My father taught me some important lessons as a little girl that have stuck with me throughout my life and surely molded my character.
When I was six years old my family and I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska on Yellow Snow Road (a name that hints all the dog sled teams for neighbors) in a one-bedroom log cabin with no indoor plumbing and an outhouse for a bathroom. I grew up taking sponge baths from water warmed up on the wood stove and dreaded when I’d need to use the outhouse in the frozen winter as the seat would be as cold as the air outside. I already knew my way around building a campfire as we would enjoy these year-round. I knew how to collect moss and twigs and small sticks, and I knew how to chop up small pieces of wood with a hatchet. I enjoyed helping my dad start and tend to the fires.
One day I was walking home from where the school bus dropped me off about a half mile from the cabin and my dad was waiting for me on the porch to announce today was "Survival Training Day." He set the scene; I was lost in the wilderness in wintertime (which it was of course at about 25 degrees that day.) He told me I needed to get a fire started or I would not last the night. I only had one match.
I'll never forget how he pulled out a book of matches, tore every match but one off the book and tossed them over his shoulder and handed me the book with the single match — I know now this was for dramatic effect. “You only have one shot,” he said. “Now go gather your wood. You know what to do.”
I set off into the snow-covered trees surrounding the cabin to gather my moss and twigs and smaller sticks and then some bigger ones and returned to set up my fire.
I got my fire ready to light with my one match. I started to light the moss when a gust of wind blew out my only match. I looked up at my father knowing I failed. With a quivering lip, I said, "I'm not going to survive". He looks at me for a second, then pulled out another book of matches and ripped away every match but one and handed it to me again, "In real life you don't get second chances." With that second match I got a roaring fire going and because of that I can say with confidence that I've known how to start a fire in the snow in the dead of winter with a match since I was six years old. Not many people can say that.
As a teenager, I looked back at that lesson and thought my dad was an asshole for basically traumatizing me. I was too young for boot camp. This lesson wasn’t the only one he gave me, and at 6 years old I really thought I had to succeed at these “Survival Lessons.”
We moved to Barrow, Alaska when I was eight years old. Barrow is the very northern most region of North America, and it was really a large Eskimo village with a population 2,500 at the time. There were no trees, the ground was frozen solid only a few feet down year-round with permafrost, and the ocean would literally freeze solid in the winter. We shopped for all our clothing in catalogs and about once a year somebody would get eaten by a polar bear.
June through August are the months that give Alaska the nickname the "Land of the Midnight Sun" because the sun never leaves the sky. It only dips low in the evening before coming right back up. November through February are the months of total darkness. Other months are transitional between the total light and total dark.
I always wondered why in the hell my parents would pack me and my little sister up and force us to live in a frozen, depressing Eskimo village of all places. Many years later I found out the main motivation was my dad and his Native friend Jewel were smuggling cocaine and booze up at a huge profit. My dad drove a cab and was the high school janitor and my mom had a really good job working as the records manager for the North Slope Borough school district. She would sometimes fly to the other villages for a few days at a time to do her job.
I was the tallest white girl in the entire school, and I was picked on a lot because of it. I became depressed and lonely, on top of that my parents were about to divorce. And while I was unaware of the divorce, I was fully affected by the household tension. One day when my mother was away at one of the other villages, I was sent to the counselor’s office because I got in a spat with a bully. I told her that I felt like dying, so she phoned home. My dad got the call. Normally it would have been Mom and she would have handled the situation completely different.
When I got home my father was waiting for me in the Cunnichuck (arctic entry) with his Ruger pistol. He said, "I got a call from your school today and they say you want to kill yourself.” He starts to slowly loads the gun. One bullet at a time. I know now this was for dramatic effect. It was very effective. He wanted me to know the gun was loaded. I was trained from a very young age about gun safety; a loaded gun is never to be pointed at something you don’t want dead.
He handed me this loaded gun, and guided both my hands onto it, positioning it under my chin. It pointed at the back of my skull and he told me, "If you really want to die, pull the trigger." I froze for a few moments before I handed him the gun and ran to my room and locked my door and didn't speak to him on purpose for years.
I hated him for that lesson. What if I had pulled the trigger?! What if he was wrong about calling. my bluff! My mother would have come home to her twelve-year old's head blown off, what then? Thankfully there was no tragedy that day, but there was now a deep wound in the relationship between me and my father. My parents divorced and I stopped speaking to my father at age 16.
Almost two decades later, I ran into him at a truck stop in Portland, Oregon. I had been living like a vagabond for a couple years in a hippy van and happened to be coming out of the showers of the Jubitz truck stop when a man said my name as I passed him in the narrow hallway.
"Robin?" I look up and recognized him, “Dad"?
It was an awkward but pleasant surprise. Turned out he became a long-haul trucker and had stopped to shower and fuel his semi-truck. I happened to be a homeless hippy who liked to take advantage of the free wi-fi and nice clean hot showers for $10. We found ourselves at the same place at the same time.
My mother hated my dad and had no problem adding to my opinion that he was a jerk most of my life. But when I left Alaska to go soul searching and travel in my van my mother decided she hated me too and quit speaking to me. I asked her why and she told me because I look like my dad and I act like my dad and she fucking hates my dad. Makes a lot of sense now why she always favored my blonde haired blue-eyed little sister who looks nothing like him.
So here I am after years living on my own without family, I have a Dad again. We began talking regularly and he'd visit me occasionally. On a camping trip together, I brought up my childhood memories and I asked him about the Ruger incident. He said he knew I wouldn't pull the trigger, though he would also never take any chance. Turns out the gun wouldn’t fire, he had removed the pin. It was all for show.
His lesson was effective; I've never considered killing myself since. He taught me a very important lesson that has shaped who I am. Even though that lesson caused me pain, I am better for it. I know to choose life, and I know how to survive. My father knows I could be lost in the world and find my way through it no matter the obstacles, just like he knows I'll make it through prison and come out having learned valuable lessons that have only made me a better person for having the experience. | RT