...and the constant sound of rain on a trailer roof.
If I liked cold showers, I could strip off my layers and stand beneath the metal sky, the concrete sky, the mud sky that lays upon the earth, heavy with sorrow, that’s been weeping for days, sending us rain, hail, snow, slush, with a slight tease of sunshine between downpours, so we don't slit our wrists and throw in our soaked towels of hope.
And of course, after a month or more of dry weather, this imperial wall of low pressure rolled over Seward within days of our move from the cabin we rented for the winter to the thirty-foot trailer we again call home, parked next to our shell of a house, construction delayed for months due to circumstances beyond our control, a story for another day, today I need a shower.
With no water hook-up on our property, and not bold enough to stand naked with my shampoo beneath the thirty-degree rain, I seek out the bathrooms of friends and family, arrive with my laundry basket overflowing, the hot water scavenger, grateful to have a generous community filled with modern day options, with doors open wide.
For dishes, we boil water on the small propane stove hooked up in our house, alongside bats of insulation, two-by-fours, boxes of screws. We use three plastic tubs and sometimes I place the food-crusted plates on the floor first for the dogs’ rough tongues to scrub before I soak them in the boiling soapy water. This makes the first water tub last longer, the water that we haul from a mountain spring down on Lowell Point Rd.
Lowell Pt Rd—gravel, potholes, multiple rock slide zones with boulders like tires that roll down as we drive into town for school. The road grows busier as the days get longer, as all the summer employees congregate, preparing for the onslaught of tourists who will arrive on cruise ships, by passenger train, by car, along the Seward highway, pulling trailers that are not their homes indefinitely.
This is not easy—if you have a romantic idea about camping full-time in Alaska in April come talk to me—peeing outside when its thirty degrees, or running beneath the heavy drops to the outhouse in the middle of the night, waking up to a frigid trailer when the temperature falls below freezing and the the rain turns to big sloppy snowflakes, turning dirt to mud to puddles that we hop over to start the generator in the morning in order to have heat.
Packing lunches for school with a fridge the third of the size, dry food in the house, perishables in the trailer, the constant running between places just to make a meal.
And yet our family sits down together most evenings, next to the scaffolding, at the table that came from Nick’s childhood home, where his family gathered for meals. Pieces of insulation, scraps of wood, and nails litter the floor around our seats, signs of late evening head-lamp lit work from Nick and I the evening before, when we change from our dirty-isa clothes to our dirtier ones to work for a few hours after the kids go to sleep, as a sun we can’t see slowly falls.
Our family sits together in our construction site and talks about the day. Elias excited to start volunteering at the Sealife Center, to help with recycling, to gather and sort plastic and aluminum, with the help of one of his respite workers, his first official volunteer role, with a t-shirt and all.
Olive excited about an upcoming A.L.I.C.E. drill ,where they practice what to do if an armed intruder comes to school. “Its kinda fun because we get to pick things up and throw them at him,” she says.
The world of school shootings is still just a game in her naive mind, a chance to be physical, a break from the routine of reading and arithmetic, still lucky in her innocence, in her inability to connect the dots between a gun at the door and bloodshed, death, despair.
My girl who believes in the Easter Bunny and reincarnation and that kindness always defeats evil in the end. Can I pause time and frame her in her innocence here?
Right when I think the rain will break me,—the cold damp mornings, the boiling water for dishes, the un-organization of our belongings, the boxes in storage, the no-cozy place to sit, the mud puddles, the way I always feel dirty—-the resiliency of my children saves me.
“I love that we get to live here!” Elias said the other day as we walked up our driveway during a pause in the rain. He clapped his hands in that way that he does when he’s excited, his one forearm crutch dangling from his wrist.
And we are lucky.
And beyond blessed—especially when I think of all the refugees across the world, the families with no place to call home. The thousand upon thousands living in tents, no belongings carefully packed away in boxes in storage, only memories of their neighborhoods destroyed by wars, fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, of all the people who didn't make it out alive.
Here I am building a nice two-story house, temporarily uncomfortable, missing creature comforts that our still a mere text away.
Hey can I come shower at your place?
Sure I’m not there but make yourself at home.
As we packed up the cabin, our fifth move in two years, Nick found a wishbone drying on the windowsill and gave it to the kids to pull apart.
“What did you wish for?” I asked Elias as we sat in the loft packing bags of clothes, boxes of books, Olive’s various art projects.
“That we don't have to rent another cabin next winter.”
“Oh I wish for that too Bud.”
“Olive, what about you?”
“That all my wishes come true,” she said with her mischievous grin.
“And what’s one of your wishes if they did come true?”
“For our house to be finished so we don't have to rent another cabin next winter.”
Oh loves. We sure hope so too.
In the meantime, I’m off to scavenge hot water for a shower, to drive into town on this rainy-snowy-slight trace of sunshine-hailstorm of a day, with hopes of making it safely past all the rock slides, as I navigate potholes and scan Resurrection Bay for Orcas—not an easy way to drive, looking out towards the sea, and up towards the mountains, all while scanning for stretches of gravel that don't resemble swiss cheese, eyes everywhere all at once, as my wheels keep moving forward, with a touch of grace.