Category Archives: Alaska

Dear Alaska: It’s Not Me, It’s You

How do you break up with someone that you love dearly, but you know no longer loves you?

It is hard, after near on three decades of life together to come to the conclusion that you are no longer loved. What once was a beautiful relationship, so full of light and promise has slowly, over the years degraded into a cruel, abusive, one-sided love.

Alaska no longer loves me, and I’m afraid I am going to have to break up with her.

This place, this great land that once held me so very captivated, so enthralled at every turn, she has turned her back on me, and while she was once so very good to me, she now assaults me daily with her cold barbs, dry and arid humor, and her sharp and crusty edginess.

Now SHE may say I’m just being a whiny baby.

SHE may say I’m a wimp.

But here’s the thing: I’ve put in time and heart and soul loving her.

I’ve given her a fair shake and the best of me; over half of a lifetime I’ve been hopelessly devoted to her, in fact.

When we moved here in 1997, everything about this place was dreamy. Even the winters. Mountainscapes at every corner, trees for miles and miles, vast swaths of ocean and quietness…I never wanted to leave Alaska. I knew I had found home. My husband and I had chosen the right place, I just knew it.

Once our children started to come along, we became even more sure that we were right. Our roots sunk deep into the ground of Alaska that grows only weeds and houses oil, but the soil of our faith and the family we’d created was rich.

And now, some twenty years later, to find that this place that once held me so sure and solidly has turned her back on me…it’s a betrayal.

I have defended you, Alaska!

I have taken up for you, and bragged on you, and told of all your virtues and beauties, and I’ve invited people I love to come rest in the bosom of your greatness.

I scoffed at people we knew who’d leave you during the cold months, thinking of them as not TRUE Alaskans, but old and soft, lukewarm northerners in their need to eschew your harsh, dark winters, all while thinking of ourselves as rugged and devout, willing to sustain the long months of short days and deep snow and temperatures dipping below zero for weeks at a time.

The trade-off I told myself, for roughing it, was the reward of the sudden blast of summer, endless sunshine, temperate days that ended around a campfire dinner at who knows what time. Was it 6 pm or nearly eleven? The onslaught of midnight sun bringing bursts of energy lasting twelve beautiful weeks, after which we’d once again see the stars we’d so missed as darkness began to slowly return to us; a sky full of lights burning on a vast and endless tapestry of space and we’d watch in amazement as though it was the first time we’d seen those familiar constellations and aurora borealis that make the skies dance at every turn.

I have loved you, Alaska, with every fiber of my heart and my body and my soul.

I have raised a family here, and animals here, and purchased plots of your land so that our family may always have a home here, a tiny chunk of your majesty to carry into generations ahead.

And now…now that middle age is firmly upon me, now that my family is almost raised, now that my children belong to you and love you with ever fiber of them, making your landscapes their huge hometown of a state that has spoiled them for any other place on earth, you turn your back on me and have made your once-perfect climate now uninhabitable for this body that carries me around.

You have gotten cold.’

You have gotten cruel.

You have gotten mean and hard and hurtful to my very bones.

Alaska, you have made me want to break up with you.

Now you might say, as only a scorned lover will, that it’s MY fault.

That I was the one who stepped out on you, not the other way around.

That I am the mean-spirited one who pursued other lands and slowly came to love that other one more than I love you.

I will admit, though not with shame, that yes, I indeed did seek out the warmth of climates more temperate.

That I did join those ranks of people I was once cynical of as I began to leave your bosom during the coldest parts of your winters.

Yes, I do admit that.

But you see, Alaska, it was YOU who drove me out.

It was YOU who continued with your relentless, driving force of your climate that wears a body down, year after year, winter after winter, until one day, after all the kids are grown and a decade and a half of farming has passed, that a young woman wakes up to find herself round about the fiftieth year and discover she is freezing.

She discovers she is sick and tired of walking in the crunching ice and deep snow all while having to wear closed-toed shoes that make her feet feel constrained and straightjacketed outside of their preferred footwear of flipflops.

She realizes that she will never, ever, not in a million years obtain enough Vitamin D from you to reach the bottom of the recommended range, let alone an acceptable midrange amount to keep her body functioning and happy. Not even when she supplements heavily.

She wakes up one day just plumb exhausted with the cold and the dark, and the knowing that there are still months of it ahead.

It was you, Alaska.

It was you who made me love the journeys I’ve been able to take to my other land, that place that welcomes me with tradewinds and warm sand and blue-green water that feels like a bath even on the cold days.

It was you who woke me up to the realization that the other place leaves me rejuvenated and fresh and feeling young again, almost like I could once and for all throw the thyroid medications in the trash and overcome the metabolism slump that has taken over my mid-life years.

It was you who made me realize how dry my skin and nails and hair all are when I winter in your climate, and how vibrant and healthy they are when I am in that other place.

It was you, Alaska, and now, now that I have realized all of this, I am stuck figuring out how I can break up with someone I have loved for as long as I have loved you.

How do I divorce and split custody of myself between you and my warm, tropical mistress?

How do I forget thirty years of never wanting another place and come to love a place outside of you as fiercely as I’ve loved you?

How do I leave you behind?

Can I maybe have you both?

Would you agree to sharing my heart? Would you be alright if I thought of her when I closed my eyes? Would it wound your bigness if I spoke of her once in awhile, and shared some of the aloha and sunshine she has given me, sprinkling it amongst your people here?

Would it be okay if the people I’ve met there become just as dear to me as the people you’ve given me here?

Those flipflop-wearing peaceful ones like our Jeep friend who hugs us and calls us Bro and picks us up and shuttles us around and treats us so much like Ohana that I send leftover groceries home for him and the kids and wife I’ve never met, but who are all like family?

Or those we’ve come to worship with, that group that meets in an open barn, birds flitting in and out with the music, praise raising the roof while the tradewinds blow in the scent of plumeria?

And would it please you to hear that we speak of you often, Alaska? That as we come across folks who share of their home states, your name will eventually come up, and even then, even as we soak up the sun and the heat that you don’t provide us, we speak of our love for you, of your majesty and your mountains and your wide open wildness that is so much like that warmer place.

See, Alaska, it isn’t that I hate you.

I’m quite fond of you still, really.

I brag on you wherever I go.

I quietly delight with pride how people react when we mention our ties to you. How they look at us a little bit differently because we know you.

A bit like a relative of a celebrity, we raise a bit higher in status just because we bear your name.

And once, that was enough to make me so proud to be yours.

But that was long ago before my bones got cold and before menopause took over my life and before my hair started to thin.

I don’t want to leave you, Alaska.

I just want you to be a little bit more like that other land.

I want you to let me wear flipflops every day.

I want you to be kind, and gentle, and breezy and not so cold-hearted and mean.

I want you to be more like her.

I know I am asking a lot of you, dear Great Land.

And I know your quiet, patient mountains sit and wait for me to take in their glory like I used to before your long, dark winters wore me down.

I know your history and I love and have so much deep respect for your eons of stoic, strong presence, holding up this end of the nation with such reverence and regard to all of those who came before us.

I really do love you, Alaska.

I just have to figure out how this can work, me loving both of you, because see, I am an all-in kind of gal, and I don’t like to split my heart in two.

I want to love you with my whole heart like I once did so many years ago.

I don’t want to think of any other place that I might love just as much, or surprisingly, even more than you.

So I have come to the realization that you and I need to break up, or at least take some time apart.

I have decided that if I can’t love you as I once did, I am left only to love your people.

Much like our Jeep friend, much like our tropical church family, and much like all of those we meet who, like us are just chasing down some extra Vitamin D to get through the winter, I have people here I cherish too.

Those people who started as friends and quickly became family.

Those folks who anchor us, who tie us here on those days where we might just be inclined to fly away and let the tradewinds blow us toward the winter sunshine.

Those brothers and sisters and neighbors and friends and children…those who have all become so much part of our hearts that to leave them would be like ripping those hearts out of our cold and shivering bodies.

I have to think of them now, Alaska, and not so much you.

For the sake of our relationship, that is what I have to do.

And for them, I’ll stay with you.

I will check back in with you after we’ve had a little mental space.

Around about May, Alaska, I promise that I will look up from my work; I will glance out the window, I will turn my head once again toward your mountains and your seas, and maybe, just maybe…

I will decide that we should stay together after all.

In the Caribou Tundra,
in the wild barren land,
on the fierce arctic ice,
where the polar bear stands,
where the trail of the Eskimo Hunter is worn,
this is the country where legends are born.

Where the Northern Lights blaze
above a cold arctic haze
and caribou come to an old shaman’s drum.

In saloons and in dance halls
they talked of the gold,
there were stories of fortune
and stories of cold.

The trail of the weary gold miner is worn,
this is the country where legends are born.

-Jim Varsos, Alaska’s Balladeer, Hobo Jim, This is the Country Where Legends are Born

Taking the Sickness South

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This piece is dedicated to the people of Lousiville. From Chef, who made the thick and hearty chicken broth on my first day of sickness…to Ms. Vickie who loves me and all my babies, and gave them all sweet nicknames and taught us how to shine our boots the southern way…to my sweet cousin I hadn’t seen in decades and who drove and gave up her weeknight just to spend an hour with us… and all the folks in between: you have all taught this band of northerners what the phrase “Southern Hospitality” means. Even though most of my time was spent in my hotel room, it was a beautiful trip because of you. Thank you.

So I took my kids -my own kids and my 4-H kids- South for their big competition and it was all they ever wanted and all they had been looking forward to, and two days after we got there, I got sick.

Now, you have to understand somethin’ bout this Mama. If I ever tell you I got sick, I got sick. Having a mind that tends toward worst-case-scenarios, I’m in the business of intentally down playing any illness that may strike me. I constantly talk myself out of being sick so that I don’t end up seeming sicker that I really am. Plus, other than the wonky thyroid, I’m very seldom sick. I had to go back and look up the last time I was sick, because that was the time I was so sick I had to write a blog piece about it.

I was SICK y’all.

And now, this time, I was that sick again. Except this time, I was 5,000 miles from home, I was trip coach to my team and chaperones who were on their dream journey to a national competition, I didn’t have a car, I was bunking up with my two teenagers, and I was stuck in a hotel room with windows that DON’T OPEN.

It was sheer pain, hell, and knarliness for six straight days and the worst of it was, I wanted to TALK! I got to be coach for the first Alaska team of our type to EVER grace these competitions and I had coaches to meet and new friends to make! Nope, by Day 3, once the fevers, chills, and body aches had subsided, so had my voice.

By the time my second kiddo fell, I was tired and feeble enough from the long days of illness to have several quiet spells of crying at the unfairness of traveling all this way just for my big boy to not be able to attend the banquet that would tell him how he and his team did, or to only get to do half of the fun tours we had planned that would show us around this huge city most of my team had never seen.

By the time I had the hotel shuttle man, Eddie the Awesome hustle our hineys over to the Kroger -did you know you can see a nurse at the Kroger now?- where I spent $400 for a nice man in scrubs to tickle our nostrils and tell me the kids were still showing for Influenza while my boogies were clean and that really the best thing for us was just to rest up in our hotel room, (if I’d had a voice I would have laughed hysterically, as it was, he just got a deadpan stare.) I was a mad mess of mama coach mixed in with irritation, surrender, and resolve when we left. No more tears, we just needed to get through the rest of the trip and infect the least amount of people we could and try not to take any souvenirs of the Influenza Type A type home.

My team moms took the reins and 3/4 of the team still got to see the sights. My kids all rocked it and worked through the sickness (one started to fall on the day of the last competition, bringing the team sickness ratio to 2:3) and they celebrated that, as the contest’s obvious Underdog, they succeeded in NOT taking the title of last place. We all laughed at the differences between livestock people and chicken people. We made a group decision to skip out on the official dinner in order to go gather round the tables that had become so familiar at the hotel restaurant so we could be homey and enjoy our last meal in Kentucky together just us, as a team. They leaned in to my whisper voice and I smiled at their accomplishments and the good that comes even when things go much much differently than you’d anticipated.

And then, on the way home, our week flown much, much too fast and yet dreadfully slow at the same time, my team girls were strewn all about the airport chairs, legs akimbo and having conversations teens have when they talk as if they are the only ones in the whole world, and one said to the other as they laughed over junk food….

man that’s so sick.

And they just laughed and laughed and glowed the glow of youth when they’re just happy and perfect and content and everything is perfect and cool -sick- in their world.

We took our sickness south.

We didn’t win by any means. Not even close. Heck, out of 19 teams, we didn’t even place in the top ten. Second-to-last is farrr from winning.

And on a scale of one to ten, with one being Small Fry Farms and ten being Big Ag, we learned that here in Alaska, we’re barely on the paper.

I had folks tell me that all the big states had qualifiers to even go to their state competition and that by the time their kids got to Nationals, they’d been competing at the national skill level for years.

We had folks tell us that Alaska would lose.

But we didn’t lose and do you know why?

Because we went.

We put our little Ag big state on the map of national livestock contests and we showed them that we want to be part of things too.

We met people over the course of our six days that’d we’ll remember forever and we gave out smiles and we gave out hugs to folks who won’t soon forget us.

We took all of the love of our community, and all the well wishes and financial support of our sponsors, and we put it in our pockets and we put it on our shirts and we put it in our hearts and my kids were brave and they went.

And everywhere we’d go, out of all the teams, it was Alaska that got the biggest applause.

Not because we won, but because we showed up.

Because it’s pretty dang cool that a little band of everyday Joes from a land so far away that it’s barely on the map would drive three hours to take three different planes for a whole day of flying to go to a land to play on a playground with kids who are so used to the playground equipment it feels like their backyard tree fort, while the faraway kids are just seeing the playground for the first time.

That’s what the clapping said. That’s what the questions asked and what the smiles spoke. And everywhere we went in our new southern city, we were bombarded with questions like Alaskans always are when they go Outside, but at the end of it, after all the questions and all the learning, what my kids heard from their peers, these kids who grow up Ag, was

We’re glad you came. It’s good that you’re here.

Half of us missed the events and tours we had scheduled.

I became more familiar with a hotel room that I ever want to be again.

I wish our group would’ve been able to spend more time together.

We weren’t 100%.

But as we came home, I realized that the magnitude and the excitement of what we had done hadn’t been changed just because we got influenza or even because we hadn’t won.

Nothing had changed at all.

We still put Alaska on the map.

We showed folks that we care enough to show up.

We saw so much.

We learned SO MUCH.

Team, you smiled at your accomplishments instead of seeing your lack of winning as losing.

You were the Underdog but you were brave.

You were brave.

And that, my kids, is SO sick.

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Unexpected

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In a season that catches by surprise, I’ve come to anticipate the unexpected.

Four kids fill this house and this calendar and these rooms…

and the minds and the lives and the hearts of their parents.

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Critters live and critters die, and sometimes it comes by way of sudden chirping from the woods when a nest of nine stumbles and weaves behind mama turkey, and sometimes it comes by way of the quiet death of a loud guinea or the noble fight and fall of a beloved pony.

“Moment by moment” round here is never an exaggeration.

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But what’s never expected is the cold stare from one who was once a warm friend.

What catches by surprise and catches in the throat are the words stuck that stream through quiet moments and that are outlined with bold strokes of anger and frustration but mostly just scream Why?? When?? I thought we were friends??

And a rejection like that can make a mama pull in and pull close and focus on just the ones around her, the ones she knows for sure love her.

Making friends never gets easier does it?

And down deep, isn’t there always that little girl who lives inside of us? That first grader in a room full of new classmates who’s standing there awkward when she realizes she’s tied the back of her dress up into her waistband while she shifts from foot to foot at the front of the classroom with her underwear and tights all exposed to the world?

Don’t the bruises get blacker when a soul gets older?

Unexpected.

And when the demands are so great a big gal feels small and sometimes has a hard time breathing let alone doing anything extra, a mama can only just bear down and push through the cramp and know she’s doing what she was meant to do in this moment: deliver these babies out into the world.

She’ll keep pushing and she’ll keep grunting and she’ll try not to swear even though she might yell out during the especially hard parts.

She didn’t know it’d be like this over a dozen years after they were born.

Unexpected.

And sometimes just the day to day can be enough to make us keep things shy and reserved and holding the heart close to the chest and the real feelings tight in the pocket.

Enough of the keeping it tight can make us keep it closed and before we know it, we’ve holed ourselves up while we tell ourselves we’re just in a quiet season of bearing down.

And then the real unexpected…

The exceptional unexpected.

The beautiful unexpected.

The unexpected gift of the unexpected time of an unexpected dinner with a couple from church, two souls just ahead on the sidewalk, and all the unexpected tears and laughter that come from that kind of unexpected encounter.

How the path we’re walking is so very familiar to them.

How the struggles we wrestle are ones they’ve conquered.

How the unexpected keeps on into the empty nest years.

How the unexpected keeps on…

My heart carries the day this month that we drove to the place where we sailed to the spot…

that gate where three seas meet, -just past the sanctuary for mariners- and the wind blew fierce and the waves pounded hard and how could I not feel God hold me there in that spot where warm tears of praise slipped down cold cheeks of wonder?

Unexpected.

The whales of September came by surprise and Native founders sailed those waters on kayaks and I sailed them with my children who stood bravely against the gusts and they braced themselves to the threat and they laughed into the wind because they are young and they trust their father and their mother, but they especially trust the One who made the skies.

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The joy we’ve had this month can be lost in the hard of this month and the hard of lost friendship and the hard of this life…

but when I focus on the good…when I fix my eyes on the pure…the hard isn’t so hard and the good is pure joy.

The unexpected moments from the unexpected trip that grew my babies and grew my mama and that grew me.

The unexpected victories that taught us that sometimes a person will win when they practice hard but that sometimes even hard practice won’t win, and that that’s okay too.

The unexpected setbacks that taught us that sometimes a plan needs a bit more time and a bit more stitching before it becomes a whole quilt.

The unexpected friends that came with what could’ve been a tight and tough competition but instead turned into a tight and tender time.

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All the unexpected.

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How the unexpected keeps on…

And then, just as a mama might start to come out of her September shell and decide rejection won’t keep her because she’s already accepted by the One who made her and Who holds her…

a routine night at church brings the unexpected, a gift, a sweet out-of-the-blue message and warm watery eyes from a new friend who is trailing just behind on the parenting sidewalk, and she might think it a small gift…

but it is bigger than that.

It makes me think of you she tells me.

And I tear up some because I don’t know her that well yet but still she thought of me, and by thinking of me she didn’t reject me, and by not rejecting me she reminds me that even when the world is cold and some people are cold, we really are each other’s keeper and we needn’t be cold back because if we are…if we close ourselves off and make ourselves cold…

we won’t ever make this planet warmer.

How the unexpected keeps on…

So I squeeze her once because her gift is so precious.

I stare at it for a second and see how perfect it is and how sweet the words are, and she smiles and I smile and then I squeeze her again because I’m so touched at her gift and how it is straight from her heart.

And so very unexpected.

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I delight myself in You
Captivated by Your beauty
I’m overwhelmed, I’m overwhelmed by You

God, I run into Your arms
Unashamed because of mercy
I’m overwhelmed, I’m overwhelmed by You

I delight myself in You
In the Glory of Your Presence
I’m overwhelmed, I’m overwhelmed by You

And God I run into Your arms
Unashamed because of mercy
I’m overwhelmed, I’m overwhelmed by You

~Big Daddy Weave

Perspective

North to Alaska

6 Replies

Our July is usually so busy I want to run away when I get to the end of it.

I’m totally overwhelmed, drained of energy, and ready to up and move to a place where there are no farm animals, no fishermen, no motor homes, and no boats.

But every July, on the 27th, I remember…

I chose this place!

It was nineteen years ago today that I rolled into this amazing place that became my new home.

It had been a boyhood dream of my husband’s to move here after high school with his best friend, but meeting me changed all of that.

When, years into our relationship, he told me of his past plans, I chastised him for not telling me sooner and told him I would’ve gone with him.

Thus began the planning and the saving and the letter writing with his friend, who’d long since settled in the land the two of them had talked of.

And when his friend came back for a visit and his folks were planning a haul of goods up the AlCan, we took our dreams and we hit our knees and we asked if now, right now might be the time.

Those good folks were thrilled to have another driver and they packed their goods and they packed my husband and I sent our valuables in the valuable trunk he’d built on our first Christmas. His Daddy shook his hand and told him he always had a home to come back to and we all stood and waved goodbye as the tooley fog lifted off the cornfield that June morning.

the bridge

I talked to him every night, but one afternoon he called in the middle of the day and a call at work meant something big and the big thing was a job and a job was the go ahead for me to give up the steady paycheck that tied us to somewhere secure.

I hung up the phone and went to my boss and gave her my two weeks’ notice and that night I started selling all that was left of our stuff.

I was Alaska bound. Even though he was already there, WE were officially Alaska bound.

On a humid July morning, my mom and I rolled out of the only state I’d ever lived in with my big brown dog and my little tranquilized cat and all I owned on the top of my red four-door sedan.

We rolled into Alaska six days later, and on the night of the 27th, when I’d made it to our new town and stopped at the first gas station I found for a pack of cigarettes and a Diet Coke, I knew I was home. I knew I would never want to leave this place.

And I haven’t.

Oh we’ve flown out a few times for family trips and the occasional vacation, but this place is a place that holds a person. When we think of how much easier it’d be in the Lower 48, how much more affordable it is in other places, how many more people there are for our kids to know…

…we come back to the fact that we’d have to leave Alaska.

I lost the cigarettes and my ability to drive in big cities and freeways.

But I found the Lord.

We came up not knowing one another that well.

But we wrestled our way into being best friends.

The two of us didn’t have any furniture.

But now we have a house full of it because we have all these kids.

We only knew one family and held them close.

But now we know many families who hold US close.

Nineteen years.

Not long at all.

And when I look at my calendar and the crazy amount of writing on all the squares this month, my eyes fall to today’s and I remember that I really don’t want to run away. I already did that nineteen years ago and every day since…

I’m home.

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I am Woman. I Bought a Gun.

18 Replies

I bought a gun today.

I took my ten-year old daughter with me.

When I learned that my trusty old revolver -the one I am comfortable with, the one that has few moving parts, the one that fits my hand just right- well, when I learned that it might not be the best gun for a woman to become too comfortable with, and that the instructor of the class I’d signed up for wasn’t excited about having me use it over a semi-auto…

I looked down at my sweet daughter, -patient and holding Mama’s cell phone and keys at the gun counter- and I decided that I’d move out of my comfort zone just like my girl does all the time with her many 4-H projects.

I decided to follow her example and step out of my box and push myself to learn-by-doing just like any good 4-H’er knows is the very best way of starting something new.

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So I bought a gun.

I bought a gun without even talking to my husband, or consulting any other man, (unless you count my pal, my husband’s handsome lifelong friend who happened to stroll up to the gun counter and, when seeing I was buying a gun, offered a once over, a word of caution about the thumb safety on my model, and an atta girl) and with no guidance from anyone other than a brief chat with the kind-eyed woman who will be my shooting instructor.

I bought a gun even though we own many and I’ve shot most of them and I even have one of my very own that everyone calls Mom’s Rifle.

But those guns my husband bought.

This one I bought.

I am now the proud owner of a Smith and Wesson 9 mm, complete with a magazine (not a clip folks, never a “clip”), a holster, 100 rounds of ammo, and a soft-sided case. The whole shebang.

And do you know what I heard after I walked out with my new gun?

I heard that just this morning, in our fair state of Alaska, there was a massive theft of guns from a small gun store.

Today my girl and I spent over one hour legally procuring a weapon, filling out pages of paperwork, having my height and weight (so what if it was just my driver’s license weight, STILL) blown up to 8×11 size for the file, having my drug habits and mental status queried, having my name run through a federal registry, having my signature scrutinized, having to provide all the basic information that anyone would need to steal my identity and wreak havoc on my life, all so I could be declared “safe” and walk out of the store with a weapon.

Legally.

That is the process.

That is how it’s done.

I did everything right.

And I told my girl as we drove off that today was an important day for her.

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That today she got to be part of witnessing a free woman in a free country exercising one of the rights so many that have come before her fought and died for.

Today was the day when she saw her grown up mama become a little more of a grown up.

Today was the day we talked about countries and laws that aren’t friendly to women and how in this land, we don’t yet live that way.

Today we talked about how it’s important to use the strength God gave you in the place that He put you.

How having a good husband is a wonderful and amazing thing, but that not every woman has one, and even if they do, it’s good and pertinent for her to know how to make decisions for herself.

How men and women fought and died so that we could do what we did today.

And she said That’s right Mama. We can bear arms.

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I did it legally.

And what took us an hour, buying that gun with hard-earned money my husband toils for week in and week out and generously provides for me to use as I see fit…fulfilling all the government’s requirements to purchase and possess a weapon…

it took the thieves 28 seconds.

Twenty-eight seconds of video footage showing them stealing many weapons, taking all they could fill their shirts with, fulfilling zero governmental requirements other than those required to be considered a gun thief.

They didn’t even have to give their driver’s license weight.

Do you see why gun owners have a hard time when folks start murmuring about upping the requirements for gun ownership?

I did it legally.

Someone bent on destroying lives will do it whether it be by a knife, a step van, a bomb, or an illegally-obtained weapon.

Gun owners, responsible, law-abiding gun owners…

we own guns legally and we use guns legally.

We fill out the paperwork, we answer the questions, we write down the serial number, we pay the money, we carry responsibily and we shoot responsibly.

Do you think the little 9 mil I’m now so proud of and a little scared of and can’t wait to practice with is going to mow people down by my legal hand?

Or do you think one of the many that those thieves so indiscriminately stole will?

Do you see the difference?

After today, after exercising my freedom and proudly practicing my independence, and teaching my daughter to do the same, I feel a little tug to throw a Don’t Tread on Me sticker on the back of my mom-SUV.

I feel a need to maybe get a little more vocal about our Second Ammendment rights, maybe even get my Concealed Carry permit.

Not to show off or sound big.

Not to paint myself as a knuckle dragging Neandrethol that many today in our society are quick to label us gun owners.

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I feel the need because today I exercised the right that so many fought and died to provide for me.

For my children

For you.

For your children.

For my daughter, my precious girl who smiles at me when I tell her how proud I am of her and the young woman she is growing into.

I may take flak from some but you know what?

I am a woman and I bought a gun and I bought it legally and I will learn all I can about it and I will practice with it and it will be my tool.

I am a woman and I bought a gun.

Many picked up their weapons and they said we have a right to defend ourselves. To defend our loved ones.

And today I could almost hear them speaking to me and my girl.

They were saying That’s right Mama. We can bear arms.

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The Haying

Pushing

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I decided to update my folder of barn records in the morning and before long there were surprised tears in my coffee as I typed up Beau’s last notes.

Our long weekend with him…

and then his final lay down.

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The afternoon was filled with 4-H and phone calls and sunshine and then yells from the front yard that the dog had eaten the sheep’s leg off.

There were angry tears when I saw that the dog hadn’t actually EATEN the sheep’s leg, but had tried to herd the sheep and a tied sheep won’t herd and a cattle dog without a job sometimes herds too hard.

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The evening saw us in the hayfield, dropping everything to go on that one day a year when the hay man says it’s here, and the injured sheep stayed home with his girl and my boys donned gloves and my big man does what he does best, he hefts and he pushes through life so he hefts and he pushes through the field of hay and I want to lay down but I drive slow instead and sometimes heft too and then, when my littlest baby is driving the truck and the music is playing and the sun is shining, tired tears come because sometimes a mama really does just want to lay down.

Because sometimes all life is, is hopping from one mishap to another…one mess to the next…one big job to one more big job…

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and it can be overwhelming.

And a mama gets tired.

But when a few more quiet tears come on the way home, hay loaded up and midnight approaching, they’re both sad and sweet and grateful because sometimes in the tired we can forget who we are and where our strength comes from.

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And while I follow in the second truck and the hay on the trailer in front of me rocks through the Alaska wilderness and the construction zones, I realize how far I am from where I want to be. From where I should be.

All the things…all the places…all the words…how have I gotten this far and left them all undone, unsaid?

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But as the midnight sun glares and my baby switches songs on the playlist like a big boy next to me, I remember that I’m close to the One who’s taking me there.

And that every breath is the opposite of mishap and an opportunity to do the things and go the places and say the words.

The mountains are purple on the flats and we take our hay home and my men unload and my girls put the crock pot away and we tuck in the sheep and we go to bed.

And I tell myself that tomorrow there will probably be more mishaps and messes. But that I need to listen. I need to remember the wide open sky and the freshness of hay and the muscles that move.

I need to listen to it all.

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So I’ll remember. I’ll remember that tears come when I’m listening and when I’m listening, I am strong.

I’ll remember that my job is to grow into who He made me to be and while I’m doing that, to love.

To share.

To remember where I get my strength.

And to use that strength to manage the mishaps and weather the worries and surrender the sorrows so that I’ll keep standing.

I’ll keep standing and I’ll keep lifting and I’ll keep pushing and I’ll keep hefting…

All the way up to my final lay down.

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Great is Your faithfulness oh God
You wrestle with the sinner’s heart
You lead us by still waters and to mercy
And nothing can keep us apart

Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough for me

~Your Grace is Enough, Chris Tomlin

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13

This Shifty Week

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Today is Saturday.

I mean, technically it’s Wednesday, but it’s my Saturday. That’s because yesterday, which was Tuesday, was really my Friday.

But every-other week, Tuesday is my Monday.

If you’re nodding your head right now, you are living and breathing among the wild ranks of shift workers.

If you’re scratching your head right now, you’re a nine-to-fiver.

I once made the mistake of saying out loud to the person I was talking to on the phone that it was Monday. Except the calendar said it was Thursday.

He called me crazy.

That’s okay.

It takes all of us.

And us shifty folks, well, there might be a little truth to the You’re Crazy statement.

Because the crazy truth is, there are a lot of us crazy folks beholden to live life on a schedule of weird and wacky shifts, and it takes just a touch of crazy to make it work smoothly (and yes, I just snorted a little when I wrote “smoothly”).

In spite of the crazy, or maybe because of it, our family is one that has made shift work work for them, and here are some things I’ve learned along the bumpy and every-other-week way.

1) Your schedule will never be “normal” again. Ever.

Normal, in the M-F, 9-5 rest of the world sense, is gone from your life forever. Oh, you’ll strive for it, and you’ll look curiously at the bankers with their hair all done-up in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, but you my dear, won’t ever know that sense of daily regular, because in the middle of your Tuesday afternoon, you’re either working like a dog for the twelvth day straight, or partying it up like you’re on Hawaiin vacation. Kiss normal good-bye. The sooner the better. Don’t fight it; that will just add angst and turmoil. But more about that later.

2) Be prepared for odd looks should you be a) working like a dog for the twelvth day straight or b) partying it up like you’re on a Hawaiin vacation in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon.

These odd looks stem from one of two reasons:

a) Tuesday is still early in the week. You should be looking early-week fresh and not like you do: wild and crazy-eyed with all your hair sticking straight up and your FR shirt wrinkled and stained like you’ve been wearing it for 12 straight days (which you have) while your safety glasses frame your nutty mug like a pair of goggles that are permanently affixed to your crazy face (they are). OR…

b) your shuffle through the grocery store for popcorn and jalepeno cheese dip has you wearing your Saturday casual while your sloppy bun frames your slightly puffy, make-up free face…puffy only because you stayed up past ten o’clock the night before which was your Friday (Monday)… and this casual package implies that you’re an unemployed slacker mom who’s mooching off the rest of society, doing nothing but slogging around in pajamas and eating junk food for all your days. I promise you, it’ll happen.

3) You will very quickly learn all about yourself.

Namely, the depth and level of your strength. Whether you are a mama of littles holding down the fort while your man is on his four-weeks, or whether you’re a hard workin’ husband who hasn’t held his baby’s chubby hand for too many days, or who has gone to sleep without the warm hug of his wife for too many nights, you will soon learn just how strong you can be when you have to be. Something inside of you will take over and the ache of lonliness that once would’ve threatened to crumple and cripple you will become an entity almost separate from yourself and you will only allow yourself to take it out and inspect it in the few quiet moments of the day when there isn’t more work to be done.

It sounds dramatic but it’s true.

You will become strong. Very strong.

4) This strength will serve you well when everything in the whole wide world decides to break down/fall apart/turn to crap as soon as the shift begins.

Oh, it will happen. It’s the law of the shift worker that at least once, -but more often, many, many times- as soon as you go away, everything turns to youknowwhat. This either a) causes the one who is back home to carry a heavier-than-bearable burden, threatening the above-mentioned strength or b) cause you an immeasurable amount of stress as you try to handle break-downs and crises back home between break time and lunch hour at the job job and you’re trying to do your very best to balance both. This part is stressful. Verrrry stressful.

5) Your life will alternate between two conflicting personas.

This ties into Number 1 but it needs more words because this is a definite issue in our home and one that I’m assuming other shift-workers and their families struggle with. This one is the hardest for me.

The on-week, we’re all about nose-to-the-grind…keeping the train on the tracks…workin it to the bone. On the off-week, it’s like one long, constant string of Saturdays, a manic seven days of fun and field trips and projects with nary a routine or schedule. You will relax, you will soar with the family time, you will so enjoy the lazy days…the productive days…the full days…the free days…and then…

BAM.

It’s time for the all-too-quick SNAP back to reality when it’s time for the on-shift to begin again. No amount of preparation or mental talk has been able to help this transition for me. It can seem like a constant flip-flop, flip-flop, and have a tendency to feel like working two full-time jobs with no weekend in between.

Unless you just let go and run with the party feel. And if you do, the one who’s at home is left with the aftermath of the seven-day/two-week/four-week manic fun-binge, and the one who’s back to the job site starts the hitch tired and hung over on family and fun while EVERYONE reels from the blunt transition to “normal”. It is a constant angst for this family. I’m sure there are folks who navigate the back-and-forth better than I, but after years, every change-out still leaves me a little shaken and trembly as much of my effort goes into making the transition smooth. (There’s that word that makes me laugh again.)

6) You will soon become an expert on things you never knew you would need to know.

Writing letters…hauling a horse trailer…running an ice auger…eradicating scads of gypsy moth larva sacs with a blow torch…Skyping…cleaning up the vomit/pee/poop…all the things your other half usually does, -or would normally do- those are yours now. You’ll get really good at them too. And one day you’ll quit wondering how it happened that you’re doing all this stuff you never wanted to know how to do. It’s that strength thing again.

7) You will learn how to argue quickly.

Notice I did not say “you will quickly learn how to argue”. While shift work CAN cause an increase in arguing for some folks, I’m talking here about the actual time spent on an arguement. You will get very quick with your disagreements. When it’s on-shift time, work is the priority and could interfere in even the briefest of conversations at any given second, so discussions are short, quick, and to the point. No one wants to hang up mad, so you’ll learn to settle disagreements quickly whether it’s by voice…or by emojis. 🙂

When it’s off-shift time, peace is priority, so discussions/disagreements/arguments/fights need to be put to rest quickly so that the fun can be gotten to. This can make for a little bit of a bipolar-type day, explosions happening one moment, happy schmoozy family times happening the next. When time is short, arguments need to be short too. Ain’t no one got time to let things drag out when there are days-long projects and fun to be had.

8) The one-who-works-away will miss half a life.

This is especially true for those men and women who work off-shore/on the Slope/overseas. Being physically removed from your family means you will not be physically there for your family. It is a simple fact, and for the shift-worker and their family, it is a part of their life that they carry around always. They are very aware of the sacrifice they are making. For the family man, it is a huge sacrifice. Some may call him selfish. Some may wonder why he doesn’t just find a town job or something closer to home. More on that later, but being away half the time cannot be discussed separate from the flip side of the issue.

North Slope photo courtesy Tristin Martinez

Which brings us to number 9…

9) The time off can’t be beat.

Many families here in Alaska work a two-week on/two-week off schedule, referred to as a “2 and 2”. In our family, we’ve done the work week that consists of four, ten-hour shifts (4 tens), the 5-day, 9 to 5 week (town job), the five, ten-hour-shifts week (5 tens), the 7-days of 12-hour shifts (7 twelves), and we’ve done the four weeks on, one week off away from home job (4 and 1, which usually turned into 6/7/8 on but that’s another story).

While being physically gone half the time is hard, there is nothing, no thing, that beats having the family together for long stretches of hours and days and weeks. Nothing.

Having the family together for a long string of days brings such a quality of life and memory-building opportunities, it makes the time away more bearable and understandable. It allows the one-who-works away to immerse him/herself in the day-to-day life of the family in a way that usually isn’t possible with a 9-5, and it lifts the weight of the home management responsibilities off the one-who-stays-home while the whole family carries the load together during the off-hitch.

Vacations can be lengthy, times of rest can actually be restorative, staying up late can actually happen, sleeping in can be a reality. The off time can’t be beat.

10) You will be criticized.

Yes, really. People will criticize you for your job choice. People will call you selfish, say you are sacrificing your family for the money, and they will think you are a overtime-hungry, materialistic bachelor-type.

Really.

But just like teachers don’t choose their profession just because of the summers off, or surgeons don’t choose their field for the long hours away from their family, the shift-worker hasn’t chosen their profession just because of the schedule.

My grandfather worked 20 days on/eight days off for over thirty years to raise his children and his grandchildren. My husband’s dad was an over-the-road truck driver for decades, raising six kids on a job that took him away from home for weeks at a time.

Shift work is simply a job.

Shift workers have chosen their profession because it puts food on the table. They’ve chosen their profession because it fits their skill set. They’ve chosen their profession because someone hired them, it’s a career, it’s a way they can provide a living for their family and a resource for their world.

It’s a job.

And to those who think, -even if quietly in their minds- that the shift-worker really should find another job, one that is easier on a family, I’d like to say this:

You go find another job.

How easy would it be for YOU to switch careers?

How long would it take you to put together a resume…scour the help-wanted ads…go through the interview process? How would that look for you to learn a whole new skill set…make a career switch…try to find something outside of what you know or have been trained for? Maybe go back to college to get a degree, or go back to college to update your current degree. How easily would that work for YOU? Especially when you have a good paying job that provides for your family right now.

People who work odd shifts are not a special set of folks who secretly yearn to spend their nights away from their family. They are not an elite group of people who have special demands, needs, or desires.

They are simply folks like everyone else who saw a path toward a paycheck, started walking it and ended up in a job that requires round-the-clock employees. Whether that job be a police officer, a nurse, a lineman, an oilfield worker, an airline employee, a bartender, a night custodian, or any of the other hundreds of jobs that call for shifts…it’s a job. It needs doing. The folks who work those jobs are providing a service to people, to their communities and to this world, but most of all, they are serving their family.

It’s a job and jobs are hard to come by, especially in Alaska right now as having hours cut, being sent home, getting laid off, or having positions eliminated are all becoming more of a reality for far too many in our slumping economy.

Shift work is just a job like any other.

And yes, shift workers keep nutty hours and crazy days.

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And yes, you may get very confused when you talk to them about work schedules and calendars and what day of the week it is.

You may even be a little jealous when they stroll into the bank in their Hawaain shirt and Saturday afternoon attitude when it’s only Wednesday at noon, or irritated when they look like they just rolled out of bed even though it’s 3 p.m.

But the next time you see a gal in a work boots and a high viz parka turn away from you on the airplane and pop her earbuds in, making it clear she doesn’t want to talk to you or anyone else, don’t think the worst of her.

She may be leaving her family behind to go work a weeks-long hitch at a job thousands of miles from her loved ones.

And the next time you see a wild-eyed guy in an untucked FR blue shirt grabbing sandwiches in the deli department at 8 a.m. and he’s got a grimace on his face and a Rockstar in his dirty paw, don’t look at him disapprovingly because he’s not wearing Tide-fresh clothes or his hair isn’t brushed.

Smile at them. Because even though their schedule is different, they’re just like you.

Smile because even though it may be your Friday, it’s really her Monday.

Smile, because today may be his last of twenty-one straight days on twelves.

Smile…because now you know.

Smile…these folks are shift workers.

Gettin’ On Autumn

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I had the rare opportunity to drive home at dusk with my girl after a late meeting.

This time of year, us Alaskans start to see things we haven’t seen in quite a few months.

Like stars.

Pitch blackness.

Snow on the mountains.

Aurora borealis.

And she tells me, sometimes at night, when it’s starting to get dark like it is right now, me and Colton just like to go outside and take a big gulp of nighttime air.

And when it’s crisp and it’s sharp and it smells like cranberries….

…that’s how we know it’s Fall.

And there in my truck…holding her sweet hand…watching the stars twinkle over the dusky mountain…

…she reminds me what it’s like to be a child again.

Cassandra Rankin

Life is Messy and Things Aren't Always Little on this Crazy Little Farm

Category Archives: Alaska

Dear Alaska: It’s Not Me, It’s You

Taking the Sickness South

Unexpected

Perspective

North to Alaska

I am Woman. I Bought a Gun.

The Haying

Pushing

This Shifty Week

Gettin’ On Autumn

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