Hard Work

We're both laboring here. I've slipped into a decent rhythm for living while I'm up here, from getting to work (on non-field days) between 8 and 9, working till about 5:30, heading to a local gym (signed up, though it probably would've been smarter for me to wait until payday...but anyway), having an espresso and reading (or talking to my little bengal) at the nearby coffee shop, and heading home. I try not to spend much time at the house because it's crowded now and someone is guaranteed to be watching TV at night, and with no place to escape to, I get little done.

It's at moments of idleness, like the afternoon letdowns I mentioned in the last post, that I feel the anxiety of separation the most, as well as moments of conversation, either via phone or e-mail, when I sense Katie's, and I feel responsible.

A quick tangent here. Last winter, after Katie had learned that she was pregnant, and we'd begun making plans to get married, I headed back out on the water for another stint on the survey boat. One of my coworkers had a way of offhandedly telling really horrifying stories (I still don't know if he was just oblivious, or really a manipulative jerk). As he and I talked over the pregnancy and Katie's and my plans to marry, he told me about his own child out of wedlock, and the rough relationship he had with the mother at the time, and her horrifically difficult pregnancy which incurred nearly $200,000 in medical bills--all billable to the US Government (I might add that he's a proud Texan who claims to resent federal overreach, but that's another matter) because the mother--later his wife--remained single. I was predictably terrified of the medical bill, the moral of the story being, "Don't get married if you can stay single and charge everything to the (evil) feds."

Of course I was scared that if Katie had any complications, I'd go bankrupt trying to pay for them, as my Blue Cross Blue Shield wouldn't cover her pre-existing condition, the pregnancy. In the heat of my panic I called her, as the boat steamed down a Louisiana canal toward the Gulf, to spill this story and to wonder aloud if getting married right away was really the best thing to do. I was fear-stricken and breathless as I hurtled through the story and my other worries, and the message Katie picked up from me was, pretty much, "I don't want to get married."

I began fearing that I'd overshot the mark when I heard her voice weaken and break on the other end, and then sob, "Don't you think I'm scared too?"

I wasn't aware yet of the fear I'd put in my fiancee--I thought I was telling her that maybe we should wait a few months. She thought I was telling her goodbye.

Then my phone went out of range, and our internet connection on the boat went down for two straight days, and Katie was left to think that I'd dumped her, child and all, and was moving on. Reality was otherwise, of course--I was just about as frantic to get back in touch with her as she was to hear from me, and finally, two days later, around 5:30 AM my time (Louisiana's an hour behind the east coast) the boat was near shore again, so I texted her, and we talked. We were both calmer, and I made her realize that I had no plans to leave her, I was only worried about timing. And she was reassured and told me (not for the last time!) to follow our collective heart and have faith that events would work themselves out around our decision. So we held to the choice to get married.

Katie and I haven't had that kind of breakdown of communication since I've been in Alaska (though I did kind of tick her off by overdrafting a checking account...twice). But her moving out here to join me is a decision of similar magnitude to our choice to marry immediately. We know we'll be back together eventually, and my coming to Palmer this summer was primarily a matter of securing an income to provide for the family. Last winter, I'd already promised her that I wanted to marry her, and (after all, we're pretty much all big boys and girls reading this blog) that there was the chance she might get pregnant anyhow. When she gave me the news (I'll eventually get there in the Pup & Ben history, but not for a little while), it was faster than I'd expected but nothing more than confirmation of what I wanted anyway. At first I looked upon the ritual of marriage slightly, but Katie's instincts were to make it a genuine celebration, and I'll always be glad we did.

Now, we both know that living apart is a temporary arrangement. Whether one or two months, or three or four or possibly more, we're not sure. But unlike the choice to get married, we have a clearer intelligence about what will happen, but our feelings (and I can say with certainty, mine) have been more mixed. There was no serious debate in my mind last winter about marrying Kate: it was only a matter of when. But I've been debating, fiercely, whether I want to bring my young wife and even younger baby (not to mention a timid and loving cat) out to this dark and frozen wilderness.

Katie's pretty bold and on top of that, extremely lonely, so she was up for it. We began making plans to rent or sell the condo, when my opposite feelings began speaking up. I've already held one real estate fire sale this summer, and it was a humiliating, infuriating experience which I never want to repeat, and I did it only because I needed to feed and shelter my wife. (I've learned to manage a lot of fury this year.) And if we move out here, at the onset of winter...we need to pack up our belongings in RI first, a few weeks' hard work at least...with my Rhode Island degree still unfinished, and not being sure, in any circumstances, how long we'd want to live so far from what we both think of as home. (And check a map--Anchorage is almost as far west of Seattle, as Seattle is from Providence, Rhode Island--it's as far when you count the northward part of the trip.) It was anguish thinking of uprooting the family and casting away the home we've made, for a future whose near-term is still unsure.

And the final aspect to this thinking and re-thinking: I might be working outside of Alaska this winter anyhow, either in the Gulf (boy, I hope not) or on one of the international ventures. Then Katie would be stuck...in Alaska...with pretty much no friends, and absolutely no family...where temperatures average 25 deg F (mild by Alaskan standards) and there are four hours of sort-of daylight.


Maybe we've watched a little too much House together, but I've seen some episodes where a mother goes crazy and somebody gets hurt. And if there's something that might push my lovely, high-strung bengal to go nuts, it's being stuck in a darkened icebox with nobody to talk to but an infant and a cat.

The point of this increasingly dismal post? We're fighting to create the least bad plan to navigate this separation while the economy prevents me from finding work closer to our home. I'm giving Alaska an honest try, and there's a lot to love about this magnificent state where the geology and the weather both display their extreme forms, but I and Kate are both weighing, every day, the pain of separation with the rest of the disruption a total move would cause.

There's just no simple answer and there are fleeting moments when I worry about our ability to communicate, thinned and frayed by such sparse contact as we have while I'm here. But those moments' fears are swept away by the emotion and humor of when we do recover ourselves, and come to an understanding of whatever the issue was, or one of us makes the other smile, which makes us both smile--and I know that our gift of easy communication with each other is intact.