I write that wistfully because I do long for it. Katie and I have been discussing--by phone, text and e-mail (and to a lesser extent, this blog)--what it's like for each of us while we're apart, and what plan makes the most sense. Of course money is a constant concern. Having this job hasn't eliminated our problems. It's a huge step in the right direction, but we're still fighting a slowly losing battle. My hope is to keep the steady loss slow enough that circumstances might change around us and we'll pull ahead. And--though my father the banker would cringe were he to read this--but financial trouble doesn't worry me all that much. We can survive, we'll be together, with little EJ, and cutting some losses, however small or big, in the long run will amount to nothing. I've never been one of the "I-want-to-earn-this-much" folks, of whom I met so many in college and at various jobs. Living a clean, comfortable life and keeping my family healthy and happy are my financial goals. My real career goals are intellectual. I want to use the geology and remote sensing I'm learning now to explore the Bronze and Iron Age trade routes of the Phoenicians--but that's not here and now in Alaska, so it won't be the topic of this post.
The occasional heartache of missing my wife and even the wombly growth of little EJ has me questioning myself pretty harshly at times. Estimating from what Katie tells me, I think she deals with feelings of loss, and all the worries which surround them, more consistently than I do (though that's for her to say in her blog entries, and she's already pointed out a flaw or two in my accounts of things ). I can immerse myself in studying Alaska, or in the fieldwork (so far limited to the Cook Inlet just outside of Anchorage harbor), for several hours at a time, or even just daydream while staring at the almost appalling mountains. (And I use the word "appalling" because huge vertical extents of rock have always excited something like fear in me, over the forces which shoved them up, and the almost menacing way they hang overhead when you're near them. Mountains impress me, deeply. The ocean is too fluid to inspire that fearful kind of admiration in me--unless it's a big storm, and I'm looking at a dark field of gray oncoming waves. And that's only happened once or twice.) And Katie's certainly devoted many hours, over many days, wholeheartedly to her counseling job this summer, so we've both faced challenging jobs.
But the sense I get from her, when she tells me about sitting by the phone waiting for my call (on one specific occasion, at least...and I'll admit, I kind of dropped the ball on that one), or letting our kitty cat Jasper provide his tiny, warm companionship, that she feels the ache of separation for longer stretches than I do. But when I feel it, it nearly buckles my knees. For some reason, I tend to feel worst in the middle of the afternoon, if I'm not busy at something. Perhaps I'm thinking of the old image of the day as a lifetime, with birth at dawn, youth in the morning, maturity at noon, age in the afternoon, old age in the evening, and death at nightfall. I look at the afternoon and I can imagine feeling time itself passing, with me inert, far from my family, for some indistinct and inadequate purpose. I'm aware only of the passage of time, and our separation. No ambition or plan or promise can overcome that sense. Right now, I have one response to it: put my head down and get to work.
Any story needs its touchstones, its moments of emotional recognition where the character reveals his or her kinship to you. Without that touchstone, without that emotional recognition, the characters would become wholly foreign, with no real relation to anyone in the audience, beyond empathy, and meaningless. The Iliad is studded with such moments, and the one in my mind now is the family scene of Hector, the Trojan hero, his wife Andromache, and their baby son Astyanax. Andromache begs Hector not to fight, and he knows the danger but feels responsibility toward Troy (he is the crown prince, after all), and as he puts his helmet on to ride out, Astyanax cries at the suddenly fearsome sight. The lines say nothing of Hector's heartbreak on frightening his child, but they don't need to.
Another--probably the most powerful and blinding in its sudden strength that I know of--is in the Odyssey, after Odysseus has made it home after nineteen years' wandering across the sea (which did include eighteen years sleeping with the goddess Circe on her island...probably not something he emphasized to Penelope). Odysseus and his son Telemachus have killed all the suitors, he's cleaned up the mess, confronted Penelope and convinced her that he's really Odysseus, her husband. They make love. I'll paraphrase the passage that follows, which turns the entire plot and imagery of the whole poem on its head, and suggests in a flash the entire second story, a whole other epic, untold: "So, as a sailor wrecked at sea and clinging to the few remaining planks of his destroyed craft, is swept ashore by the waves, feels again the solid ground beneath his feet and rejoices,...so Penelope felt, again in the arms of her long-missed husband."
Kate's and my relationship is young enough, and even though I'm older than she is, we're both young enough to enjoy looking forward toward what life may hold for us. So feelings of doubt and despair don't sit on my shoulder for long--their talons can't get a firm enough grip. And there are enough issues these days--from Katie's and my struggle to stay solvent, to the similar situations of millions of families across the country, to the civil war which it seems some conservatives are trying to start--that the modest and majestic love which she and I share shines like a beacon in the cloudy darkness of my mind.
I'm used to the clouds and the darkness, and the beacon is a welcome presence.
So our plans are changing, toward her coming out much sooner than later, probably in October--pretty much, once she's acclimated to caring for the baby, and it's safe to bring the infant on a trip. (And we will look into that.) I still have despairing thoughts about pulling Katie out here with me, after she's lived a somewhat rootless life for several years, and she's started making some genuine friends in Rhode Island, on top of being near family again. But she corrected me again today, as she's so often wont to do, when she said, "My roots are with you, not in Rhode Island."
Thoughts like that put me at ease, but she and I are both cursed worriers, and sometimes the worry overwhelms even the strongest assurances. This year for me has been, among other things, a test in mental and emotional flexibility, in keeping my composure while I feel I've lost almost all control over events in my life. I'm talking about being unemployed and searching for any income I could find--a state of affairs that left me ashamed, afraid and at times full of rage. Now that I have a means to bail out the boat, so to speak, even if slightly more slowly than the water's coming in, I at least have more control. But moving suddenly across the continent and so close to the Arctic Circle (about six degrees latitude away) was never in my career plan, and I alternate between happiness at the unexpected, refreshing opportunity, and despair at the hideous derailment which has befallen my school career. Depends on my mood, and right now it's rather on the better side--most likely because I'm writing.
I'm homespun enough that I like the idea of buying a rusty old Suburban for 500 bucks and rattling through the winter with it (there's a neat red one for sale here in Palmer, but the guy won't answer my e-mail). But I know that if I nest too earnestly, I'll forget the hopes and interests which led to my coming here in the first place, by however sidelong a means. I think a little of Plato's Academy, which he supposedly placed in a swamp outside of Athens--remote enough so the city was not a temptation, and an unhealthy enough location that the students were all a little ill and therefore not tempted to practice athletics or be vain: instead they focused on philosophy. So I've called the home I want to have with Kate here, our Athens in Alaska: our own little enclave of intelligence and imagination, resisting the temptation to limit our vision to the things immediately around us.
It helps that the Sox have positively gone into the toilet since I've come up here. I think the Fenway-style scoreboard I put on our fridge blackboard hasn't been updated since July, when the Sox were 5 1/2 up on the Yanks. As far as I'm concerned, I'll let the season end there. Until they're back in first again, anyway.
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