Backpack

I have this backpack. It’s a Marmot; blue and gray with a little bit of yellow trim. I bought it right before I left for Scotland in 2003. That backpack has been all over the globe with me. It’s not very big but I’ve found I can easily live out of it for a month at a time. I love pulling that backpack out of the closet. I’ve said many times that I know when I pull it out good things are going to happen. Some of my best memories have occurred with that pack on my back; or at least in the car.

Tonight I watched “Up in the Air” (Don’t worry, no spoilers. I HATE!!!! when movies are ruined). George Clooney travels all around firing people. He also attends conferences and gives “Challenge” addresses. His talks are based upon the belief that the people and things in our lives fill up our backpacks and weigh us down to the point that we can no longer be effective. I started to think about my backpack and all the adventures we’ve had. We’ve been across the UK from Orkney to Deal. We’ve slept in Parisian hotels with crazy plumbing in the corner and accepted rides from strange men in Brussels. We’ve traveled the Alcan and the Inside Passage. There have been trips to Rocky Mountain National Park and Buffalo Creek. Treks to Homer and Ninilchik, Denali and Talkeetna, Otter Cove and Seward. I’ve trekked across the Great Smokies and sat by a lake in Georgia. I’ve hiked, camped, dip-netted, clammed, caught trout, caught salmon, caught halibut, and caught absolutely nothing. I’ve driven for days, almost hitting a wolf. I’ve sat on a ferry watching whales and dolphins and almost missed the same ferry because I got too busy seeing Ketchikan. I’ve almost run out of gas in the middle-of-nowhere Montana. I’ve been stuck in crazy thunderstorms and behind overturned semi’s and through all of this, my backpack has been with me.

But I realized tonight that it isn’t so much the backpack that’s been with me. It’s all the people that I’ve picked up along the way. Every trip I took included one of you. A gross Parisian hotel would have been just gross without a sister to laugh about it with and catching nothing in Seward would have been a waste of time without a few good-natured friends and their screaming baby to share the ride home. Being stung by a jellyfish in the Baltic Sea would have been just painful without meatballs and potato salad to follow and Pimms all alone is just depressing.

So, he’s right. A full backpack digs into your shoulders. It creates extra weight and makes you work hard. But the added work also develops a strong heart. So instead of emptying my pack I’m gonna keep filling it. Thanks for traveling the road with me.

Todd

This weekend was one of the hardest I've ever had. I flew to Montana to say a final goodbye to one of my oldest and dearest friends. He was diagnosed with colon cancer in May of last year and lost the battle on April 9. He was only 28 years old. He made a list of people he wanted to speak at his celebration service and I was honored to be among them. Several people asked me to post what I wrote so here you go. I hope that it will continue to honor one of the best men I've ever known.

I recently spent a day driving through the mountains of Georgia and North Carolina. I was struck by the old buildings still nestled in their hillside homes; remnants of the past, left to tell the stories. In the last few months I’ve also been struck by the remnants of my past and how often those remnants involved Todd. The number of stories that involve him amazes me. Todd has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. There are not very many memories of my childhood in which he did not play a significant part. From the time we could walk and talk he was my best friend. The goal of every summer vacation was to spend as much time together as we could manage. The Baar home was as much my home as my own was.

We spent our days building forts under every bush and tree and in every abandoned building on the farm. We took trips to the junk piles in the surrounding hills to return with chipped plates, cracked mugs and empty ketchup bottles and vegetable cans to line the shelves Todd rigged between uneven tree branches; a foreshadowing of his career to come. We swam in the canal and, having apparently watched Annie one too many times, ran through the fields as runaway orphans escaping from their evil guardians. And if we were really lucky Ely would be there, too. The three of us would haul out his old red backpack, pack a lunch and our swimsuits and head out across the fields for a day of adventures. We ate our lunch beside the Owl Tree or the Willows and alternated carrying the supplies and cooling off with a float in the swampy, but oh-so-cool water, letting the current carry us along. We ended the day with all three of us packed onto the fold out couch in the Baar living room giggling and talking until Ron was thoroughly fed up and would come stomping down the stairs telling us to be quiet “For the last time” for about the third time. We eventually outgrew the sofa bed and moved our slumber parties outside. However, not wanting to be woken by the car when Ron left for work we bypassed the yard and camped out in the cemetery on the other side of the fence. When I mention this to friends now they tend to find it a strange place for regular campouts but it was simply convenient and we saw nothing wrong with it.

There were Saturday night suppers at Grandma’s where the whole Westra family would gather for a big meal and then game after game of Beckon, Beckon, Capture the Flag or Moonlight, Starlight in the dark in which it always seemed to end with someone running into a branch of an apple tree or a full tilt collision. There were the Thanksgivings on the farm and then after, sledding in the draw and football in the snow. There were the weekends every month spent in Billings while Ron was in the Navy Reserves. With the bushes in the Anderberg yard off limits we were forced to build our forts using every available sheet and blanket filling the basement with linen palaces in which we hid out and watched movies and ate popcorn. Or the days where the floor was lava and we could only move around by walking on furniture, the results of which left me with ten stitches and a scar I carry to this day. Countless games of Blind Man’s Bluff and Twister on the playroom floor and always the plans for the months to come.

As we grew older schedules got harder and harder to accommodate. But he still came every month and attended youth group functions and school events. He came every year for the homecoming game and took me to dinner to celebrate my birthday. The summer trips to Ennis Lake to cliff jump and jet ski and Fourth of July pancake breakfasts out on the farm.

During my college years it was harder to find time together. School and work kept me busy and he was busy beginning his career. But the summer after I finished I spent 2 months in Bozeman working in the greenhouse and the Garden Center. I spent nearly every evening at his house having the privilege of getting to know the love of his life. I left that fall to teach in Scotland with the anticipation of having Erin just 100 miles down the road. But the love won out over the fiddle playing and instead of planning Scottish romps with me she returned to plan a wedding and a future with the man she loved. I in turn chopped several countries off my scheduled last European hurrah to return to Montana and be a part of the festivities.

My life has not been sedentary in the years since. The travel bug caught me and has never let me go. I don’t stay in one place very long. I’ve made and said goodbye to many friends in many different places over the years. I’ve not kept in touch with many, but Todd was always a constant. Their home was always open to me and time with them was always a priority on my trips home. It was always a place of rest because it was a place of shared memory. I looked forward to his smile, his laugh, and his hugs. He had very distinctive hugs.

The loss of that shared memory has weighed heavily on my heart the last few weeks. In our last conversation Todd spoke of his heartbreak that his kids would never have the opportunity of seeing all his favorite places with him. He asked me to take them to the Chalky Bank and tell them the stories of our childhood adventures. I consider it an honor and a privilege to share my treasure chest of memories with his precious children.

One of the memories that has been running through my mind for weeks is of walking through the pasture behind Uncle Dick and Aunt Hermina’s on our way to the back pastures and our days of adventure. The pasture was always full of cows and, being the city girl that I was, I was always afraid of the cows. Todd would tell me to wait, pick up his walking stick and run down the road yelling, scaring the cows out of the way. He would wait on the other side with an exultant smile on his face waiting for me to catch up. Running parallel to that memory is the ending scene from C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle. There has been a train wreck and the children are once again in Narnia, standing with Aslan before the door to the new world and eternity. And as they pass through the door, the book reads, “But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever in which every chapter is better than the one before.” And I see a skinny little kid with a red backpack and a walking stick, exultant smile firmly in place, crossing through the door, ready for the next adventure, and waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

Overalls and Folding Chairs

Murfreesboro has not been the wellspring of southern hospitality that I somehow expected it to be. In an effort to feel more at home, I’m writing down the little things that happen day to day that have made this strange little city a bit more like home. Here’s the first:

If there’s one thing I’ve determined is a must while navigating the circuitous path that is graduate school, its large quantities of red wine. But hey, I kind of feel like that about most of life. There’s a little liquor store that is right on my way way home from school. It doesn’t have a great selection and the prices are nothing to brag about, but I love the men who run it. They are all older; 60 and above I would guess, and all fall, and again now that the warm weather is returning, they are almost always sitting in front of the store on folding chairs when I pull into the parking lot. They see me coming and stand up, hitch up their overalls, open the door for me and ask “How are you tonight, darlin’?” That phrase always makes me smile. I always leave feeling like I need the wine a little less than I did when I went in.

Candy Land

I remember as a kid how magical the first snowfall was. The drab browns of fall are suddenly turned into a wonderland of white possibilities. Thursday, the state of Tennessee went into a panic with the forecast calling for a possible 2-3 inches of snow. School was immediately canceled for the foreseeable future and all stores warned that they might close. All the bread, milk and eggs disappeared from the grocery stores. It seems that when bad weather comes, Tennesseans make lots of French toast. Friday came and though overcast, not particularly stormy. In the afternoon there were a few flurries of snow and finally about 3:00 it really did start to snow. The ground was even covered. It only amounted to maybe, possibly 2 inches. Then it started to rain. The rain made a hard crust on the top of the snow but it also started to coat the trees. When I woke up Saturday morning every individual branch on every tree was coated in ice. When the sun came out Sunday morning the whole world was sparkling and shining. We quickly got our shoes and went out to Stones River National Battlefield and walked. It felt remarkably similar to those mornings as a kid. Rather than being in the bleak, colorless winter of Tennessee I had been transported to a magical Candy Land with a sugarcoated forest. I kept expecting Princess Frostine to appear and send me back to the chocolate swamp. Oddly enough, a little snow here in this new land of mine made it feel much homier. It seems that it isn’t completely foreign after all.

Kentucky

This blog is incredibly delayed, but it’s still fun

Danielle and I try to get out of Murfreesboro as often as possible. This fall over our 4 day fall break Danielle was presenting at a conference in Cincinnati. It’s only a five hour drive so we decided to make a road trip out of it. We took the back roads and spent a day looking at the fall leaves. We stopped first at Cumberland State Park and spent a day hiking and seeing the waterfalls. After leaving there we just sort of stopped at all the historic sites advertised on the big brown forest service signs. One of the stops we made a cabin in the Renfro Valley of Kentucky that was built in 1791. It has been turned into a store with one of the biggest collections of “stuff” I’ve ever seen. When we walked in the man who ran the store was sitting in a rocking chair turning elk horns and turtle shells into musical instruments. We went upstairs and found a whole section of the store devoted to confederate flag paraphernalia; hats, shirts, beanies, you name it. He owns a fudge store in a nearby town and gave us directions to get there involving multiple stop lights and left turns but not right turns and don’t veer this way but go ‘round that little bend and apparently every wrong turn takes you to Walmart. If that isn’t enough to scare you off I don’t know what is. Unfortunately neither of us could focus on the 20 minute direction spiel because we were transfixed by the pipe curls that made up his mullet. At this point Danielle says she’s going outside to pet the cat, leaving me alone with him as I try to nudge my purchases closer and closer to the cash register so he’ll ring me up. Finally he starts to ring me up and the electricity goes out. Credit card machine has to reset. Now I get to hear about every time the power goes off in backwoods Kentucky. How there’s no reason, it just goes off. Sometimes electricity really just isn’t all that handy. Pipe curls bobbing the whole time. Somehow we’re back to directions to some place that I’m not sure where and talking about turns that go places I can’t remember. Pipe curls still swinging. Finally out the door rather dazed and definitely more confused than when I went in.

We managed to find the fudge store in Berea, Kentucky. His wife was working at that store. Here’s how the interaction went.

Her: Hi ya’ll

Danielle: Hi. How are you?

Her: Oh, ya know, middlin. Sunny day but a little too cold.

Me: We’re just happy to see the sun after all this time.

Her: Well, I guess you can’t have everything, can you?

Danielle: We just met your husband and he sent us this direction to get some fudge.

Me: We heard you have pumpkin pie fudge.

Her: We do. It’s my husband’s thing. I can’t eat it. I “foundered” on pumpkin pie once and its turned my stomach from it forever. I can’t even make it.

(At this point we are both having visions of bloated cows who foundered lying on their backs with their legs sticking straight up in the air and trying not to picture her like this.)

We go about ordering our fudge and as she cuts it and packages it she carries on a continuous dialogue all in a thick Kentucky accent. First she fills us in on all the news of her family. Apparently her sisters are fighting and her cousin is working on a family tree. It’s taking years and people are not being cooperative. Then,

Her: Did he have that dog inside while you were there?

Danielle: Yes, it was so sweet.

Me: Sweet. How do you know? The thing never even moved the whole time we were there.

Her: I knew it!!! He said he leaves that dog outside all day but I knew he left him inside to sleep. That dog stays up all night barking. Last night I probably got 50 maybe 60 winks and that’s all. I keep telling him to leave him outside so the distractions will keep him awake during the day. That dog’s a little confused. Sleeps all day and awake all night. Did he tell you the story of that dog?

Me: I don’t think so (remember, mesmerized by pipe curls)

Her: Well, that dog is 12 years old. He’d been feelin’ poorly so my husband took him down to Knoxville to the University of Tennessee vet school there and they took out a 12 pound tumor. No wonder he wasn’t feelin’ so good. Dog’s lookin a little skinny these days. Livin’ on borrowed time I think.

Well, you girls have a lovely trip and safe travels. Glad you like the pumpkin fudge. He’ll just be thrilled ‘cause I sure don’t eat the stuff and it’s his special thing. You be safe out there on those roads …

She continued talking as we backed our way out the door thanking her and saying goodbye. We walked to the car in a bit of daze trying to process all the information we had just taken in. It wasn’t until eating flourless chocolate cake in our hotel room that we really started to think about our experience with that odd couple. Truly pleasant, wonderful people who I am grateful I met. But boy did we laugh hard over our chocolate cake.

Lemon Drop Week

This year as I returned to Tennessee from my Christmas break I was reminded what I left and returned to last year. New posts coming soon, but in the meantime, hope you enjoy this one.

1/9/2009

I had a discussion with my students this morning about bad days. Or bad weeks as the case may be. It was interesting what their definition of a bad day was. For most of them it came down to a computer or mp3 player not working. However, a few of them had some bad days: divorces, medical emergencies, etc. After they shared I told them about my week. They got quite a kick out of it and I thought all of you might also. It’s a bit lengthy, but so was the week.

This story really starts the day before I left for Montana for Christmas. Some of you may remember that the night before I left last Christmas I ended up in Urgent Care because I sliced my finger open and needed stitches. Well, this year I went to wash my face and when I turned my faucet off, it fell off in my hand. I stood there with my faucet in my palm watching a geyser to rival Old Faithful shoot up and hit the ceiling, then proceed to spray everywhere soaking all of the laundry hanging on the shower rod, the towels on the shelf, rugs, laundry soap, me. Everything. I admit it, I panicked. I stood there thinking…no, not thinking, actually yelling, “What do I do!?!” Finally, as my floor became Lake Superior, I realized I could handle the situation. I pulled everything out from underneath my sink and turned off the tap. Unfortunately, water continued to gush. Then I really panicked. Finally, I realized there must be another tap and dug down under the floor of the cabinet and found it. It stopped. However, now I’m standing in like an inch of water, dripping wet. So I take the next hour to clean it up and try to get everything dried out. Actually, by the end of it I was laughing pretty hard.

I went to MT for Christmas for two weeks. While I was gone the weather in Anchorage dropped to –20. My poor little car was not happy. I plugged it in for a day, but still, it wouldn’t start. So I rally the troops. I have a wonderful boss who lives across the street from me. This is the same boss who took me to Urgent Care in the middle of the night last year. She sent her husband (David) and son (Jimmy) over to help me get it going. Eventually we did. At this point David tells me that the thing they put on my car was not a block heater. Who know what it is, but block heater it is not. Lovely. Jimmy decides take my car up to his house and park it in his heated garage for the night to help it thaw out and then he’ll bring it to me when he’s done teaching at noon.

Tuesday morning I catch a ride to work and walk into my classroom. Hmmm. For some reason it is taking me a really long time to warm up. Finally, I realize there is no heat. Turns out the radiator pipes have frozen. So, we pull everything in my classroom apart and have space heaters going. Kids sitting in winter coats and hats. Piles of books and art supplies stacked on every available surface. A teacher who is frazzled and only half put together. And the day just started.

Well, noon comes and goes and no Jimmy. At 1:30 I find out my car is now frozen in the Dimond Highschool parking lot. Again, I just started laughing. Hard this time. Tears running down my cheeks. So now it needs to be towed. Of course, this is a common story across Anchorage at the moment so it is a day and a half before a towing company can get it and then another two days before the garage can look at it. Again, lovely. Now I’m carless, faucetless and in a classroom with no heat. However, Jimmy says he has a spare car I can borrow so no problem.

This car is interesting. It is a manual, which I don’t do great with anyway. Add to that the fact that the seat is broken and stuck in the all the way back position and it makes for an interesting ride. Anyway, I head out to go to work Thursday morning and the lights go on and then fade off. Weird. But they stay on the next time so nothing to worry about, right? I pick up our new school administrator who lives across the street because his car won’t work and we’re off to work in a little red ghetto car. But who cares because it is a car and I am grateful. Until we stop at the first stoplight. The car shudders to a stop. Well crap, I killed it. Nope. Not stalled, dead. Stone-cold-no-turning-over-no- lights-no-nothing-dead. It was dead silent in the car. @#$#%&@$#!!!! And then again the hysterical laughter as cars are honking and drivers are flipping us off. A logical reaction because really, when I woke up this morning my plan was to inconvenience every driver in Anchorage and block traffic on Dimond. I MEAN COME ON!!!! So I once again call my boss and once again her husband comes and tows us to the parking lot and drives us to school. However, the nice people at the gas station where we waited so we didn’t get frostbite gave us free coffee. Gas station coffee, but free none the less. Again, much near hysterical laughing.

So this morning I had the conversation about bad weeks. The kids agreed that my week was pretty bad. They thanked me for not being a huge grump and taking it out on them. They got a kick out of it. We talked about how life has to go on even when nothing goes right. Surely my bad week is over. Two hours later, the power in the school goes out. Every one of my students look at me as the computers die and the tape recorder goes silent and one of them says, “Yep Miss Anderberg, this is a bad week for you. But maybe we’ll all get to go home!!!” And we did. At –9 degrees it doesn’t take long for a building to cool off. We ran around the gym like maniacs with only the emergency lights on. I was told the kids were too wound up and I needed to control them because it wasn’t normal. NOT NORMAL!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!! The kids running around like the wild children of Borneo was really the only normal thing about the day. I just laughed really hard, said I would take care of it and then continued to let them run around like mad. I mean really. We ate lunch in the dark. We played hangman. I read to them with the book angled toward the few rays of sunlight filtering through the drifts of snow and continual cloud cover. And then their parents came and I hitched a ride home.

So now I’m sitting in my rocking chair cuddled up in blankets drinking a glass of wine. Lucia just left after taking me to the grocery store so I don’t starve to death on top of everything else. (I mean, one can only eat beets and potatoes for so many meals.) And I’m thinking back on my week. Yes, I did call my dad almost in tears at one point, but really, I mostly just laughed. There were times when the hysterical laughter was really more hysterical than laughter, but at least I laughed. Because life is crazy and there are definitely times when it requires tears. But this week, every time something fell apart there was somebody there to help me sweep the pieces up and throw them away. So I think I’ll save the tears for a time when I really need them, heaven knows there’s enough of those. And I’m just going to feel grateful. Grateful that David and Marilyn haven’t stopped answering my phone calls yet. Grateful that Jimmy went out of his way to try and help. Grateful for the rides and the phone calls and the prompt space heaters before I had a class of middle school Popsicles. Grateful that as I write this there is a friendly handyman installing a new faucet in my bathroom so I don’t have to wash my face over my dirty dishes. There’s a good chance I won’t be in Alaska for another winter. Tennessee is sounding really good right now. And as I think of that, I’m grateful for this week. I mean, think of the story I have to tell. I moved to Alaska because I wanted adventure. Granted, I was thinking more the climb-mountains-catch-big-fish kind, but life throws all kinds of adventures our way. And this has been an adventure in relationships for me. I have more friends than I sometimes think I do. It’s also been an adventure inside me. A few years ago I would have sat down and cried and felt sorry for myself. It’s good to know I’ve grown up a bit and take life a little less seriously. Because when it comes down to it, it’s really not that bad. If this is the worst week I can think of, my life is pretty easy. I look at my students and I know some of them have had way worse weeks than this. Their poor lives are filled with pain that I will never understand. And I’m proud of them for getting up every morning and coming to school. And if they sometimes take it out on me I guess I can take it. However, whatever else happens, I’m finding some strong drinks Friday night. Because like Heather says, “When life gives you lemons, make lemon drops.” ………Oh, but I might need a ride????

Breathing Deep

10/8/09

I have always loved the transition seasons, both spring and fall, but particularly fall. I love the brightly colored leaves blowing in the air. Pumpkins and mums line the fronts of stores and Starbucks sells pumpkin spice lattes. The day that I walk into Starbucks and see pumpkin spice latte listed for the first time is one of my favorite days of every year. There is a nostalgia that overtakes me every year as autumn approaches. This year it has been particularly strong. The fall comes much later in Tennessee than it does in the north. The leaves here are just starting to think about changing colors and I’ve found myself looking out the window wistfully almost every day, longing for the changes to appear. A few days ago I felt a shift. No so much a change of temperature as a change of mood. And I felt a sense of relief.

Summer in Tennessee is hot. It’s stifling and heavy. The air presses in on you like a thick down comforter. It’s hard to breath. And lately I’ve needed my breath. Needed my space. I had no idea how deeply rooted I was to my home in Alaska. To my friends and my job and the moose in the backyard. I’ve pulled those roots up. I’ve said goodbye to friends. Most of them more of an until-next-time type of goodbye but unfortunately a few of them have been more permanent. I stopped in Denver to say goodbye to my friend Chad and then a week after arriving in Tennessee I flew back to Denver to say goodbye to my precious friend Noel’s wonderful husband, Sawan. I spent time with one of my very best friends who is in the fight of his life against colon cancer. I entered a program that is slightly rocky and began working for a woman who has let her career drag on a little too long. It feels like the summer air has not only been holding in the heat, but every care and worry as well. And it’s made me tired.

There’s a park across the road from our house. I walk the paths there and sometimes run the bleachers at the soccer fields. I was at the top of the bleachers when I felt it. It was such a subtle shift that I almost missed it. There was just a hint at first. Almost like a breath against my cheek. But I paused and then I felt it. A breeze. Not a hot sticky wind, but a cool, refreshing breeze. I stopped and just let it wash over me. I lifted my arms, closed my eyes and for the first time in several months I stopped and just breathed deep.

I’ve been in a perpetual state of motion since school got out in May. Camping, fishing, hiking, packing, saying goodbye, traveling, experiencing the trip down, seeing old friends, spending time with family, moving in, starting school, starting a new job, adjusting to the south. My massage therapist told me once, “You don’t breathe deep enough. You’re tense because your muscles need oxygen. Your soul needs oxygen.” I’m finding this to be true. I’ve been rushing home in the afternoons to get to the park and walk. I find my route is determined by where the breeze is coming from. I find the breeze, turn my face to it until I can feel it blowing in the hairs at my neck, and I walk. The fear and the worry haven’t left completely, but in that breeze is the promise that something is to come. That’s what transition is about, easing into what’s coming next. And I remember that I’m not alone, for in each breath is the whisper of the Breeze Blower, reminding me that He’s here and I can find my rest in Him.