"I'm Gonna Call This Place My Home"

I was born amid the snowdrifts of central Alaska where you are raised in a snow suit the majority of the year, and shortly after you’ve been carefully bundled up you need to go to the bathroom.

At least that’s my fond memory I’m sticking too.

By the time spring melts into summer you have never felt so free and I’m pretty sure my younger self was unaware my world was not the norm.

I could not have known then how the strength I was raised up in and around, the values being instilled in my depths, was busily rooting and preparing me for the story ahead.

I only wish my dad were still alive so I could say thank you, to all I know now.

I turned 17 in 1979 and just like that was already married with a baby in tow. By 1980 we were two teenagers hitting the Alaskan Highway, heading for California to live out “the dream” under promising blue skies and sundrenched skin.

I felt like Janice Joplin.

Back then in America, innocence in the face of the world was still possible and took us a long way; until it didn’t.

There are just some seasons in life when you are not so strong but then again later - because you felt the weakness - growth comes in all the ways you didn’t know were needed.

The years rolled forward like a flash flood as I turned 31 living in the middle of Silicon Valley. The financial grind, a new marriage and now 2 children in tow, the road leading to Washington State and yet another dream - this one of small-town life - tugged at our hearts.

We packed up bags and children to answer the call; I could almost smell the apple pie my neighbors were sure to bring.

If you had told me then, my story was leading towards chapters of heartache which would take years to unfold and my biggest challenge in moving this time would surround meeting people whom I could truly connect with and call “friends”; that my greatest lessons would come through people who left me feeling alone; that this loneliness is how I learned to “become” - I would never have believed you.

I would have come anyway.

We arrived to the beauty of Washington and the fertile Skagit Valley on a warm July day in 1993 full of new beginnings.

The uniqueness of an area with islands, farmland, forests and mountains encircling you at every turn can remind one of poets and painters that may have come before. Those who left their mysterious mark across the landscape of colorful flower fields; of crops that meet a morning sunrise and some nights even manage to pull the moon straight down upon volcanic soil, laying there so rich.

Coming from the concrete jungle of California’s Bay Area and used to the din of noise you cannot possibly notice when you live in the middle - despite the peaceful quiet of this land - it was quite the shock to my system.

But there was a greater jolt which shocked me more. No matter how much I reached out to others, I was not readily invited into their lives as I thought I would be in a small community.

And I needed them. And I needed them to need me.

In my mind it was simple as that.

Looking back, I see the Alaskan girl not realizing her own strength and the California girl coming in with her fresh exuberant ways, thoughts and dress that did not mesh with the organic culture of Western Washington.

The divide seemed impossible to cross over.

But I was determined to fit in. How hard could it be? After all, I was friendly and in my judgement that was enough.

I joined groups of women who wore hemp clothing and knitted caps or loners who drank fresh teas in the local book shop where the tabby cat rested on the shelf.

I talked peoples ears off in quaint little stores selling local jams and art; the library circle time with my toddler son and the post office line. I invited people into my world; my home, my walks, my playdates.

Yet somehow I still stood in the shadow of other people’s lives.

I’d simply come at a time when I was not needed, and for the longest while all I wanted to do was take flight.

Strange, isn’t it, how fleeing can be our first reaction to something that feels foreign or unpleasant to our security? Perhaps it is that human survival instinct to protect all things fragile from breaking, and so, “flight plans” were made often back to California.

Back to the sunshine state that “grew me.”

But I found it not so easy to fly away just because I was uncomfortable. When you are established with family; children in school, work and all those responsibilities one carries if they whispered “Yes”, a soul is affected at the crossroad of every choice made in such a different way.

Through the days and months and years ahead I would discover it was far easier to leave a place than go back.

When you are holding on to the “way things were” life is constantly changing everywhere.

Physically, as dirt roads become paved, and parks become condominiums.

Relationally, where people you love are having experiences you are not a part of anymore. And all the while in your corner, blindly, so are you.

Nothing stays the same in a world that moves forward without your permission. Not even hearts.

Here in this part of the country where rivers and forests and the ocean sound met me in the middle of an uncertain and shaky life, I came to the end of myself. I finally stopped running and found it is only there when new beginnings are allowed.

I suppose it was the journey of facing the parts of me I did not know. Like that one part which surfaced slyly, making me aware I was afraid to be alone, began.

It would be the long and winding road which stripped me down, built me back up and essentially made me okay.

It was winter the day I became so weary of knocking on hearts, gave up and let the darkness close in, just hoping light might find me.

I won’t lie to you, it was rough.

I felt like a sloth on his worst day. Letting go of ideas and dreams and pre-conceived notions of how I thought I should be welcomed in this majestic state of Washington.

The decision to be still and present with myself and my family - to use this raw and lengthy time in a rain-soaked corner of the world to truly know who I am and what makes me stand - exhausted my very being.

But sort of like the Grinch over many Christmases, coffee, conversations, wine, books, warm fires and endless walks forward in the wind, I was softened and transformed into a new understanding of what it means to “need” on a healthier level.

The willingness to be alone with just myself and my family - to observe others without judgement - opened a door of insight into how our human need for connection affects another; eventually creating space for me to see with new eyes the hills and valleys and people of this town I fought tooth and nail for years to detach myself from when I felt rejected.

In my aloneness this place showed me who I was at the core. It asked me questions in the midst of a crowded room that penetrated my selfishness.

The days and nights may have took a toll on me while my story peeled back layers of a heart and soul like the thickest onion in the crop, but taught me how to love - not just receive - outside my comfort zone.

Now, here in this place that I choose to call home, I know my neighbors.

It didn’t happen all at once, it “became." Like me.

Today, it is by far one of the greatest gifts “I never asked for.”

We come into this world with an innate desire to be needed, to be known, to belong. We can go about feeding that need in healthy or unhealthy ways depending on our past. I did come to this town when I was not needed, only to learn that being needed is earned through time, patience and trust.

When we slow down and begin to understand that our story takes time to blend in with another’s, it is then we witness the true and natural beauty of humanity’s need for each other.

I bear battle scarred memories of what it means to stand still and alone. Allowing old ways to be pruned, new insights to take hold; which in turn roots you to people and places you once tried to run from when they could not give you all you thought you needed at the time.

It is in the waiting (both loud and quiet) where a slow practice of new breaths become a gentle reminder that we don’t always know what lay ahead within the best of plans.

Our greatest gifts are not always packaged in wrapping papers of choice. Sometimes they are wrapped in those onion skins that must be peeled until we cry. Sometimes it is the moment of fancy bows tied around papers of silk, that once released, open to a glimmer of hope.

And sometimes when you lay it all down, it’s that call coming through from a stranger you met at the grocery store and suddenly you have a friend.

And so life goes.

Quarantine may be a new word in our vocabulary today, but I learned what the word “quarantine” meant almost 30 years ago when I moved to this small town in the Pacific Northwest where I didn’t know a soul and was forced to dig deep in my solitude to find what it means - past the surface - to be a better partner, mother and friend.

To be a better person.

I’m reminded of an older and much wiser lady who once told me in my younger years, “never ever think you have arrived.” I didn’t quite understand what she meant then. I do now.

I tell you it has not been a pretty journey here for one such as I, used to being surrounded by unconditional love, support and security. But I would not trade the gifted lessons nor the ones yet to come. I’ll only pay them forward, eyes and heart wide open, because my story is far from finished.

I’ll be turning 60 next August and still drive my car over the hills and valleys of this town.

I still marvel that the mountains sit right behind my home. I still smile at the cows grazing the fields of green at the dairy farm I pass on my way to the Big Lake Store with the faded sign and a gas pump that no longer works; where you can buy anything from a can of beans to a bottle of beer, where you can still order a burger between the hostess cupcakes and old VHS rentals, right in the middle of a pandemic.

Each time I place my hand upon the worn screen door ( especially during these difficult times) I pause to remember this old store was here long before I came, how all our paths are tread by ones before us and how will I leave my mark?

It is sweet recall that years of resilience and the action of love, forever go hand in hand.

Just last summer sitting on our front porch, gazing out at the community lake sparkling in the distance, I was lost in thought when my husband looked at me with eyes that know.

He said to me, “Aren’t we lucky? We get to live here.”

Yes. Yes, we are.

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed my last book "If I Saw You on Sunday" which was a fundraiser for a school in Mexico, I am currently working towards another book of my collective writings and have joined Vocal to help with the cost.

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Salud!