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Well, nearing the end does not mean there aren’t some important lingering pages lying hidden here and there – just found this and respectfully post it — and, yes, she says it, her brother and her mother hurt her:
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I see the masses are not hopping up and down trying to get to these last Alaskan posts – but I am hunting now, and I mean SCRAPING around looking for any more papers that are not transcribed yet. Talk about cleaning the skeletons out of the family closet! I have scribbed and scrubbed that old closet right out – and I’m on the disinfect and then polish-er-up end of this job.
Still have some of my grandmother’s letters here, but I have very little motivation to deal with her crappy handwriting. My youngest sister said I can send them to her – I don’t give a damn what’s in the rest of them for the most part.
This graphic is one of my favorites – it’s my father’s sketch March 1960 on how to attach the Jamesway to the trailer they hauled up the mountain.
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April 15, 1960 Friday 10:30 P.M.
Dearest Mother,
Oh, how my moods change here – awhile ago, well, hours ago not I was so happy! I was out gathering wood and heard a tractor coming – my, such excitement – the children all came out, (it’s been showery all day) and we ran to greet it. It was our operator [‘cat skinner’ tractor operator]. He had come to inform me that he would help Bill bring my first load of household things up when bill got home from work.
He came in our very humble dwelling and I gave him a welcome hot cup of coffee. It was 6:00 P.M. then and he figured he’d just make it back down the mountain in time to meet Bill.
I’ve had quite a time keeping these good, good children amused all day – we’d been making paper hats out of newspapers and playing ‘tit-tat-toe’ [sic] – so I asked him if John could go – He’s so nice, just like a jolly Santa Claus and readily agreed! It had stopped raining and so he happily climbed in two-wheel trailer behind tractor and they took off down the mountain.
My, how our wood stove hungrily devours wood – but how warm it keeps the Jamesway – today, being rainy, I’ve kept it burning all day. It takes alot of wood fetching and we all help.
7:00 P.M. I went out to get more wood. It was sprinkling ever so lightly but the woods and grass smell ever so sweet and the wildflowers are blooming about – enormous blue flowers looking all the world like lilacs [they were lupine], blue bells etc.
I heard the tractor returning! Oh, how pleased I was – I gathered ten armloads of wood – the house must be cozy and warm when they returned damp and cold.
I peeled my last potatoes, opened string beans and fixed hamburg –
The lamp must be lit – oh, how temperamental it’s been lately and how dull. It doesn’t light up this big Jamesway the way it did the tiny trailer. I cleaned the glass inside and out. Bill tells me to ‘pump’ it up plenty and hold my finger over the hole. Oh, bright welcome light – then gradually it dimmed and went out! More fuel – I get the filter and go out and fill it up – pump, pump and on it goes. (But gosh, I’m frightened of it and it seems to know it).
Up til now I’ve stubbornly and flatly refused to light our Coleman Camp Stove. I’ve heard of them exploding and only will use it when Bill is home. Consequently I have to haul ever so much more wood and it takes forever on the Yukon stove. Today, I asked Bill to show me how and did cook the children’s breakfast on it and how quickly it heats dish water.
But tonight I couldn’t get it to work and just lost courage.
All the wood burned up – it started pouring outside and Oh Mom, the tractor had seemed so close and it stopped completely.
I got more wood – all wet – the potatoes and meat won’t cook. I try the stove again, it won’t light and I’d cry if it would help but it wouldn’t.
So I fix the three patient girls a half peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some fruit punch and they go to bed in their sleeping bags on the floor because Bill was bringing the wash—in their clothes – and I wonder?
Oh Mom – they’re angels – as I put them to bed and tuck them in and hear their prayers – Cindy says “Mommy I added a special prayer tonight for our homestead.” It’s their dream too – oh such darlings – we cannot fail them. It’s theirs as much as ours.
Now it’s close to 11:00 P.M. – no Bill, no John – no tractor, no trailer – what happened? Are they stuck in the damned mud – or was the trailer too loaded down and the road couldn’t hold up?
Then why not walk home? Poor darling John was so thrilled to go – he gets so tired of being with three girls and me all the time and now this.
I gave him soup and crackers at 5:00 – all of them – but no dinner and cold and wet and mosquito bitten.
Oh Mom, Mom. Mom!!!
I’m sitting here close to lantern for light and swatting mosquitoes who smell the half-cooked food and are attracted by the warmth, the lantern light and me! I must have killed two dozen since I started this! (My spray is gone!)
You know me – I’ve never been patient and it’s all I’ve had to be since one year ago when we started all this!! — and all I can do now is sit, wait and wonder and hear the purr of the lantern and the drip, drop of the rain! – and the wood is all gone too!
11:15 P.M. – Still not home. I am worried! Oh Mother remember when Bill used to be half an hour late sometimes on the L.A. Freeway and I’d call you because I feared an accident.
Oh Mom, who do I call now? It’s still raining and pitch black outside – I went out awhile ago to listen – listen. I’ve listened so much I can almost imagine the ‘putt putt’ sound. A minute ago I was certain I heard it – but opened the tiny window and only heard the rushing river below.
If it wasn’t for leaving the three girls I’d start down the road looking for them.
I’m worried especially about John. It just dawned on me that I don’t really know that man at all. I never would have let him go but they were on their way to meet Bill.
Bill said he might stop to help Carr fix the road below his place where the creek flooded over but I figured he wouldn’t in the rain –
And I did hear a tractor, but that was at 7:00 and not it’s 11:20.
And Smokey she’s been gone all day. She’s never once left us here alone before today. She used to follow us down to the trailer when we all out together and wait there for us – or rather come bounding down the road to meet us at the sound of the jeep.
Why, I’ve been lost without her and worried over her.
She may have followed Bill but why today and why didn’t she return!
She never lets John out of her sight a minute and we all adore her and depend on her too.
Oh Mom, I’m scared!
Where are they all?
Here is Bill’s gun hanging on the wall but I don’t even know how to load it!
I’ve been sitting here praying. I want us to be together.
I’ve been so alone lately – yet always I’ve kept the children together.
I miss John – where is he? He’ll have pneumonia for sure and he’s so thin anyways.
Oh God, Oh God – help us!
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My father’s first written homesteading plan. Clue: Nothing in this PLAN worked out according to plan!
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September 6, 1959 Sunday – Journal
Glorious clear, sunny day. First light frost last night. Red letter day for two reasons. First Bill is really plowing today and I kick myself for not having any film
– (I’m not going to make menus and lists galore ) – so that I’ll have ingredients for recipes handy (no running to market here if I need one thing etc.) – also want to plan quickie meals and yet very nutritious – we’ll need to pack in every vitamin.
Secondly I drove for the first time down one night and out and back! I honked and honked the jeep on way down to trailer [Linda note: What trailer?] – I was so proud and RELIEVED.
Our mile is still muddy but this is – believe it or not – third day of clear weather and the road has dried out considerably – and no need for chains SO – I decided to try it – I still had more census to take and load to take to Nursery –
EVENING – A gorgeous evening follows a gorgeous day and I realize I’ve been depressed lately because I’ve been in tight cramped quarters for so many rainy weeks – and no view at all through the teensy hut windows
— Ah today though has more than made up for all that those weeks lacked.
The very air has been marvelously clear after the rain and today seemed even more lovely than yesterday.
Other people thought so too as they trek to the highways in search of outlets that can’t be found in the city – many have come down our jeep trail to explore the unbeaten paths but the lower homesteaders turn them back before they reach our road – once again I’m glad to be on our Mountain!!
There were three cars turned back from Pollard’s today while I had coffee with her!
I just returned from a short walk down to Bill – the children are tucked in early tonight to get a few extra winks before school starts and I am once again alone with my thoughts!!
— As I returned up the hill from his plowing and saw the cheerful smoke wending skyward from our hut chimney and knew all was well and snug inside I had a marvelous sense of accomplishment – Oh, how crude to any outsider – but to us – well, as I look at the first home we’ve made in the wilderness and trudge happily crushing soft, rich dirt clumps beneath my feet I feel rich – and I feel like shouting – We’ve done this and I feel rich indeed!
The sun was setting and the sky was a mass of vivid orange tonight above the purple Mountains that form Sleeping Beauty above Knik Arm and the clouds were purple above the orange sky. – Oh to paint and be able to capture this scenery –
It’s cool but nice – so nice to have these few days of sun before winter – Indian Summer for sure and how the children reveled in it!!!
(Magic) Precious Moments
I take time off to
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Yes, I am working my way to the bottom of my mother’s papers and just found something that strikes me as being SO STRANGE!
In with my mother’s mother’s college graduation information from Boston University 1917 and masters graduation transcript and information for the University of Minnesota in 1918 I found two very old regular size envelopes with ‘Bureau of Educational and Vocational Guidance, 6 Park Street, Boston, Mass. printed on them. Neither envelope was ever mailed or addressed – but here is what is written in my mother’s child handwriting – evidently before she even knew how to spell her own name (I am going to correct the spelling here in this text):
On the first one:
and presently upon her breast a baby raised and cried aloud. Her mother was so surprised she wept upon her golden hair which was upon her breast. She wept and wept until a bride arrived and swept
On the second one:
a ruined city in my heart. Of the deep wilderness of the wood where you and I shall walk free as when I rode that day where the bare foot maiden raked the hay.
Mildrid
[actual spelling of her name is Mildred] – ah, my youngest sister solved the puzzle – partly:
“As you point out, very precocious of her to understand the meaning of the poetry.”
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Famous poet, John Greenleaf Whittier:
http://www.poetry-archive.com/w/maud_muller.html
“Free as when I rode that day,
Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay.”
I would think because of the misspelled words that my mother did not copy these words from some other text, which does not mean that she didn’t know the words from some other place. Of course the context for these writings will never be known, but they definitely have been saved for a very long time – probably since around 1935 (when my mother was 10 or even from an earlier time).
This looks about like an age eight handwriting – even then the seeds of how my mother’s life turned out had certainly already been planted within her beginning with not having her needs met from infancy forward. The loss of her grandfather, of her father, and the loss of her mother when her mother went to work to support her family once she had divorced when my mother was five.
Whatever all the combined influences were in her very early years, I can’t help but wonder about these images contained upon these envelopes that have probably traveled 25,000 miles and are 75 years old today, June 16, 2010 when I found them: The a troubled mother with her infant daughter and the yearning for the healing of the land.
How would it happen that a child this young would understand the meaning of these phrases, “a ruined city in my heart” and “the deep wilderness of the wood where you and I shall walk free?” I wonder. I have to deeply wonder.
(And if these are archetypal images with their archetypal figures, whom might the ‘bride’ and ‘the barefoot maiden’ be?)
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This reminds me of something I wrote August 21, 2007 on a little piece of paper that I dropped into the ‘mess’ of my mother’s papers and also found today:
Did Mother have to pay the price for “going on being” by leaving the biggest part of who she was and who she could have been and was meant to be — behind?
(Informed compassion) – Understanding frees me to love my Mother — and then to love myself better — as an extension of her (and Dad). If we “hate” a parent we cannot help but have that hatred carry over to how we feel about our self.
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As I transcribed this one of my mother’s 1957 early Alaskan letters seven weeks into her new life, I find myself ‘wishing’ that a miracle could have been possible so that some kind of surgery could have been performed that would have removed every single remnant of my mother’s mental illness from her. As I work with these last of the hundreds and hundreds of pages of her writing that I have transcribed, I continue to wonder, “Who actually WAS my mother?”
It’s as if her mental illness possessed her, took over her mind and body, so that who my mother ACTUALLY was had to fight and struggle to exist side-by-side within that SAME so-troubled body and mind. When am I glimpsing my ‘real’ mother and when the ‘sick’ one? In the end, it’s not mine to figure this out, as much as a part of me wants to.
Instead, some part of me remembers from my childhood that it was the other way around and that the ‘problem’ was me, meaning that the set-up was if LINDA could be amputated and removed from my mother’s and therefore from your family’s life, everything would have been fine!
It’s very hard for me not to feel as I read her writings (which of course do not talk about her mental illness or the terrible abuse of me she was so capable of committing) that somehow all the trouble with Linda REALLY WAS BECAUSE THERE WAS SOMETHING BAD AND WRONG WITH ME. Part of me tells me, “Linda, it all WAS your fault! Read these words. See what a marvelous person your mother REALLY was. The problem WAS all you. Linda, YOU BROKE YOUR MOTHER!”
In this letter I realize that my mother is describing something I would name LAND HUNGER. This kind of hunger is carried by some people, but not by the majority. This LAND HUNGER DID belong to America’s early pioneers, I have no doubt of this fact. But I don’t sense this as a ‘land fever’ in my mother’s letter here. It seems to be literally a longing, a great hunger.
My mother makes a most interesting and insightful comment in this piece of writing:
“I must have been a pioneer in my old life.”
I believe a part of my mother that was her TRUE self (not the sick self) is present in this writing:
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October 21, 1957 Monday evening
Dear Mother,
Right this minute I should be washing dinner dishes – my kitchen is a mess! I usually attempt to wash them now immediately after dinner but tonight we ate late and I read to the children instead. So-o- will make this short – really too!
Bill brought home Linda’s [late] Birthday package and note and my nice letter! I just had to write you tonight – without delay – to let you know how beautiful I think the skirt is and what’s more, and this I know, we’ll relieve you – it’s a perfect fit and length!!!!! I consider the whole thing a marvelous accomplished [sic] and you certainly are a seamstress plus everything else! Congratulations. I’d probably never fully appreciate the beauty of the workmanship if I didn’t sew myself – but it’s really perfectly done. Well, I could rave on and on.
Linda does like it and I told her you did it for her because you loved her and she must show her love for you and appreciation by taking very good care of it. I adore the colors – they’re beautiful. Wouldn’t a royal or powder blue sweater be pretty too? The white is very cute and fits well too – it’s also extremely versatile. You know – even the buttons were in just the right spot. I sure love it.
Cindy size 5 – and she looked adoringly at it and said I’d like one too!! HINT
Knock on wood – we’re all very fine now. The weather is very warm and that one light snow flurry weeks ago has been it! This warm weather is most unusual for this time of year!!! Today it showered some but the week-end was perfect. I’ll tell you more next time I write but a short of what we did over the week-end.
Friday I did make pie, clean and The Glenn Briggs, from across the creek came over. We had worried some over way to entertain them as they’re more your age – oh about 50 I guess – (you’re so energetic, you seem 50 – REALLY!) We had a nice time – just talking. He’s very nice and we both like him very much. He’s unlike Scotty who we don’t care to see much of. He’s natural, intelligent, bulging with ideas, enthusiastic and just plain nice!! Could be Bill’s father – looks like Bill and acts like him – our doorish and all. (More energetic, but that comes from living in Alaska!)
His wife is nice – more quiet and reserved and harder to get to know. Seems to resent the influx of people here in Eagle River, even though they’re partly responsible. They were the ones who had originally lived on Vanover’s farm, having bought the 160 acre homestead. (Farmed and had hog ranch for seven years and then leased 40 acres to Vanovers – who bought it after three years. They exercised an option to buy and meanwhile prices here had gone up – so Briggs regretted not waiting. They subdivided rest here and built this house, Janie’s and their own – sold Pottel’s that house and land. He bought another 160 acre adjoining homestead and has sold lots off and really made $ — lives off of profits!!! Some dealer (operator). He’s still holding about 90 acres across road, next to stream, beyond Vanovers.
Oh, Mom, we’ve been miserable this weekend and sick for land. It’s all gone in this area – we’re too late. If only we had come here eight years ago, I’ve been sick all week-end over it.
I found out Johnsons – parents of our babysitter – Homesteaded 160 acres five years ago. The most beautiful land you ever saw! Yes, five years ago we could have and we’re too late.
It’s $800 an acre now and will go up, up, up! Many are getting rich – you multiply it! Isn’t it sickening! Then most are holding it for further, higher prices. This section is booming. They’re adding three new stores now to our shopping center – and exclusive restaurant!!
Oh Mom, I so love it here – Eagle River Road is home to me!
Saturday we looked into five acres of land Briggs told us about plus a homesteaded ‘habitable house’ (??) on it. You see they could PROVE UP on the land, get title, and leave it. This 160 acres belongs to the owner of the Woodcraft Shop [Bockstahler] over across from our mailboxes – the one with such beautiful lamps etc. He originally had his shop in this house – expanded and took a business tract and now really has something.
Well, Briggs quoted 2500 for the five acres plus house. Now it’s 4,000 and no road to it. Well there are two roads but can’t use them – so there would be that cost. To think this man owned this and left it. He too, is not anxious to sell as prices going up, up, up. His 160 acres is about three miles beyond us. He has level land and slight slopes, all overlooking mountains, glacier and Eagle River. It’s indescribably beautiful – I’d give all I own to own it!
He will sell these five acres for 4,000 – 1,000 down and it’s a bargain as prices stand now because it does have a partly finished house (he lived there two years) of three rooms and a well! [Bockstahler’s ‘shack’ or ‘cabin’ we rented later in the summer]
What a view! Oh Mother, we took a picnic there and it was grand! Of course there’s no stream (a small brook!) but the mountains look like Heidi’s Alps and all at once I’m reminded of ‘Trail of Lonesome Pine’ scenery – remember? It’s just as beautiful and one lonesome pine stood outside the front windows.
If we had 1,000 (ha, ha) I would buy it — We could still homestead out someday (maybe). It’s even gone in Valley now! Or tract, etc. but you see, these all require you to live on them right away. Here’s a house – of sorts – no bathroom etc. – but Bill could fix it up in a few months and we could move in when our lease here expires and save that rent.
Five acres would cost 30,000 there in Pasadena – and you’d never find it. Lumber is so high here that house is worth something! There’s room for horses, a garden etc. and it’s still in this section – same stores, school, etc.
The house there now is on the perfect location – it sits on a knoll overlooking the valley below and surrounding mountains. I would like to move it elsewhere on the five acres, fix it up some – live in it build another (one room and move in) then rent the old house for $100.
Oh darn it, $ $ $ — we have a few pennies and Bills, bills, bills.
I wish you were here to talk to – and to see this scenery. It’s spectacular, wonderful, marvelous and the skies so blue, blue – the air like wine. You’d adore it and all the cultural advantages of Pasadena – best schools, stores, shops!!
I could kick [many underlines] us around Alaska for not having come before! I tell you I was sick all week-end and I want to do something next summer! Our lease here is up August first. Come before then because I’m warning you – I’ll live in a tent or quonset hut to get land like that!
[Linda note: And she did! Actually a combination of both: A Jamesway is a canvas Quonset, like a big curved tent. This is ‘LAND HUNGER’, and she had it bad.]
The further up the Eagle River Road you go the less flat land there is. The Johnson Place is perfect – as they have flat land and a view of the mountains and even the glacier! Beyond it gets very mountainous – no level land – even the road is carved out of the mountain and to the right is a drop to the river and swampy land – so even as the road is built as the government plans to extend it, there won’t be livable land there!
The part that hurts me the most is that there are no hicks Mom, here. The people are refined, educated and plain NICE – they come from California mostly (Funny). They’re just like us and they homesteaded. They did without electricity, roads etc. – even five years ago Mrs. Briggs didn’t have electricity here! In fact, while building this place – it’s seven years old – they saw a bear in the yard! And one time a baby bear was looking through our dining room window! So there!!
Well, my dishes are still undone. Once I get started.
So even though we would have to buy that land at $800 an acre we would be ahead. There could be a phone, plumbing, electricity etc. It would be half mile from Eagle River Road and one mile from nearest neighbor and four miles from shopping center – but it’s perfect for me. Why, dream though. It’s quite impossible. But see, say our payments would be 40 per month – we could live in it in August, September, October and apply this 150 a month to fix it up. 1,000 down, 1,000 payments = 2,000 Balance by next August – and only 40 a month payments and no rent! Just 100 from here for three months or so would make it livable. Maybe we could dicker to use neighbor’s road (there are two roads already!)
Tell me your reaction. I bet it sounds primitive to you but to me it’s right. I must have been a pioneer in my old life. I love I there – and it’s not rugged to me – only picturesque and beautiful. [Linda note: bold type is mine.]
The children adore it here too and are completely happy. They’re real Alaskans!
Sunday they went to church and we spent afternoon home. I made hot rolls – best yet. It’s a basic sweet dough recipe. I made half into Swedish Tea Ring (m-m!) and other half into Egg braid. They both looked professional. The Braid raised so high it filled my cooking sheet! I’ll bake you bread and rolls next summer!
What a note – I can’t resist!
I think Carolyn is [bunch of squiggles]. So there! Not to write and so does Bill!! Shall I write Charlie?
Hope you’re really taking care and getting more rest and please eat right. Maybe we’ll reserve ‘old house’ for you for summer, say!! — an idea! I have too many for my own good.
Good night Mom. I miss you terribly!! Everything here I want to share with you – how will I ever wait. Come for Xmas instead, could you? And again in July. How I wish you could!! Will be good now and do dishes. Bill has gone up to ask Jo Anne about that movie thing I got him into – and I promised to clean kitchen up before he came home!
[Mildred sketched the five acres with notes]
House is not included in price so is really a gift. Owners had to build it under Homesteading Requirements. There’s flat land for garden or corral, a driveway of sorts. Woods comprise the five acres, could be farmed or left as is. No work on this land here, it’s forest! Bill could use birch for outside of house and it would look like a Swiss Chalet in Switzerland.
P.S. Finally I got a nice letter from Grace! And a joint note from group of girls in Glendora. Grace recently had a car accident – she’s OK. She tells me to write (what do you know), found my letters so interesting. Said I should contract Star News about column ‘Lloyd’s in Alaska’. Wouldn’t hurt to inquire, will you?
I wrote various letters on Friday and sent various pictures to the whole gang. Please explain to Charlie I wouldn’t send anything to Carolyn. Anyways she’s selfish not to write in six weeks – plain mean!! Anyways explain to Charlie – O.K.! He’s so busy I didn’t want to obligate him to show them around and Elsie and Byron will enjoy it!
* I hope you keep my letters. I spend so much time writing to you I neglect making notes for books and might need my letters to you for reference! [Linda note: June 16, 2010 as I transcribe these letters – again, she did not DATE any of them even with this intention to use them as historical record! What a job I have to work from postmarks when the letters are with envelopes or piece the story together!]
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Again, a big thank you to my oldest daughter for the collection of climbing rose bushes she gave to me last Mother’s Day! Today, June 16, 2010 two of the plants showed their first blossoms! Once the summer rains come all plants enter an impressive growth stage, and it will be fantastic to watch these plants REALLY take off!
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I just finishing transcribing another version Mother wrote about the decision they made to move to leave Los Angeles and move to Alaska. I like this one better. There is no indication of when it was written, but I think it was written before the one I posted last night.
It leaves me thinking that no matter how genuine and authentic their ‘dream’ was, my mother’s undiagnosed and untreated severe mental illness did actually destroy any chance our family had to ACTUALLY ‘live happily ever after’, which is something I believe my parents both hoped for when they made this HUGE move. That tragedy is real, even if I cannot find even a glimmer of it in this piece she wrote:
*Probably written October 1958 about leaving Los Angeles
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Sometimes I wish I could talk to some ‘mental health professional’ just about the moving around that my mother did. As she mentions in her piece of writing that I transcribed yesterday and posted the link to in *October 1958 – DREAMS CAN COME TRUE, my mother believed that my father provided a kind of stabilizing counterweight to her impetuousness. But I wonder what would have happened to her in her life if my parents had not yoked themselves to one another?
I still have not completely delineated and visibly lined up the number of moves that my mother arranged and that mostly my father accomplished during their married years prior to my leaving their home when I was 18. Some part of me this morning wants to stop and take account of the moves that had already happened before my mother had written her October 1958 description of their Alaskan ‘venture’, as she called it.
My parents married June 11, 1949 and as far as I know they lived on/at Almont in Los Angeles at least until their first child was born on June 15, 1950. Then comes a move. I don’t believe I was born while they were living there, so probably by August 31, 1951 they were living in a rented house on Calavaras (wherever in LA that was).
So, from Almont to Calavaras to a rented apartment by July 10, 1953 when my sister was born, then probably to a house my parents bought in Altadena that they did not sell until they were moving to Alaska even though my spring of 1956 they were in another new house they purchased in Glendora (still in LA area).
We must not have lived in this location of the 4th move for much more than a year, but that would have been four moves in the first seven years of their marriage. The move to Alaska, which involved my father leaving first and being gone from us for two months in June and July of 1957. According to mother’s writing, they sold the Glendora house (and the Altadena one) before my father went to Alaska and moved into a ‘court apartment’.
From this apartment, after my father had left, my mother then moved us into a motel, out of the motel into a rented house, out of the house into her mother’s, up to the mountains for a week, back to her mothers, and then probably into another motel before she left for Anchorage.
So, adding up these longer and shorter term moves and locations, let’s see – that’s around 11 moves that were made with children in tow before mother reached Alaska and the infamous Log House in Eagle River on August 1, 1957. The log house was probably move number 12.
We stayed ‘all cozy’ in the log house until June 1958, by which time my father had already located the 160 acres spot of our homestead and had staked claim, or filed on the land. We moved out of the log house into Bockstahler’s ‘shack’ or ‘cabin’ (its title depended on mothers move moment to moment) where we stayed until October 1958.
At that point the six of us moved into an apartment on Government Hill in Anchorage area where we stayed until about the following March, and by April 1, 1959 we were off on our homesteading adventure.
So by the time my mother wrote her *October 1958 – DREAMS CAN COME TRUE piece she (I’m quite certain it wasn’t my father) had orchestrated, staged and managed to accomplish 14 moves. I was 7 when this piece was written, and already by then I had been dragged around through probably 13 moves with my parents, and that was only the beginning.
So, talking about ‘life’ and ‘childhood’ in attachment-related terms, right along with the incredible vacillation and instability of my mother’s moment-to-moment mental-mood states and the insecurity they caused in the lives of all around her came the physical moving from place to place that even further guaranteed a complete environment of lack of safety and security for my parents children.
My mother wrote *October 1958 – DREAMS CAN COME TRUE from within the small enclosure of a massive, ugly apartment complex. True, the move ‘to town’ was no doubt simply seen as ‘as step in the right direction’ toward accomplishing fulfillment of their Alaskan homesteading dreams, but I still find the contrast in location and place interesting as I read her written piece.
By the time my mother was actually on the homestead, and had her ‘dark rainbow dream’ about the horrific wind storm contrasted to how it stopped in her dream when she met the right ‘person’, she had already in her lifetime experienced probably close to 30 moves.
If I could talk to this ‘mental health professional’ I would like to ask what this kind of moving is seen to represent in a person’s life. That the moving, at least in our family, seemed to be connected to and integrated with this ‘pioneering’ drive makes me suspect that it was then connected to the genetic undercurrent that MANY immigrating ‘pioneers’ had within them as they traveled to America in the first place.
But it is hard to feel a part of the mainstream American current with this kind of ‘traveling’ background – and I have certainly done my share of moving around in my adult life, as well. I still haven’t counted my own moves, but I do know that right now being here and staying here in this little house I live in now is the single most important aspect to my own current life.
So when I work in my yard on my adobe projects it is in part the grounding I experience as I work with the physical DIRT that helps me right now. As I looked around me out in my yard this morning I just had this thought: I wish I had thought beforehand that I could have actually encased my mother’s individual letters I have completed transcribing right into those bricks – where they also would have finally met their final grounded end — because they probably would have remained within those bricks for a very, very, very, very LONG time without GOING anywhere.
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Stop the Storm 
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