An improvised life

Among the things I found after John died were 24 cans of Rainier beer in an outside pocket of his hockey bag. Yes, it was a massive bag – a goalie bag, though John didn’t play goal.  I got rid of most of his stuff pretty efficiently when he died, some of it with unabashed glee. The boxes of old magazines he carted through each move, fraying 1986 copies of Mother Jones and Utne Reader he was always going to get to. I brought 17 boxes to paper recycling. I doled skis and jackets to friends and family. I gave away his skates. But something stopped me from giving away the hockey bag, and I’m pretty sure it was the beer.  It’s a bit ironic given that I don’t even drink beer. I think I realized that case of beer stuffed in his hockey bag and smuggled into the rink was quintessential John. He was never one to travel light, a habit that continually irked me. But who was the hero at Happy Camp, three days into a Chilkoot Trail backpack trip, when he pulled out a complete copy of the Sunday New

Last night I talked to a friend who lamented the unsolicited advice others feel entitled to offer. Her family is going through hard times, and there are difficult decisions to be made. But she did not ask for advice.    I told her I’ve learned there’s one consequence of trauma people don’t warn you about: trauma serves as an invitation to others to peer into your life and advise. Most of it is well-meaning. But it quietly robs you of self-efficacy. It can trigger a spiral of dependence and self-doubt.    Over the last decade, my husband died, my best friend died, and I went from a paragon of health to a double-cancer survivor. The hardest part has been an erosion of my sense of self.    In addition to the Big Things – the death and disease – there were more insidious ways I felt my agency ebb. Complicated relationships. Giving up my work and professional identity to prioritize my children and my health. Moving seven times, not always by choice. Losing confidence that with enough grit,

Last year my Alaska driver’s license expired while I was living in Boston. After a week living on the edge, knowing I would rue this day but seeing little lawful alternative, I trudged into the Registry of Motor Vehicles, where an hour’s wait, a quick eye test and $30 bought me a Massachusetts license. Fast forward a year and I’m back in Alaska, buying a Subaru from Bellingham to replace the rusted-out one I sold on the way out. I need my Alaska driver’s license to avoid Washington sales tax, and to regain my bonafides. I google: I need a passport, social security number, proof of residence, knowledge test, and eye test. I make an appointment, which is mercifully simpler than in covid-times-Massachusetts where Rosie and I crawled over hot coals and transited the seventh circle of hell this summer to get her permit and license.    We won’t talk about what happened at my first appointment. (Why does a person need to know what coverage minimums you need when your insurance company takes c

I solved a Rubik’s cube last night. I started learning on the flight from Boston to Seattle as we were moving back to Juneau after three years. I like how planes limit my options and force me to slow down and focus. Without the Alaska Airlines crossword or meals (covid danger), we were even bored-er than usual, so I finally assented to Alder’s offer to teach me to cube.    I remember when the Rubik’s cube was all the rage in middle school. I made a few half-hearted attempts and never solved a single face. The Rubik’s cube always carried with it a vague whiff of failure. Then in December, for his Project-Based Learning class Alder was to choose something he didn’t know how to do and learn it.    “I think I want to learn to do a backflip,” he said.    My mind leapt to C-4 spinal cord injury, paralysis, and wheelchairs. “Mmmm,” I said, feigning neutrality.    “Or how to solve a Rubik’s cube.”   I shrugged. “Maybe that would be a little more practical.”    I got him a set of Speed Cubes fo

Despite growing up in the Boston area, I feel like a kid who’s been blindfolded and spun around trying to pin the tail on the donkey when I drive around Boston. When we moved here from Alaska three years ago, my then 9-year-old son Alder and I experienced acute disorientation. Our sense of dislocation was spiritual and social, but also profoundly geographic. In Juneau, the roads end in every direction. The mountains and ocean that bound Juneau tell you where you are, and which way is north. Here in the northeast amidst the tangle of asphalt and buildings we felt lost, severed from nature and nature’s guideposts.  So the notion of following a continuous waterway from the suburbs to saltwater intrigued me. It took three years from idea to execution, but on Saturday we kayaked from the Upper Mystic Lake in Arlington to Boston Harbor (or at least, to tidewater). I pressed Alder into service as my adventure buddy, and three more friends joined.  Our route took us from the Uppe

Parenting an 18-year-old right now is like being blindfolded in a leaky lifeboat in confused seas, one rogue wave after another slamming us. What guidance can I offer on the cusp of her graduation from high school? What comfort?  She wants to help, wants to be part of mending this broken world. What can she do that doesn’t feel like an empty gesture, virtue signaling, or preaching to the choir of her “woke” friends? Her questions are mine, only more urgent. She is on the cusp of fledging (– but where? how? I am moving, dismantling the nest. Her summer job at overnight camp is gone, and with it her summer home. Her dishwashing job and babysitting gigs are gone. Graduation will be piped into our dining room through my laptop, the inadequate conduit emblematic of our evanescent plans, our fading certainties. The uncertainty is all-encompassing, too much most days to talk about.) Last night we walked down the street with Rosie’s small homemade Black Lives Matter sign and my small