Mother Airways

"I am so sorry for you. How are you doing?" she says, squinting in the light filtering through the canopy of green leaves shading her driveway. Shuffling with age but appearing as polished as she did when she was my mother-in-law two decades ago. 

It takes a moment for me to understand what she means because the words sound like death. And I'm only there to take a carload of donations from the basement. Items my adult daughter is discarding because she is leaving for Scotland for her master's degree.

I want to say that Conner and his family left a third-floor apartment, and Alexis is leaving a basement. But I don't. I smile and tell her it is sad, but mostly I'm excited. 

She gracefully turns in her own shadow and leads me inside to a house that still feels a little like home even though I don't want it to. 

I was fifteen when I first set foot in that house; thirty when I stepped out. 

As I haul my daughter's belongings into the back of my car, just as we did with her brother a few months ago, I know I have done something right to have raised kids who are brave enough to fly the nest.

Welcome aboard Mother Airways. The airlines refer to passengers as souls. Their job is to safely move us about on our journeys. We have three souls in Alaska. One in Moscow, Idaho. Two under our roof plotting their path into the world. 

And one on her way to Scotland fulfilling a lifelong dream. 

In a half-hour, I will drive her to the airport, and we all cry. But this is the job of a mother. We hold onto them with our hearts, not our hands. 

Thank you for flying with us. Your destination awaits you.

 

 

the road

The road makes us laugh. The way it heaves, buckling at the ice below. It splits and curls like white caps. Welcome to the edge of the Alaskan Highway. I drive it like a bull rider, watching for the dip in the shoulders to tell me which way to lean. 

"You're good at this," he says from the passenger seat as the last of the Yukon peels from beneath the tires.

"I am good at it because I'm good at not trusting the road, and this road is certainly not to be trusted."

He laughs and cracks the window to smell the air.

I would stay forever in the Yukon. Tucked inside the isolation and a tent behind a bear fence. I sleep better in the shadows of mountains than buildings. And I live better in the face of real danger than I do walking with the fear in my head.

I have bitten through my lip, the metallic taste of blood minges with my cold cup of coffee. 

Wild swans swim in pairs out on the mountainous lakes. They are so white and alluring we pull over to see them. He rolls a smoke and adjusts his hat gestures from another time.

Then we get back in the car because we have somewhere to be. And that somewhere is not the Yukon; it is Alaska. So we drive the Alaskan Highway to the border and slip back into the US after four days and three nights of driving the Canadian Provinces. Passing through mountains cradling gravely blue glaciers. Watching the rivers of white water and stone roll down yawning valleys and spotting herds of bison, elk, caribou, and sheep.

All the coffee was good. I can't say the same for the beer. The road always made us laugh, but it's what is at the end of the road that makes us truly happy.

what fear creates

 

Last July, I stopped writing here. The final post was about how a man with an overflowing bucket of entitlement and anger had frightened me so badly I stopped going to the dog park. The fear of angry people pushed me into the mountains where I could hike alone. Where I felt safer stumbling through the trees in the dark than I did in the valley in the middle of the day. 

Three days a week, I would set my alarm for 4:30 AM, make coffee, grab the dogs, and drive fast to avoid people and parking issues.

Near the end of July, I had hiked most of the top of the canyon and begrudgingly shifted my hiking to lower trails. What I didn't shift was my alarm clock. One morning, I got up, a little earlier than normal, and drove half as far. I ended up on the Overlook trail hiking in swallowing darkness. 

I was so scared I forced Juneau in front and Ginger Dog behind. I didn't have a light other than my phone. 

I remember thinking I should go back. Of course, I didn't. I hiked in the dark, safely tucking into my own fear. And a conversation began playing in my head. From that conversation grew the first chapter of a book. The timing of which was unfortunate because I was just finishing a not so horrible manuscript/novel and considering attempting to publish it. 

Fear is a house of mirrors.

Sometimes it fools you. Fear can amplify, replicate, reflect, and it can create. 

This past week at work, I had a similar angry person encounter. It was a woman, and she did something I have never seen someone do. It has shaken my faith in the rules of bad behavior. It wasn't her swearing at me and threatening to "come in and kick my ass." Blowing up the phone for half an hour. Or her showing up demanding to speak to my boss. At least in my job, anger and rudeness, I know how to deal with. I am a fixer. I talk anger down. I make mad people happy. 

But this woman lied. I know people lie, but they do it when they think they can get away with it. She was so bold, so empowered, she didn't give a shit that WE both knew she was saying wasn't true. 

She accused me of doing what she had done to me, swearing, threaten her, and hanging up on her. Then she threw out another threat pretending to be a police officer, which she is not. 

And as I kept helping the customers in front of me, this woman stood two feet away, complaining loudly to the authority figure we provided for her. Sneering over at me victoriously boldface lying ABOUT ME- basically to me.

Lied about what was said, who she spoke with, who had helped her the week before. EVERYTHING she said was untrue. I couldn't interject. I couldn't defend myself. It was like being held down and being punched in the face.

She thought she had all the power and that I was helpless. And in the world of customer service, she wasn't entirely wrong. Customer service is a tar pit. It's hard to work in and not get your ethics and morals (and self-esteem) a little dirty in the name of being paid to be nice.

So it's nice that no one at my work believes her. They all have my back. Nicer still that I have witnesses to all my encounters with her. It's great that the owner researched all the data on the computer, which proves I was doing my job by the book. Except for one thing. I broke police when the week before I did the woman a "favor." After a rambling account of child support and illness, I let her prepay for a spot in a full class if it were to come available. And if not, she was to use the credit she created for the following month. 

I fucked up by being nice to her. And as far as breaking the rules, we allow people to prepay for classes as gifts, so as a rule follower, I want it noted I only bent the rule. 

But that niceness was my downfall. She knew she had pushed me the week before to get her way, and so she figured she would do it again. But it didn't work, and so she was angry. She wanted revenge, and she got it.

I am being told not to worry about it. I'm not in trouble for not doing anything wrong. I'm not in trouble for being verbally assaulted at work. That's good to know. 

Logically, of course, she was a crazy-ass woman, just walk away from her- after you do your job, of course, and after she gets her say, but you don't get yours. Don't let her bother you, just like the angry man at the dog park. Walk away. Into the mountains. Into darkness. Through fear. Into the light.

"There is a space in my mind where monsters lay in wait."

I have now written the book I will hopefully publish. And after I thank all the people who have supported me, I suppose I will thank all the angry people who made it possible to write an entirely fictitious novel about fear.

To keep down on the word count, it will simply say: fuck you.