I talked yesterday to a deckhand engineer in his laidback carhartts and button-down cotton shirt.
He paused and stood outside Salmon Landing.
He said “Where are you coming from?”
“I had to deposit some laundry to the boat barn.” He smiled.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To my lair.” (the engineer tool-shop/magical, dingy fix-it kingdom)
Slight pause, here comes the natural question.
“So, how are you doing?”
(I just returned from my grandmother’s death and funeral, and we haven’t really caught up yet).
Flummoxed exhalation. “I’m okay. I mean, we were very close.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Coming here was a calculated decision” (I’m sure I expressed with bewilderment and sadness in my voice) “because I took care of her for 4 months before I came here. I was her oldest granddaughter and her namesake.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, I’m glad that it didn’t happen when I was in Guatemala, and not able to come home at all for the first 5 months.”
“Yeah.”
Pause.
“But at the same time, it won’t ever feel like it was her time. You know those older folks who seem ‘ready’ to die. Well, she wasn’t ‘ready’ to die. She was just ready to be out of pain.”
You know when you are talking about something unpleasant and engrossing, you look off into the distance at a bunch of nothing as you speak? That’s what I was doing.
I’m not sure if expressing myself is more for me, or for him, or because it would be wonky in the context of our work relationship to skip the event entirely. Why catch up about something like your grandmother’s bodily departure and immortality in front of Fat Stan’s and the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show? It just seems the appropriate thing to do, of the options.
The conversation turned to his extended family.
“We’re not close.” He said. “They don’t get the whole boat thing.”
His parents don’t get the fact that he lives on a boat with 7 children. “We stopped doing Christmas and they didn’t understand that. And they don’t send presents except for like something insignificant.”
I asked him about the restaurant that he wants to start, and the status of it. He walked me to the corner and pointed out one of two leasing options where they would set up shop. “Baked goods, pastries, coffee.” “Maybe salad.”
“So I think what we’ll do is take next winter to travel through POW (which is Prince of Wales) and the other parts of Alaska we don’t usually get to see. I think the kids are most excited about the possibility of the restaurant. I think it will teach them life lessons and will encourage a hard work ethic.”
And we talked through other logistics..
We talked about money and how they would prepare themselves for the change. I said I couldn’t relate because that many children would be an extreme difference on the budget.
He said “Children do not have to be expensive. That is something that is not necessary.”
I think he’s right.
And I thought to myself “This is just the raddest family ever.”
