. The Bridge was traffic-free and free flowing by the time we crossed. When we returned home, our house looked just we had left it that morning. No more backpacks, textbooks, or running shoes in the entry. No cereal bowls stacked in the sink. We were happily adjusting and enjoying our new lifestyle. Grandparenting could wait.

Or at least I thought so, even three years into our empty nesting, when our daughter announced her first pregnancy. I was busily clearing off my desk at the college where I worked—anticipating a weekend of well-deserved relaxation—when the phone rang.

“Hi, Mom,” chirped Anna, now eight hundred miles away in northern California.

“Hi there, Sis,” I reverted back to our family’s term of endearment.

She continued, “Sorry to be so late in calling, Mom, but could you fly down and go with me to my first midwife appointment? It’s on Monday.”

“This Monday,” she clarified. “I’d feel a lot better if you could be here with me. Please, Mom?”

I began to formulate an excuse. What was she thinking? Didn’t she realize that I had next week’s workload already planned? I’m swamped here.

But I quickly changed my tune. What was I thinking? This is my only daughter inviting me to participate in one of life’s most intimate moments. I slashed a bold line through my calendar to block out the upcoming week, dialed Alaska Airlines, and booked a flight to Oakland.

Three days later—while comfortably seated in a bright, sun-lit room at Caring for Women, a health clinic in Fort Bragg— I leaned closer to the examination table that held my daughter. The mid-wife was carefully maneuvering the ultrasound machine closer to her, preparing to scan Anna’s just-beginning-to-round belly.

“Just a warning. This will be cold at first,” the midwife cautioned. She gently smoothed the icy conductive gel into a widening circle, followed by the flattened scope, round and round the barely noticeable baby bump. Anna flinched, as if on cue. But she quickly recovered, relaxed, and settled in for the exam. She gazed at me happily.

Then we heard:

“Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.” My eyes swelled with tears.

“Lub-dub, lub-dub. I’m here, I’m here,” a heartbeat, like an unknown voice, fluttered about and filled the tiny room. I was not prepared to be as smitten by the faint presence who had just introduced itself to us. My heart was captivated.

Afterwards, we drove cautiously down Redwood Avenue on our way back to her home in Mendocino, both keenly aware of the important cargo on board. The afternoon sun reflected off the Pacific, with enough glare that forced us to lower the windshield visors and dispel the sparkle of the ocean and dazzle of the day.

“Hey, Mom, did you know that there’s a nice little college over there?” Anna announced. She momentarily released her right hand from the wheel, thrust her arm before me, and pointed toward the ocean’s edge.

She laughingly proposed, “You should get a job there so you can be here when the baby is born!”

I rolled down the window so I could see better. As I peered toward the horizon, I could hear the waves crashing before me. Through the bright curtain of sun and ocean mist, I could just barely make out the shapes of several sprawling buildings with reddish-brown roofs that rose slightly above the jagged edge of the cliff. The appealing little campus was surrounded by open fields of golden grass, that waved in the ocean breeze. Distinct rows of California cypress trees—with grey-green foliage, shaped into abstract sculptures by the prevailing westerly winds—neatly defined the campus boundaries.

“I already have a job. It’s not as if I need another one.”

I began to visualize myself as a frequent flier: Seattle-to-Oakland, Oakland-to-Seattle. Work-Weeks-in-Washington. Grandparenting-Weekends-in-California.

But, I couldn’t stop thinking about her proposal. It became one of those recurrent, can’t-get-it-out-of-my-mind thoughts. An internal voice began to resonate within me:

“Why not? Why not? Why not?”

Soon another faint, distant voice joined in:

“Lub-dub, lub dub. I’m here, I’m here.”

Both voices danced their way through my mind for the remainder of the afternoon. By the time I called my husband that evening to relate the highlights of the day, the possibilities had permanently dug in, prepared to grab hold of our destiny.

“Tell me about your day,” he said.

“It was great. I’m moving to California!” I announced with unabashed confidence and commitment.

I was not surprised by my declaration. Clearly, he was.

“Will I be coming along too?” his voice wavered a bit.

“I hope so,” I blurted out.

He had just retired, and my own retirement was not too far away. We had paid off our house. We were downsizing. An unplanned adventure like this had not been part of our budget plan. He was also very familiar with what we often called, “Judy’s Hair-brained Ideas,” a flurry of thoughts and dreams I carried around. After I processed them back and forth, I usually cast them aside and moved on.

Not this time.

After a long silence he wondered, “Will we be able to eat?”

Now he had me. I wasn’t quite ready to disclose that during my afternoon of imagined possibilities, I had visited the local college’s website and learned that a new position was about to open on their campus, similar to the position I held in Washington.

I swallowed hard and attempted to console him, “I don’t know that yet. But I am going to work on it.”

He sighed, “Well, we don’t owe any more college tuition. The orthodontist was paid off long ago. And our last pet has died. So, I guess we have a slight window of opportunity here.”

The next few months flew by, filled with a flurry of activities: I applied for the new job at the college in Fort Bragg; survived a three-day, grueling interview process; accepted the job offer; signed a two-year, renewable contract; leased a rental home, sight unseen; filled a small rented van with a few essentials to begin our new life; and locked the door of our family home behind us.

Most evenings— after I returned from my workday at College of the Redwoods—we swaddled our infant granddaughter into her stroller, and sauntered down the hill to the village of Mendocino, to marvel at the sun setting below the horizon of the Pacific Ocean, just minutes away from our new home.

We never looked back.

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