That song where Mother Duck loses all her ducklings one by one until she too goes "over the hills and far away" and they are reunited:
As clear an allegory for death and heaven as ever my gummy little brain had been fed. I was sceptical about the heaven part as it seemed obviously tacked on to make people feel better about death. As I had a hobby of scaring myself silly by trying to comprehend eternity and infinity, it seemed a cheap platitude.

"Waltzing with Bears":
Interesting metaphor for drug addiction! It's a dangerous and bizarre hobby that his family tries to intervene in, but in the end the addiction was stronger than their love and his determination.

"Puff, the Magic Dragon":
Pointlessly depressing because the kid dies at the end, and the dragon mourns him forever. (He may have grown up before dying.) Even so, it was all the terror of eternity with the loss of a close friend to make it more interesting.

"Wearing My New Hat To Town" is a game my sister and I used to play, usually with laundry baskets.

1: Locate a household object that will not kill you if placed on/over your head.
2: Announce "I'm wearing my new hat to town!"
3: Parade about the house.
4: If you like, you can sing a little song about it while you're doing it.

We played this game regularly.

Yesterday was very exciting, but all is sorted now.

My aunt was in Redwood City picking up Dazzle from the groomers when my uncle called her, from Lake Tahoe, to let her know that he'd gotten a concussion (in a skiiing accident) and couldn't drive himself home from the airport. So she pulled over and sent me a few semi-frantic text messages asking if I could come and help her do the two-driver shuffle to get my uncle's car home from the airport. I said I could, and since she didn't say what time this was going to be, I headed right over.

Of course, I got there a good twenty minutes before she did, so I was parked and waiting and reading stuff on my phone to pass the time, keys in the ignition. She arrived, and I hopped right out, locked the door, shut it, and realized my error as I was putting my hand to my waistband to check that the keys were securely clipped there as they always are. Unfortunately, despite Dad's cautionary tale about locking his keys in the Honda*, I did not have a spare -- not on me, and not anywhere, since the car key has a microchip and when I've remembered that I should have a spare has not been when I've remembered the money, and vice versa. And I'd never even gotten a spare without the chip just for door purposes. The windows were shut tightly, and the locks are the rocker switch sort that don't respond well to coathangers. It was about 5:20 by then. My aunt said that we'd have to leave at 6 in order to get my uncle at 6:45, so we didn't have time to call a locksmith right then, so we got dinner and fed the dogs. She asked if I would just want to go home after the car shuffle, and deal with it in the morning, but I pointed out that yes, I did have a spare house key -- safely at home, locked inside.

Just as we were finishing up, my uncle called. It turned out that he was already there, and had either said 5:45 and my aunt mis-remembered, or had meant 5:45 but said 6:45. So we scurried down to the San Carlos airport, and I drove my aunt's car back while she drove my uncle's car with him. His pilot was there watching him until we arrived, which was very nice of the fellow. My uncle was headachey, and didn't remember much of anything beyond the initial ski-fumble and heading in to the lodge, which was a reasonable chunk of time.

Then we called a locksmith; since it happened at my aunt's, her AAA covered it, which was convenient. I will have to check mine about lockouts. The guy was there in about 20 minutes. He had a little tool to pry up the edge of the passenger side door, and a wedge to keep it open, and this long snakey tool of rubber-covered quarter inch diameter metal, with a nice handle and a little bit at the tip. He worked the thing inside, found the lock, and poked it with the bit at the tip, and it opened right up. It couldn't have taken more than a minute. I retrieved my keys and we had steamed apples and raisins with cinnamon and pecans, and watched a movie.

First thing this morning, before going to my aunt's craft-and-chat session, I stopped by the hardware store across the freeway and got a spare key for the door. It lacks the chip, and you have to fiddle with it so it works, but it unlocks both doors and the trunk. My uncle is feeling somewhat better, but still headachey, and tired from being woken up all night. On the way back from my aunt's this evening, I got a second one, and a second spare house key, and I am thinking I might leave those with my aunt in case of emergency.


* Dad locked his keys in his little blue Honda once upon a time, before I came along, while he was doing laundry at the Coin King laundromat in Fairbanks. Mama was shopping at the grocery store across the way. Dad realized that he'd left his keys on the seat and locked them in the car. But he was at the laundromat, and he'd happened to have left the window open a crack, so he got his hands on a coathanger, fashioned it into a hook of just the right shape, slid it in through the crack in the window, and pulled up the vertical locking knob. Then he opened the door, carefully rolled up the window so that no other nefarious person would be able to repeat the trick, locked the door, and shut it.

Then he realized that there was a problem with this: at no point had he actually picked up the keys. And sure enough, there he was, outside the car, and his keys were inside the car, the window was closed, and I can't remember whether he'd put the coat hanger inside the car too. So he had to hike across the road to the grocery store to get Mama, who had her copy of the keys. After that, he had a full spare set of keys made, and he kept them in his other pocket, carrying them with him at all times, and was never locked out again.

Once upon a time, O Best-Beloved, I lived in a little cabin in the great big woods of Alaska with my mother and father and sister and a whole lot of stuffed animals. The cabin was small, and had a loft and a downstairs and a wood stove and a table in the kitchen and a couch and some other furniture, but was mostly just one little cozy room. And every year, Mama and Dad would have to do taxes!

This procedure involved a great many pieces of paper, all spread out over every available surface, or so it seemed. The calculator, a fascinating device that plugged in and had glowing red numbers and a great many buttons of uncertain function, was brought out and made to do interesting and arcane tricks. There was muttering and occasional cursing, and invocation of My Full Name (for, given that this was Alaska, I was in receipt of oil dividends, and therefore had to pay taxes at the tender age of four).

Mostly I stayed out of the way and played with my stuffed animals. I got out my Tinkertoys and stacked the green and yellow windmill fins in piles on top of a box, one atop the other, shuffling them and disorganizing them and occasionally noisily pushing them all to the floor! Old Cat, my favorite stuffed toy, sat next to me, stoically watching the whole process.

"What on earth are you doing?" Mama asked.

"We're doing our taxes!" Old Cat and I explained.

Mama did her taxes a bit quieter after that.

Mama sent me a photo of the quilt.

The bookshelf is at the center, with a whole lot of books I read while growing up. The stars around it represent interests of mine (such as the soccer ball), or little pieces of the past. It looks like Mama has a piece of the blackberry dress, and the fishtank-gravel pants, and the Frog Skirt, and all sorts of butterflies, and that gorgeous fabric from that dress from the 6th grade... this is wonderful.

The photo is a bit fuzzy, but I'm sure I'll recognize a lot more once I get to see it in person.

[Poll #1331444]

The hills are high and I am queen of the world on this rock. Dad points out the microwave installations and talks history. I listen to the wind singing in my ears and look across the river valley so wide I can't see the end of it all.

Dad reads us fairy tales at bedtime, all tucked up snug in thick blankets upstairs with the wood stove stoked with a few last slow logs for the night. Sometimes there is a princess, and usually her name is Marya. I thought that Sasha is a girl too, but Dad explains that was a boy's name. We fall asleep dreaming of magic as the house cools with the snow falling quietly outside.

Dad brings home a portable computer. It is so tiny. His computer at work is larger than a refrigerator with so many blinking lights and tape reels. This is only a little bigger than my little suitcase, even though I can't lift it. The bottom folds off and turns into a keyboard. It plays music when you put the right disk in it. I am enchanted. Dad uses it to compose bogus memos that he posts by the elevators at work, and comes home with tales of the stir he's caused this time, well-pleased with his cleverness at making everyone laugh and (usually) not getting caught.

It's well past bedtime when the phone rings and keeps ringing. Dad thuds downstairs to answer it as we all start awake. His voice booms upstairs to come down and come outside. We pull coats over our nightgowns and stuff our bare feet into boots and rush outside to watch the lights in the sky circle and dance. My nose gets cold, but we watch until the ripples fade out into blackness and stars.

Another night, Dad is the one to see the Northern Lights and make the call.

They called it "Seward's Folly", "Seward's Icebox", and only changed their tune after they found gold and then oil. We go over this every Seward's Day at school. He got a great deal when they bought us from Russia. Teacher tells us that they paid more in dollars for our school than they did for Alaska, even though money is worth less now and Alaska was really worth more. But it was still a good deal.

They're sending up rockets again, to get a better view of the Northern Lights. Dad's work stories are less office gossip and more rocket range. Dad stays late again. Mama puts leftovers away. When I wake up, I hear Dad downstairs making coffee. He's gone again before I come down for breakfast.

First it was the Berlin Wall come down, and my stolid 5th grade teacher traced over the line on the roll-down map with tears streaming down her face. Then pieces of Russia tore themselves away, and my 6th grade teacher sighed and talked about new maps. Even fragmented, you could still fit Alaska inside Russia whole and entire.

My sister plays violin with the group every Wednesday before lunch at the museum. I bring a book. Sometimes I steal away into the depths of the museum and look around at the displays. There's usually an aurora display, with the movie playing. I recognize the names in the credits from the stories Dad brings home from work. Mostly, I read as music fills the high echoing hall with its vaulted windows on the sky.

There are some new names coming home from work. Some of the old names have retired or moved. Some people will always be there, old friends and old thorns in Dad's side. Dad sends electronic mail back and forth with other scientists in the frozen North. The fast-talking fellow from Boston has gone to Svalbard for some weeks. The office stories are less entertaining in his absence.

Russia, Dad says. Mama gets upset. We kids go to bed early. Downstairs, he says once-in-a-lifetime scientific and cultural opportunity. Mama says instability, imprisonment, death. We say nothing, as quietly as we can.

Dad packs his warm clothes, plenty of batteries, and even buys cigarettes. We kids are disgusted, but he explains about customs guards and checkpoints and inspections and bribes in the same practical way he explains how charged particles excite atoms in the upper atmosphere to create the Aurora. We subside, still privately thinking that he could have bought more batteries instead of cigarettes.

Mama worries until she gets the telegram from Sweden. Then she worries about what else could happen. We don't understand it. We crawl into the big bed on Dad's side, and she doesn't send us off to our own beds until late. Usually Dad comes upstairs to kick us out sooner.

Dad comes home in a clatter of baggage and stories. Next time, he says, he will bring tea, because when traveling abroad you have to make sure the water is boiled so it will be safe to drink. When he asked for boiled water, they made tea for him, and tea is expensive and people there are so poor. He has perfume for Mama and books for us.

It was always the third youngest brother who succeeded at the quest, got the girl, found the treasure. He was usually named Ivan or Sasha. Baba Yaga, the witch in the hut with the chicken feet, was by turns kindly and malevolent, but never safe. Her gifts had a sting in the tail. Usually Ivan (or Sasha) could avoid it, but sometimes clever Marya had to rescue him from his foolishness.

Dad packs up the old portable and takes it back to the office. Then he brings home a new computer. This one can talk. I christen her Majel (after Majel Barrett, of course, the voice of the only talking computer I know) and we play with her voice-recognition software for hours.

Dad comes home from work chagrined, in receipt of an irate email from his host on the Russian trip. He has sent a care package, with the old Compaq portable and sundry other little comforts from the corrupt capitalist empire. He thought it would be funny to add "To Russia, With Love" in the addressing. Russian customs officers don't have a sense of humor. They also know about James Bond. Dad's host was questioned closely, and while unharmed, was shaken and upset.

This year, it's our turn, and Dad's colleague, his wife, and their two boys come in time for summer. They stay in the cabin that Dad built shortly after he and Mama married, before he built the big house. Dad and the doctor spend time at the University, while Mama plays hostess. I am shy and the boys are wary. We do tourist things together. They go home, finally, and I have peace to read again.

I swear up and down to Mama that as soon as I am old enough to move away, I will not spend another winter in this godforsaken cold land. Maybe I'll move to Florida. Mama goes quiet and looks old and hurt. I pretend not to care. I just want out.

My fiancé and I plan a road trip, just the two of us and our roommate (his best friend) for this, our last summer for a while in Alaska, before we go away to college. We drive down to Valdez, then through the mountains to Anchorage, then back up through the Park to Fairbanks, a grand triangle encompassing only a small part of the state. Each leg takes a day, and that's by blowing the speed limit out of the water on the long straightaways. I have forgotten my camera, but my brain soaks in the expanses of deserted land. We will come back after college, and settle down somewhere outside of town, close enough to work but not too close.

Three years stretches. I have neither a degree nor a husband, but I'm reasonably happy in Arizona on my own. It's not all that different, once you get over the culture shock -- you stay inside where the climate is under control, during the bad months. I still encounter cultural stumbling blocks, references that only another Alaskan will get, or someone who's lived so long in the cold it's crept into your very bones. I don't call home enough.

I have only a few words of Russian left from my elementary school classes. The company I volunteer for has been bought out by a Russian company, and the 'in Soviet Russia' jokes fly thick. I learn a few more words here and there in self-defense, but not much changes except upper management, too far above me for me to get to know them.

Someday I will come back to Alaska, I think. Someone will have to take care of the property once my parents are too old. My sister can't; she's in the Seattle music scene too deep to come home. It will fall to me, the eldest. We could sell it, but the thought is unbearable. It's home.

Someday, perhaps, I will visit the Diomede Islands, and gaze across the Bering Strait at Russian soil.

What is your earliest memory of your life?

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My earliest memory is either slightly after the age of two, or possibly slightly before, depending on which one came first, and if it was the latter, when it happened.

Memory with a date on it: We were in a big building with high dim halls. They took me to a window into a room. There was someone there, touching a baby in a glass box. That was interesting. They pointed at another baby, in a crib right below the window. She was wearing a blue blanket. It was my little sister.

My little sister was born not quite three months after my second birthday.


Memory without a date: I was downstairs in the Big House looking up the hole they'd made in the second floor for the stairs. I was MAD. I wanted to be up there too, but Mama had said I could not be, because I was too heavy and I would fall through. I knew they were pulling one over on me, though. THEY were bigger than I was, and THEY were not falling through. It was untrue, and therefore, they were lying to me.

Many years later, I brought this up to Mama. She explained: they had just put the plywood down, but it wasn't nailed yet. They were walking very carefully, making sure to stay over the beams. If they'd gone running off like I surely would have, they'd have fallen through. But they couldn't trust me to not go running off, so downstairs I stayed. MAD. (Mama was impressed that I'd remembered that. It had made an impression, though.)

I cannot remember all the goals I had set for myself for when I was grown up from before 10. I mostly wanted reasonable things within my parents' power to grant