September 21st again

Among my life's many regrets, I feel guilt about my father's death. I wish I had done more, listened more, been more alert to mistakes that were made in his care, managed interactions better, been better in tune with what he needed. I wish I'd somehow made better use of the time we had. It's not that I made a complete botch of it - it's just the finality of the thing. Always open to 'review' in my head because 'redo' isn't a possibility. I'm mostly just sad that he's gone. But I wish the guilt wasn't there; that's for sure.

Those feelings don't seem to be fading with the years since his death, but neither do the wonderful memories of the twinkle in his eye and his mellow voice; and the bad jokes, lengthy political discussions, criticisms of my driving habits and waxing eloquent about the virtues of blueberry pie.

My dad was a character. And somehow on his birthday I always seem to want to write something about him.

When my son was very little we shared a vacation with my folks to the interior of Alaska. It was an incredible trip - the mountains, rivers, glaciers and wildlife of Alaska are just beyond the superlatives of language I can throw at them. We actually SAW Denali - a mountain so huge that it usually hides itself in its own weather. (Yes, I know. It is really named Mt. McKinley but I just can't bring myself to call it that. It should be known as 'the great one' - Denali - not by the name of some mid-west politician who had never been more than 1000 feet above sea level in his life. Anyway.)

My father was completely taken by it all. He took what seemed, at the time, to be miles of videotape of all those amazing sights - recording for posterity what had stood there for centuries, and stands there still today. In the 'sound' background, where he wanted to provide commentary, he could only say how incredible, how beautiful... a lot of "oh my goodness's" and "wow's" and "just look at that's."

Along for the ride, of course, and competing with the scenery (in my view at least) was cute-as-the-dickens Todd - a little guy at the time and less impressed with the views than with the first time experiences of sand between his bare-foot toes and the smell and sight of a musk ox standing a few feet away from him at the Anchorage zoo. During that trip Todd was, for the first time in his young life, sharing space in the world with a video camera, and I have often thought how lovely it would be to look at that tape and catch a few frames of him walking, talking, laughing and just being a little boy.

But both my mother and I are sure that little Todd doesn't appear on those tapes much at all. My dad was so focused on what he had come to see - on the splendor, on the awe of actually being in northern Alaska, this place that he never expected he would see in his life but which was right there in front of him anyway... It wasn't that we weren't important at the time, but this experience was one of those times in life where taking it all in is the most you can do. So that's what he did. In the form of miles of videotape of inanimate stuff.

(I certainly don't fault him for it. My own pictures of the trip hardly included 'people' pictures either! Am I my father's daughter or what?)

Even so, I wish I'd followed his example in the last months of his life. I wish I'd done a better job of focusing on that time and sorting out what was going to be important and lasting about it for me. I hate having the fun of thinking about him get all mixed up with the sadness and guilt of not having made the last times with him as good as I might have.

Is it a lesson I can apply to the future? I hope so.

My favorite holiday?

Guess what? Today is "Talk Like A Pirate Day!!" Very exciting. No decorations, no greeting cards, no costumes required (although they might be appropriate - to help with the overall ambiance.) Just a few pirate jokes:


Pirate A: "How do you like my $2 earrings?"
Pirate B: "Not bad for a buccaneer."

Why does it take pirates so long to learn the alphabet?
Because they spend years at C.

What do they teach in pirate schools?
The three arghhhhhHHs!

Why does a pirate's phone go beep, beep, beep?
Because he left it off the hook.

What has 8 arms and 8 legs?
8 pirates!

Deja Vu

We did all kinds of touristy things over the past 2 weeks while my mother was in town visiting - but one of things we saw was so very reminiscent of a past life - it sort of gives me the creeps to look at the picture. The Alaska ferry Columbia was docked in Bellingham when we visited. This almost could have been the view out of my upstairs window in Wrangell - only in Wrangell it would have been heading into the dock instead of tied up to it. I know every inch of this boat. I know its sounds and colors and smells. I got my first true migraine from the thrumming of the engines on the Columbia. And its sailing schedule? Hasn't changed in all these years. Of course it was going to be right there in Bellingham. It was Friday afternoon. It would be in Wrangell on Sunday.

My first ferry ride was from Prince Rupert to Wrangell on the Malaspina ferry - which looks just like the Columbia except it only has one row of windows above the hull line. Todd was only 6 weeks old and I was so afraid of somehow losing him to the dark waters that I couldn't easily bring myself to stand out on the deck. It was cold anyway - to me at least - in July. And even though the boat left Prince Rupert in the late afternoon, there was light in the sky during the entire 14 hour trip.

During 15 years of living in Southeast Alaska there was plenty of opportunity to ride on the ferries. There were little vacations, and sports trips to play other teams when Todd was in Little League and city league basketball. There were more times than I care to remember that I had to catch a ferry in Ketchikan or Petersburg or Juneau after trying to fly home and having the plane not be able to land in Wrangell. But our direct encounters with the ferries were more about greeting guests coming to visit than about taking trips ourselves. And selling garnets to tourists, of course (see this blog posting for that story.)

There were wonderful times and just plain awful times during all those years. Now when I look at that ferry, and the water and islands around it, I am glad to be done with all that. I don't know why I have this natural 'bent' to remember so much negative stuff when, really, I have made life to be just what I want it to be, but... I just do. Even knowing that, it surprises me that seeing the Columbia again brings a lot of anxiety to my head. I should never have been stuck on an island for 15 years!

OK, so, it's been kind of a tough week. Mark has been out of town. (In Detroit, of all things. Other people in his group travel to Europe, but Mark goes to Detroit - where some actual customers are.) My mother left on Tuesday morning. The weather, which has been simply spectacular, has now started to turn toward fall. And fall is always hard for me.

So I am posting this picture of the Columbia in the hopes that putting it out there will help me turn my attention to better stuff. Deja Vu isn't really a good thing.

September already

We had a bit of fall weather there and I was worried - my mother is coming to visit from Arizona, and I don't want her to be cold and sorry she came! We actually got rained out of a hike on Sunday, and had the fire turned on in the family room for a bit of heat as well when we got home. (Lovely, actually.)

So today we are back to wonderful weather and everyone is happy about it, including Squirrel who got a corn cob to chew on for a little gift. Hope you are enjoying the change in weather too!