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| My Mom and Shea. (The red was coincidental I’m sure.) |
Today is my son Shea’s birthday and I give thanks to a shaman in Peru that he has made it to 28. I’ll explain why in a minute.
Shea has worked on the water since he was a pre-teen when he first started helping Raymond McNeal. Shea enjoyed it so much that I became concerned and went to Raymond to enlist his support in discouraging Shea about working on the water as a career choice. Raymond, in typical waterman fashion, dismissed my concerns by saying “You ain’t got to worry about that because everyone knows that working on the water ain’t no way to make a living.” I told Raymond I wasn’t so sure that Shea had processed that knowledge. As Capt. Jerry Norris says about working on the water though “It gets in your blood.” And that was certainly true for son Shea who as I write this is preparing his crab pots for a 10 April launch of this season.
Back to the Peruvian shaman about whom I’ve previously discussed click here. The night before I left on the trip to Peru with Buzzy, Shea and I had had an “encounter.” Let’s just say that it occurred at around 2 a.m and one of us was drunk while the other one of us was in bed asleep. Things got heated and ugly and had it not been for Reagan doing some on the spot conflict resolution, things might have gotten even uglier. Shea eventually fell into bed and I left an hour or two later to pick up Buzzy and head out for our early morning flight. Consequently, I never did get to discuss any of this with my prodigal boy and naturally he was on my mind throughout the ensuing trip. (Note that this was not the first trip I had taken where Shea was heavy on my mind.)
When our tour group in Peru was briefed on the shaman ceremony, we were instructed to write down a petition and give it to him. I wrote very succinctly “Shea” and passed the paper to the little man you see here.
Keep in mind that I’d previously petitioned for Shea at just about every place in the world from the Great Wall to the Wailing Wall and all churches/cathedrals in between. (There is even a tiny one room church in Greenland that has a Shea petition somewhere in its frozen architecture.) The shaman accepted my petition and performed the rest of his ceremony with herbs and earth and who knows what other ingredients.
But miracle of miracles, I think it worked as subsequently Shea seemed at least to begin to figure it out. I’m not saying that he became a choir boy or that there weren’t other incidents and “oh shitter’s,” but I do know that the strife between the two of us was dissipated after that. Hence, I am thankful to the shaman for taking care of my Shea-man. Happy birthday son!