F-O-C-U-s

Focus. It eludes me. Nothing is the center of my attraction. Nothing keeps my attention. Nothing is in alignment. My life feels tilted off its axis. My mind needs to be recalibrated. My heart is off balance.

“Concentrate!” I tell myself.

Grade those papers. Reserve those plane tickets. Make that Grammar Test. Walk the dog. Sweep the snow off the porch. Write those lesson plans. Sew on the quilt. Make the soup. Knead the bread. Vacuum the floor. Finish the taxes. Order classroom materials for next year.  Grade. Reserve. Make. Walk, Sweep, Write. Sew. Knead. Vacuum. Finish. Order.

It all swirls around me like the wind outside, blowing snow against the window, making it difficult to see outside. It surrounds me, making it difficult to see outside myself.

“Stop!” I yell into the wind.

The word blows back into my face, back into my throat, where it sticks like peanut butter, only it tastes bitter and makes me choke.

I take another sip of coffee.

“It’s too much,” I whisper to my dog.

But, it’s not. I rise to another day. I grade another paper.

The real storm is not outside my window, but inside my soul. Lost. Wandering. Years of death, disappointment, failure, and abuse add up like the snowdrift against the front door. Every time I open the door, it cascades over me. I can barely see the sky when it blows in again. Surely, the storm will pass. Perhaps I need to quit opening the door.

Wind

Unalakleet in the winter

Bering Sea

Rolling over and around the house like the waves on the Bering Sea, it sounds like we'll surely sink. The house shudders with the onslaught of a sudden blast. I curl up tighter and tighter in my blanket on my feather pillow-topped bed, snuggled in my striped flannel sheets, drawing my pillow down with me, listening to my dog breathe heavily on her bed by the door. The wind is a natural sound to her and she is not to be bothered. Somewhere deep in her genetics, it's familiar and comforting.

The whistling. I'm not sure where it comes from, but it's there. An occasional rattle from the window. The sound is louder upstairs in the bedroom than downstairs on the couch, but I like my bed, and the couch gets cold because it sits right under two east-facing windows, which is the direction from which the wind usually comes.

Other than the wind, all is silent. Silence picks up as the sun goes down, which is later and later this time of year. There is no rumble of planes landing or taking off. No one is out on their 4-wheeler or snow machine, not on these 50mph nights.

Bering Sea frozen near the coast

A student told me this week about a couple of men from a neighboring village who went missing on their snow machines last weekend. They were found, lost and out of gas, but they were found. Many are not so lucky.

It sounds more like the ocean beating against the house than anything I've ever experienced. There are no trees to slow it down. It rushes down out of the snowy Kaltag and Whaleback Mountains, sweeps across the tundra, and rolls through our seaside village like a reverse-tsunami heading out to sea.

Unalakleet wind turbines

The truth? I love the wind. It is constant and steady. It can be relied upon. Somehow, it makes me feel safe and protected as it swirls around outside and I curl up with a hot cup of tea inside, wearing my wool socks, softest hoodie, and yoga pants - all shades of grey, much like the colors outside my window.

The wind reminds me of how small I am, while at the same time causing me to bear up against it, resist it, go through it, beat it, survive it. After all, Unalakleet is a Yupik word meaning "place where the east wind blows."

Unalakleet sits between the "Alaska" label and Nome. This is a satellite picture taken during a winter storm.

A Norman Rockwell Christmas

Today is the last day of school for the year, an exciting time for students and teachers alike. Finishing up projects, entering the last grades, a Christmas party, and a movie. In my classes today (we're only having morning classes), we are watching Norman Rockwell's Christmas Story. I chose this movie from my Amazon Prime list because it's the right length (48 minutes), highly rated (even though it was made in 1996), and my dad was a Norman Rockwell fan. There was no other choice for me.

Add caption

Dad was "old school," traditional, conservative in many ways (not politically), and valued his simple upbringing in rural Iowa and Missouri, right on the border. There's nothing out there but twisty, two-lane roads bordered on both sides by farmland. Rolling hills, scattered patches of trees, and occasional towns made up of a post office, city hall, and several churches. On first glance, the towns, if they can even be called that, seem run-down and forgotten, but if you venture off the main road, you get a very Normal Rockwell-esque feeling. Names like Nodaway County, Hopkins, Bedford, and Maryville take you back to a simpler time. A time of family-run general stores, drive-in theaters, and home-cooked meals. I sure do miss Dad and his stories.

Hopkins, Missouri

This Christmas, I will spend with my sister, for the first time. Dad was married before my mother, and they divorced while she was pregnant. Because of unfortunate circumstances, youth, and poor decisions, Dad wrote off total legal right to his unborn child, my sister Holly, and promised to never contact her. Five years later, I was born. When I was 29, with the help of a private investigator, I found Holly. We have been "sisters" for 19 years, now. We didn't grow up together and although we have visited one another often over the years, we have never lived close enough to make it practical for us to spend Christmas together.

Bedford, Iowa - 10 miles north of Hopkins

I came to the realization of the loss involved from being "practical" when Dad passed on September 25, 2014. It had never been practical for me to go visit him in South Carolina - he had lived there over 20 years. I didn't sit in one of his porch chairs until he was gone. I never gave him a chance to make me dinner on his fancy grill.

It had never been practical for me to visit Holly when he was there, too. The first time the three of us were ever in a room together was the day Holly and I went to pick up Dad's ashes from the funeral home.

After Dad passed, I vowed to never let practical get in the way of memories again. That's why I spent five weeks this summer traveling around the states visiting friends and family. That's why I'm spending Christmas in Gig Harbor, WA, with my sister and her family this year. No more excuses. No more procrastination when it comes to relationships. You've heard it before, but it's truth has never rung clearer to me than it has the past 15 months, "There is no promise of a tomorrow."

I've always tended to be a bit non-traditional when it comes to Christmas. Not this year. Holly and I will laugh together and bake together and probably play a game of Scrabble. We will enjoy her grandkids (practice time for me), and I'll get to spend some quality time with my favorite niece. We will miss our dad together and imagine what it would be like for him to be there with us, cracking jokes, tickling the grandkids, and eating too much turkey. He is the one who brought us all together.

Holly and I have shared a lot of firsts over the past 19 years. This year, it will be Christmas. I'm not expecting a Norman Rockwell Christmas, but pretty darn close!

Five Percent

"Let me know if you need anything."

"We're here for you."

"This is a huge mistake."

"I just don't understand why."

"Are you sure about this?"

They seem like harmless words, well meaning sentiments, but they carve through my confidence. The truth is that I do need something, encouragement. I hope my friends and family will always be there for me, in a non-judgmental way; I don't want their sympathy. I want their support. The truth is that nobody needs to understand why, and if I weren't sure about this, I wouldn't do it.

I married John because I love him, he's a hard worker and a deep thinker, and he has that adventurous spirit that I've been searching for, not to mention the fact that he's outrageously handsome! Our relationship hasn't been easy. It's been downright difficult, but that doesn't diminish the reasons that I married him. We both come with scars and idiosyncrasies and baggage. He tends to wear his on his sleeve more than I do, but I'm no picnic either. Getting a good dose of counseling and staying away from alcohol has worked wonders. We're in this for the long haul. I have definitely done my share of dating over that past 16 years of being single. I know what I want. John is that person.

I'm not ready to walk away. These days, folks find it much too easy to walk away. That may seem like the wise path, but I'm not so sure. I know the statistics. I know our chances are not good. Hell, there's probably a 95% chance that this won't work. Guess what? I'm in it for the 5%. I believe in the 5%.

You see, a little over a year ago, when my dad went in for heart surgery, the doc said that there was only a 5% chance that anything would go wrong. Dad was in the 5%. That experience has made me see things differently. I think about the 5% now. I know how much life-changing impact lies within the 5%. I have to believe that those chances can work in my favor as well as against it.

So, believe. If you can't believe, trust. If you can't trust, encourage.

"That's great!"

"I'm happy to hear that."

"Let me know if you guys need anything."

"You have to follow your heart."

"We'll have to get together when he gets back."

Interloper (villanelle)

My windswept soul begins to burn

a blaze that turns me inside out.

Thoughts of loss begin to churn.

To the point of no return,

Confidence becomes a land of drought.

My windswept soul begins to burn.

Reality, I no longer discern.

Voices inside begin to shout.

Thoughts of loss begin to churn.

Failure spreads like sunburn.

What makes me fell with such self-doubt?

My windswept soul begins to burn.

For what is it that my soul yearns?

Why do I repeatedly make this route?

Thoughts of loss begin to churn.

Moving past the point of no return,

Battling to conquer this new bout,

My windswept soul begins to burn.

Thoughts of loss begin to churn.

I am 48

My hair has betrayed me,

body forsaken me,

mind abandoned me.

A contagion of sorts.

Depression

chews my nails to nubs,

but not lately.

My children

Grown, lives of their own.

My Dad

is the Ghost of my present.

The Man

I cannot live without

hurts me

with his words,

but not lately.

Denali, the Great one,

My savior, my dog.

I should run her more,

rub her belly more,

teach her more,

more, more, more,

but not lately.

My students complain,

but write.

Lives on a page.

Dreams

are made there,

from the Bering Sea waves

and the rolling tundra

to the Dakota plains

and urban sprawl,

but not lately.

Yearning for solitude.

Needing companionship.

Always longing to be further

and further

from

society,

but not lately.

Catching my Breath

It’s difficult to write when it feels like the world is caving in all around. I’ve always been the type to clam up when things go wrong. This past year has been one of those. I hate to use my blog as a place to vent and am always careful about what I say about whom, so for the past year, I’ve tried to live by the old adage, “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.”

I can sum it up with a few lessons learned:

Life is short. Don’t wait for next year.

Not even family can be trusted.

Abuse is real.

Follow your dreams.

Never settle.

Depression is real.

Do what you love and love what you do.

Get a dog.

Grief is real.

Cry, laugh, and take deep breaths.

Don’t put off spending time with loved ones.

Spirits are real.

Go outside.

Learn something new.

Love is real.

To sum up life since my last post, I taught a fun group of 7^th graders in Dickinson, North Dakota, for a year, in an overcrowded, 80+ year old school overseen by a very misguided school board.

My family put the pheasant hunting farm for sale, which they had asked me to come run just one year prior. Alas, it was time to return to Alaska.

With much help from my sister, I finally settled my dad’s estate. Many tears. Lots of heartache. Still today.

I took a 5 week, 7,000 mile roadtrip with Denali this summer to visit many people across the states who mean a lot to me. Dad taught me not to put this off ever again. Denali and I put our toes in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Bering Seas all within three weeks!

I accepted the High School English teacher position in Unalakleet, Alaska, agreed to marry a man I had dated in North Dakota on and off for two years. He wanted to move to Alaska with me. We were “on and off” because he was abusive, but I thought I could make him happy and heal him. We all know how those stories end. After one month, he was escorted out of the village by the Alaska State Patrol (no Discovery Channel cameras around, thank goodness). To think I broke my 16 year single streak for that! Geez! Se la vie.

Enough of that. My writer’s voice has returned!