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SUCH A THIN VEIL separated the past from the present; they existed simultaneously in the human heart. Anything could transport you—the smell of the sea at low tide, the screech of a gull, the turquoise of a glacier-fed river. A voice in the wind could be both true and imagined. Especially here.
On this hot summer day, the Kenai Peninsula was vibrant with color. There wasn’t a cloud in sight. The mountains were a magical mixture of lavender and green and ice-blue—valleys and cliffs and peaks; there was still snow above the tree line. The bay was sapphire, almost waveless. Dozens of fishing boats puttered alongside kayaks and canoes. Today was a day to be on the water for Alaskans. Leni knew that Bishop’s Beach, the straight, sandy stretch below the Russian church in Homer, would be one long line of trucks and empty boat trailers, just as she knew that some clueless tourist would be out on the sand, digging for clams and not paying attention, and get caught by the tide.
Some things never changed.
Now Leni stood in her overgrown yard, with Matthew beside her. Together, they walked over to the grassy rise above the beach, met up with Mr. and Mrs. Walker, Alyeska, and MJ, who were already there, waiting. Alyeska gave Leni a warm, welcoming smile, one that said, We’re in this together now. Family. They hadn’t had much time to talk in the past two days, with the whirlwind of Leni’s return to Alaska, but they both knew there would be time for them, time to stitch their lives together. It would be easy; they loved so many people in common.
Leni took her son’s hand.
A crowd waited for her on the beach. Leni felt their eyes on her, noticed how they stopped talking at her approach.
“Look, Mommy, a seal! That fish jumped right outta the water! Whoa. Can we go fishing with Daddy today, can we? Aunt Aly says the pinks are still running.”
Leni stared out at the friends gathered at the water’s edge. Almost everyone from Kaneq was here today, even several of the hermits who were only seen at the saloon and sometimes at the General Store. At her arrival, no one spoke. One by one, they climbed into their boats. She heard the smack of water on hulls, the crunching of shells and pebbles as they pushed off.
Matthew guided her over to a Walker Cove Adventure Lodge skiff. He put a bright yellow life vest on MJ and then settled him on the bench seat in the bow, facing the stern. Leni climbed aboard. They motored out to where the other boats were.
The bay was quiet on this sunny, brilliant early evening. The deep V of the fjord looked majestic in this light.
The boats drifted out into the cove and floated together, banged bows. Leni looked around her. Tom and his new wife, Atka Walker; Alyeska and her husband, Darrow, and their twin three-year-old boys; Large Marge, Natalie Watkins, Tica Rhodes and her husband, Thelma, Moppet, Ted, and all the Harlans. The faces of her childhood. And of her future.
Leni felt them all looking at her. She thought suddenly, sharply, how much this would have meant to Mama, these people coming out to say goodbye. Had Mama known how much they cared?
“Thank you,” Leni said. The two inadequate words were lost amid the sound of waves slapping on boat hulls. What should she say? “I don’t know how…”
“Just talk about her,” Mr. Walker said in a gentle voice.
Leni nodded, wiped her eyes. Tried again, her voice as loud as she could manage to make it. “I don’t know if any woman ever came to Alaska less prepared for it. She couldn’t cook or bake or make jam. Before Alaska, her idea of a necessary survival skill was putting on false eyelashes and walking in heels. She brought purple hot pants up here, for God’s sake.”
Leni took a breath. “But she came to love it here. We both did. The last thing she said to me before she died was, Go home. I knew what she meant. If she saw you guys here for her, she would give one of her bright smiles and ask you why you all were here instead of drinking and dancing. Tom, she’d hand you a guitar, and Thelma, she’d ask you what the hell you’ve been up to, and Large Marge, she’d hug you till you couldn’t breathe.” Leni’s voice broke. She looked around, remembering. “It would fill her heart to see you all here, to know you’d given up time, with all you have to do, to remember her. To say goodbye. She said to me once that she felt like she’d been nothing, a reflection of other people. She never quite understood her own worth. I hope she’s looking down now and knows … finally … how loved she was.”
A murmur of agreement, a few words, and then: quiet. Grief this deep was a silent, lonely thing. From now on, the only time Leni would hear her mother’s voice would be in her own mind, thoughts channeled through another woman’s consciousness, a continual quest for connection, for meaning. Like all motherless girls, Leni would become an emotional explorer, trying to uncover the lost part of her, the mother who had carried and nurtured and loved her. Leni would become both mother and child; through her, Mama would still grow and age. She would never be gone, not as long as Leni remembered her.
Large Marge threw a bouquet of flowers into the water.
“We’ll miss you, Cora,” Large Marge said.
Mr. Walker threw a bouquet of fireweed into the water. It floated past Leni, a bright pink splash on the waves.
Matthew met Leni’s gaze. He was holding a bouquet of fireweed and lupine that he’d picked this morning with MJ.
Leni reached into a box and pulled out the mason jar full of ashes. For a lovely moment the world blurred and Mama came to her, smiled her bright smile and gave her a hip bump and said, Dance, baby girl.
When Leni looked again, the boats were splashes of color against the blue-green world.
She opened the jar, poured the contents slowly into the water. “I love you, Mama,” Leni said, feeling loss settle deep, as much a part of her now as love. They’d been more than best friends; they’d been allies. Mama had called Leni the great love of her life and Leni thought maybe that was always true for parents and their children. She remembered something Mama had said to her once. Love doesn’t fade or die, baby girl. She’d been talking about Matthew and sadness, but it was equally true for mothers and their children.
This love she felt for her mother and her son and Matthew and the people around her was a durable thing, as vast as this landscape, as immutable as the sea. Stronger than time itself.
She leaned over and dropped some bright pink fireweed on a gently rolling wave and watched it float toward the shore. She knew that from now on, she would feel her mother’s touch in the breeze, hear her voice on the sound of the rising tide. Sometimes, berry-picking or making bread, or even the smell of coffee would make her cry. For the rest of her life, she would look up into the vast Alaskan sky and say, “Hey, Mama,” and remember.
“I will always love you,” she whispered to the wind. “Always.”
MY ALASKA
July 4, 2009
by Lenora Allbright Walker
If you had told me when I was a kid that someday a newspaper would come to me to talk about Alaska on the fiftieth anniversary of its statehood, I would have laughed. Who would have thought my photographs would mean so much to so many? Or that I would take a picture of the Valdez oil spill that would change my life and make it onto the cover of a magazine?
Really, my husband is the one you should speak to. He’s overcome every challenge this state has to offer and is still standing. He’s like one of those trees that grow on a sheer granite cliff. In the wind and snow and icy cold, they should fall, but they don’t. Stubbornly, they remain. Thrive.