Walking on Eggshells: Discovering Strength and Courage Amid Chaos (9 page)

One day when both Barbara and Tucker
were
home, Tucker asked me if I had ever been whitewashed. I didn’t know what that was, but Tucker said, “Come on. I’ll show you.” We then went outside into the deep spring Alaska slush and he dunked me into an icy puddle that must have been several feet deep. “Whitewashing,” I found out, was a sort of rite of initiation to life in Alaska.

My clothes were soaked through and by the time I got back inside the trailer where my mother lived, I was shaking with cold. I stripped off all my clothes and jumped into a shower that was hot enough that my feet burned with what felt like hot daggers. I had not yet learned that when your extremities are frozen to the bone, lukewarm water is the best way to warm up.

Another time, our mother had given Nick and me a few dollars to get some groceries and buy a treat at the corner store. We called
it the corner store, but in actuality we got there by walking more than a mile down a wooded trail. On the way back I had my hands full of bags and was also keeping an eye on my little brother. I remember that one of the bags I carried was especially heavy so I must have had a gallon of milk or some orange juice in there.

The trouble began when we were about halfway home. On my right, just off the trail, I noticed a huge moose. Then I looked to my left and saw a baby moose. I made the connection instantly. In addition to undergoing the ritual of the whitewash, I had been warned about the many peculiarities of Alaska life. One thing I learned was that the first rule of Alaska was “Never eat yellow snow.” It took me awhile to figure out what that meant. Another warning was never to get between a mama moose and her baby. Moose typically will not attack a human unless they are threatened, but there is nothing more threatening to any species than the possibility of harm to a mama’s baby.

If you’ve never stood next to a moose, I’m here to tell you that they are enormous. I am five-foot-nothing in adulthood, and was much smaller when I was ten, so you can imagine my fear. The second I realized we were in danger I dropped all of the bags, grabbed Nick’s hand, and ran as fast as I could back to the trailer. The new shoes that Dad had just bought me became ruined in our race through the slush and muck, and after we dashed into the trailer it seemed like hours before my heart stopped trying to jump out of my body.

I was very sad on the day I got on the plane to go back to
Colorado. I really wanted to stay in this peaceful place with my mother and younger brother. When I walked off the plane and into my dad’s waiting arms, the result of my last adventure in Alaska became very apparent. I had cut my hair. Well, apparently I also shaved part of the back of my head in an attempt to look cool. I remember how disappointed Dad was about my haircut. Besides the fact that it probably looked awful, even though Dad now lived in Colorado he was still big on Hawai’ian tradition. One of those traditions was that a woman should not cut her hair until her father passed away. Since moving to Hawai’i I had had my hair trimmed to keep it healthy, but never cut. To Dad, my haircut was a huge sign of disrespect toward him. I don’t recall that disrespect was my intent. I’m pretty sure that all I wanted was to look cool.

★

One day shortly after I returned to Dad, he and Beth got into another huge fight. It was around Mother’s Day, and Dad had bought a small, corded appliance for Beth as a gift. It appeared that was the wrong thing to do, and Dad once again moved us out of Beth’s home.

This time, however, instead of the Motel 6 we moved into the apartment of a woman Dad knew who had twin girls with long hair that they often wore braided. I liked it there until the day I happened to look in the trunk of the lady’s car when it was open. It was loaded to the brim with machine guns and lots of packages
of white powder strapped with tape, just like I’d seen on television when I was watching a police show. Seeing those things scared me to death and I was very relieved when, soon after that, we left her place for good.

We also stayed several times with a woman I’ll call Aurelia. Aurelia was very wealthy and was in the middle of a divorce, but had a huge piece of property in a rural part of Colorado. She had cows and horses, dirt bikes, a motor home, and a lot of other fun things on her farm. She also had several sons of varying ages.

We stayed at Aurelia’s for only a short time, and the last morning we were there we woke up to find that one of the cows had died. I’ve mentioned how much we all love animals, and waking up to a dead cow did not sit well with any of us. We cried to Dad about the poor, dead cow and he promptly told Aurelia that it wasn’t going to work out. He then took us back to the Motel 6. That was one time I wasn’t sad to go back to motel life.

Between times we were still in and out of Beth’s house. I am not sure what Cecily thought about all our coming and going, and I have to give credit to Beth for hanging in there. Without her continual firm reminders, Dad might still be on the path of a drug user.

Beth also provided me one of my main sources of enjoyment: pageants. I was still competing when we were around long enough for me to do so, and the process of dressing up, looking pretty, and performing a talent had become my favorite thing to do. Between pageants and moves I watched as much television as I could, and
I read a ton of books. At school I belonged to a reading club, and I far exceeded the required number of books we were supposed to read. For my efforts, I received a special award. I still smile when I think of that. Some of my favorite books of that time are ones I hope my own daughters will read someday. These include the Judy Blume books, the Little House on the Prairie books, and my favorite,
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,
by C. S. Lewis.

★

Eventually the anxiety and depression that resulted from my highly dysfunctional surroundings began to consume me. I so desperately wanted to fit in at school, but all the kids who could have been considered good influences on me had grown far away in emotions and interests. The gap between their home life and mine was just too great.

The only other sets of kids around were the druggies, the juvenile delinquents, and the general troublemakers. No child wants an isolated existence, and I had certainly had my share of that, so I fell, rather hard, into a group of kids in my school whom most people would consider the dregs of society.

To be sure I fit in, I began bringing pot to school. I had started smoking it more regularly, and found it a beautiful escape. I spent a lot of time imagining a better existence—a better, more stable life—and the pot helped facilitate that for me. If I had known how easily pot would serve as a gateway drug for me, how it would take
away any motivation I might have had to accomplish anything, I might not have started using it. Or maybe I still would have. My perception of my life was that bad.

Smoking pot was also a way for me to feel that I was growing up. After all, most adults I had come into contact with, the exception being my teachers, smoked it. I thought it was just something that grown-ups did.

Now I can see that I was a true product of my environment. Kids mirror the adults around them, and that is exactly what I was doing. A plumber’s kid will play with wrenches and pipe, a doctor’s child will most likely have a toy stethoscope, and a pot smoker’s child will sooner or later pick up a joint. That’s why, while I knew it was wrong, I didn’t view the use of pot as a particularly bad thing.

I also found that in my peer group, having a stash of pot made me cool. That was exactly what I wanted. I wanted coolness, to be part of a community of friends, to be the popular girl in my group. But as I mentioned, pot can be a lead-in to a host of other inappropriate behaviors, especially for kids. Cigarettes and alcohol were just two of the other evils I began doing regularly.

At home I became mouthier and stopped all pretense of being cooperative. I watched the negative behaviors of my older brother and sister and imitated them. And at night when I went to bed, the dolls I used to so lovingly cuddle had become just a distant memory.

★

L
ooking back over these
years I wish I realized that I had a choice. In ten short years, life had worn me down and I had become apathetic. With no role models to demonstrate a positive direction to me, with no one to encourage me to do well in school, I stopped caring. I should have found someone—a teacher, a counselor, anyone—who would take me under his or her wing. But I didn’t.

My role models today do not include one specific person. Instead, they encompass an entire list of people who have influenced me either positively or negatively. For example, I watched the circus that followed the misfortunes of young female celebrities such as Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton. Sitting back I thought,
Wow, with all the young girls who watch you constantly you
choose to drink too much at parties, wreck cars, and do drugs? Why in the world would you set such a bad example with all those young eyes on you?

If I ever have the power to influence the youth of America, or the world for that matter, I will follow a much more conventional path. I may not have been the best candidate to be a parent or a celebrity, but I know that every example I set had better be a good one. Not only are my daughters watching, but having the eyes of America’s youth on me is very humbling.

When I was ten, it never even occured to me that people who could serve as positive role models might exist. I didn’t know any counselors, we no longer attended church regularly, and my school attendance was spotty at best. Any adult who might have helped a troubled child like me was too far out of reach. I do realize that kids like me, kids who have troubled home lives, are often the least rewarding to spend time with and to teach. But these kids need positive role models the most. If you are an educator, a coach, a pastor, or a counselor, I encourage you to reach out to kids like me because I know what a huge difference you can make.

With the advent of the Internet, good choices for kids are easier to find today than when I was growing up. Even if there is no computer or Internet access at home, most schools and public libraries allow students to get online. I hope kids who need encouragement from outside their home make the effort to find a good youth center, church, or other program that will show them
the many wonderful options there are in life, and also help them get there.

With no role models in sight and with my life continuing to spiral downward, I went back to Alaska to stay with my mother for the summer. By this time I had just turned twelve. I remembered my brief stay more than a year previously and hoped for continued peace and love from my mother.

But this longer stay was not to be the one I envisioned. First of all, my mother had moved from Healy to Anderson, an even smaller town about an hour north. When I was there, Anderson had five hundred residents, six roads, and just sixty-one kids in their one school, which ran from kindergarten all the way through high school. Anderson wasn’t even settled until the 1950s, and most of the families who lived there were connected to Clear Air Force Station, which was just five miles south. While Anderson doesn’t have the beautiful setting that Healy has, Anderson does have a great view of Denali (a.k.a. Mount McKinley), the tallest mountain peak in North America.

Nick; Tucker; Barbara; my mother; her husband, Mark; and I lived in a trailer in town. When our mother married Mark he had a good job in Anaktuvuk Pass, a small northern Alaska town named after the Anaktuvuk River. Anaktuvuk, by the way, is the English version of a word that means “place of caribou droppings” in the language of the Inupiat, one group of Alaska’s indigenous people.

The county the town was in did not allow the sale of liquor, so Mark had a nice little side business going where he’d buy bottles of
whiskey in or near Anderson and then sell them for $100 or more in Anaktuvuk Pass. He also sold a little weed up there. Eventually the practice got Mark fired, and by the time I came, he was just hanging out. He was a good cook, though, and I still remember the wonderful “Mickey Mouse” pancakes he used to make for Nick and me.

In the late 1990s, Anderson had little to offer in the way of kid-friendly activities or entertainment, so we made our own fun. For example, Mark used to let us have water fights inside the house. With a hose. He also let us shoot BB guns inside the house. Obviously there was even less structure here than I’d had at Beth’s. There was no schedule for chores, homework, or other activities necessary to daily life, so I had too much time on my hands.

With five hundred mostly adult residents there was no one my age to hang out with so I fell into a crowd of older kids whom Barbara and Tucker already belonged to. These were fifteen- to sixteen-year-olds compared to my twelve, and these older kids were, for the most part, not honor roll students. During this summer I realized that my mother had a problem with alcohol. I had grown up some since I had last been here and by this time had learned firsthand about the effects of overindulging. I now knew that what I had perceived on my first visit as bubbly fun was, in fact, drunkenness. My mother and Mark drank socially, but it often got out of hand. When they were both drunk my mother and Mark began fighting every bit as loudly as Dad and Beth did, just not as often. This was a shock to me because I didn’t know that my
mother could scream at another person with such intensity. It also brought back the unsettled feeling of anxiety I had when I was with Dad.

After I had been in Anderson a few weeks, and after another rousing fight between the adults in the house, my mother tiptoed into my room with a large bottle of E&J brandy. “Shhhhhh,” she whispered as she put the brandy in my closet. “Don’t tell Mark that it’s here.” Mark inevitably found the bottle, and when they moved the fight into the garage I could still hear the ugly name-calling between them through the closed door to my room.

One day Mark told us he had to run an errand. When he didn’t come home right away my mother alternated between being really angry and distraught with worry. Mark finally called three days later to tell her he had broken down in Healy and the car had been towed. That’s why he couldn’t come home. Mark assured her that he was trying to find parts for the car and would be back soon.