Social Topics
August 5th, 2010
By Bob and Claire Rogers
Bob:
“You don’t fu….. care about me!” It came from a young woman sitting in a car beside Turtle. “You don’t treat me like you did before. You don’t treat me the same fu….. way you did before we got married.” A young man, stood tall beside her window, hands at his sides, outer calm mirrored in his desert camouflage uniform, defending himself in an even tone. “It’s not me. It’s you,” he said.
His tone and demeanor seemed to make her even angrier. The recriminations continued, she shrill and emotional, he controlled, uncommunicative.
Claire and I looked at each other. We both had tears in our eyes. It was our twentieth anniversary, and we were witnessing the beginning of the end of a young marriage. It didn’t take words between us to know what we would do. We held hands and walked around the motorhome to them.
Claire: I was really nervous about this type of encounter; domestic disputes are one of the most dangerous calls for police, but we could tell from the vague, repetitive accusations that they had reached an impasse.
Bob: “It’s our twentieth anniversary,” I said. “And we just had to say something. We couldn’t help but overhear.” I nodded toward Turtle. “I hope you don’t mind.” He acknowledged us, “No.” She quickly put the car in reverse and said “It’s okay, I was just leaving.” But she didn’t.
I looked at him. “You don’t understand her emotions. You will when you are older, but for now, just listen. She’s hurting, and you need to hear her” And to her through the window I said, “You don’t understand why he’s so calm, so unresponsive to your hurt.” She nodded, still looking down. “He’s just doing what men are taught. We’re not supposed to show emotion. Fathers and football coaches,” I acknowledged his uniform, “the military, none of them reward a show of emotion.” I clapped him on the shoulder, there were still tears in my eyes, “When you are 66 you will know that it’s okay to cry, but not yet. I understand.” “But you have to understand her need to see you show her your love.”
She stole a furtive look at him, her mascara left marks of her tears. “You’re being a man, and she’s being a woman.” He smiled just a tiny bit.
Claire: “It’s what men do, it’s called freezing up, it happens when they are feeling bombarded, so they just clam up. Trust me, this happens to men and women all over the world, but it just causes the women to yell more because they think they’re not being heard.”
Bob: “You gotta work together. That’s the hard part of marriage, but it’s the rewarding part too.” I turned to him. “We travel, just the two of us, on our tandem bicycle all over the world.” His eyebrows went up. “Last year we rode over the Tibetan Plateau, through Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, three thousand miles.” He was really listening now; man stuff I guess. “A few years before, we went from Beijing to Istanbul.” I touched his arm. “Across Central Asia; I hope you don’t have to go there.” I didn’t expect him to be as attentive as he had become; he was really hearing what an old man (to him) had to say. “A couple doesn’t do something like that without knowing how to work together.” I smiled at what I’d just said. “There’s nothing like it.” “But, it takes some time, and a lot of listening.”
Claire: The writer in me spoke to her: “If you aren’t able to communicate what you need, try writing it down, write what’s wrong and write what you think would fix it, but don’t give up.” She cracked the window a bit more and went back to twisting the beautiful wedding and engagement rings.
Bob: She rolled her window down further and looked up at him, he down at her. “Touch each other,” I gently insisted. They slowly reached out to touch hands and lock eyes. “We’ll go away now.”
We hurried to Turtle, threw things where they wouldn’t fall and started the engine. As we drove away, he was leaning through the window and they were kissing.
We could have gifted ourselves a cruise to Alaska, celebrated at the Captain’s table with expensive Champagne, and seen Alaskans at a safe remove. Instead, we had leftovers and box wine in Turtle in a library parking lot, and maybe, just maybe, made a difference in two young lives. No contest.
July 24th, 2010
After a good hard bike ride up East End Road out of Homer, we decided to celebrate the rare sunshine with ice cream for a late lunch. We bought a carton at Fred Meyer’s and took it outside to their picnic tables.
A woman sat at a nearby table smoking. She had that rode-hard-put-away-wet look off women of a certain age who have experienced an interesting life. Shari introduced herself to us, and in the same sentence told us a long story about how she was in the original cast of Up With People in 1968. I vaguely remembered such a quasi-religious hippy vocal group and their brief fame. Her participation seems to have defined her life for the last 42 years. She measures the value of a year by whether or not there will be an Up With People reunion. There is one in Tucson later this summer and she is very excited. Note the new tie died t-shirt, made special for the occasion. She’s wearing it early to get in the mood, or more likely to stimulate conversation.
Seeing us on bicycles made here vociferously apologize for her smoking. She went to great lengths to tell us of past failures, and her next attempt – just as soon as she gets back from the reunion – Up With People, don’t forget – and she gets a few other things in order. She gave no timeline.
Lighting another cigarette, she rambled on for a long while, telling us very personal things about her life, just happy to be hearing the sound of her own voice, and having us listen. This happens to us often. I guess we look like we need to be entertained. She was entertaining. Maybe that’s why she was an Up With People cast member so long ago.
Just then John arrived, smoking and semi-controlling a large but young and hyper black lab mix, jerking repeatedly on the short leash. Shari told us John lives in a tent, by choice she added — no doubt. She began to tell us his life story in great detail while he tried to shut her up so he could tell us the story of him being sick the previous night. He paused, stalking and cursing, to his dog tussling with a less enthusiastic dog and owner nearby.
John awoke sick to his gut at 2am, ran for the toilets, nearest bush, whatever and, “I swear to god I shit my pants.” He threw up repeatedly and then began to cough violently. This went on for hours. Could have been alcohol involved, or worse, who knows? He told this story with great relish, taking particular pleasure in the most savage details.
Shari broke in and suggested, “Maybe these folks don’t want to hear all this while they’re eating.” Did I mention the ice cream was delicious? “We don’t mind. We’ve heard and seen worse.” We didn’t mention that our experiences were always in overcrowded poor countries where privacy is not a priority or even an option.
He finished with a good-natured curse, slapped the picnic table, jerked on the dog’s leash and walked away, apparently satisfied that his adventure had been adequately shared with the wider world. It doesn’t take much to make some people happy.
There was a third visitor. He was also of middle years, forty something, and had obviously had a stroke of some sort, signaled by his cane, halting walk and slurred speech. Shari said he was probably, “on something,” since his speech was worse than usual. He wasn’t in a sharing mood, just wanted to borrow Shari’s phone to call for a pick-up.
Young stroke victims are not all that uncommon, among populations of substance abusers. The substances abused include cheap fat sugary food. Of course we were eating ice cream at the time, lots of ice cream.
Shari hated to see us go, but we had a few hours of sunshine left, and wanted to spend it on Homer Spit with the kittiwakes, sea otters, the lone bald eagle and a few tourist campers. Sunset is before 11pm now, so we have to make use of a rapidly diminishing resource, and it looks like rain again for the next few days.
July 22nd, 2010
Turnout boondock on the Kenai near Seward, and we were settled in for the night, nice forest on one side, traffic a good distance away on the other. Alone.
A truck with a camper pulling a boat, typical Alaskan rig, swung in ahead of us and stopped abruptly. The passenger door flung open, a woman jumped out and stumbled into the woods. After a few minutes a man got out the driver’s side and stood looking at the woods, hands in pockets, looked at his feet, called out loudly to the woods. He was still for tedious time, suddenly decided, and hurried into the woods.
Some loud voices, quiet, more commotion further away, then quiet again. We moved from mild interest to slight concern and finally worry. A half-hour passed. Should I do something? What? Was this just a couple’s spat or something more serious?
He’d turned off the truck, but the headlights were still on, the driver’s door open. I hoped he’d seen us, but what if he was blinded with anger, unaware that the drama was not being played to an empty house.
I decided to make sure he knew someone was listening, aware. I walked to the truck, and yelled in the direction I’d last heard them, “Hey! You guys okay? Silence.
Then I had an idea and yelled: “Your headlights are on.” After a few seconds the man walked from the woods. “Yeah, we’re okay. Thanks.” He looked a sad tired man. “I figured you were having a bad day, and didn’t need one more thing to go tits up.” He smiled at me. “Yeah, thanks man.” His smile was soft, sincere. He went back to the woods and she came out with him soon after. He got a blanket from the back and put it gently around her shoulders, and they drove away.
Sometimes you just have to do something. Small things matter.
(I had a photo to illustrate this but the Anchorage Library won’t let me upload any more than text)
July 6th, 2010
 The Fountain of Need
by Claire Rogers
Sometimes instinct tells you to do something; this time, I acted on my inner voice a little too late.
On a rainy July 3rd in Anchorage, we drove to the library to try to get some work done. We found it was closed for the Independence Day weekend, but we parked anyway to make use of the Wi-Fi network. As we sat in our motorhome, connecting to the outside world, we watched as waves of hopeful people approached the entrance, only to leave in disappointment. At lunch time, we took a break and watched the beautiful Mrs. Jack M. [Kay] Linton Memorial Ice Fountain with its seven plumes dancing like quill pens hovering over an ink well.
I marveled out loud to Bob how lucky we were to have the luxury of eating when we wanted, more out of out of loyalty to a clock than in response to hunger.
We moped through the gray afternoon, napping to the shush of the fountain and studying maps to prepare for some sunny day. Throughout the day, a lone figure moved around the park, sometimes contemplating the fountain from a lonely perch on a park bench. As others came and went, this boy stayed. I imagined that he’d planned to study in the library and was stuck waiting for a ride home once a parent got off work. He looked to be a teenager, but he wasn’t talking on a cell phone or listening to music, he was just sitting.
We stayed in the parking lot through a nice dinner of fresh halibut and mustard greens that we’d picked up at the farmer’s market this morning.
All the other park visitors were now gone and only the boy remained, now hunched at an empty picnic table. Still, he stared straight into the fountain. It was well past what would have been the closing hour for the library and no one had come to pick him up.
Too late, I wondered aloud if he’d had anything to eat. Too long, I hesitated: What could I give him? Too much, I worried: What if he was deranged?
As I haltingly put together snacks I would like, I stumbled over options as Bob kept watch of the boy. When the boy moved out of sight behind the motorhome, I hurried out the door with a small bag of cherries, blueberries, raisins and granola bars, still fretting that I hadn’t come up with a suitable source of protein.
Panicked that I’d missed him, I rushed around the motorhome. When I did see him, I realized with a pang that I’d hesitated one minute too long. The boy had just successfully fished a Styrofoam tray of unfinished food from the garbage can. I called out to him and my prepared script left me. He waited patiently as I stumbled around trying to ask if he’d eaten. To avoid looking at the greasy tray of salvaged refried beans and rice, I looked up into his face and saw crusty eyes and a boyish softness. He seemed relieved when I spoke to him; his body relaxed and he even smiled as I handed him the meager bag. Bob followed with a cold can of soda.
He thanked us, we wished him well and he turned and walked away.
Epilogue: The plaque at the memorial fountain reads: “In dedication to a volunteer extraordinaire, whose spirit inspired so many in our community to live by her motto: ‘Find a need and fill it.’”
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