Frozen Tundra: A Short Story

My father died in the spring.  Six months later my mother took her two daughters on a once-in-a-lifetime cruise to Alaska.  When the trip started it was just a vacation.  When it ended it had become something else.

We are complex women, each an island unto herself.  We were unable to reach out to each other, even in response to the death of a father and a husband.  We had spent a lifetime avoiding just such emotional connections.  We each lived behind our carefully constructed facades.  We were masters of the superficial.  Our roles were so well rehearsed we could easily move from scene to scene, even a death in the family, without breaking out of character. 

My relationship with my mother had never been an easy one. My entire life I had struggled with my ambivalent feelings; I both loved her and feared her.  Even now as a grown woman, I seemed to dance around her, first advancing to attempt closeness, then retreating from the pain of her coldness.  

Thus initially I had been against the idea of this trip.  Too many past family get-togethers ripe with the promise things would be different had left me jaded and guarded.  But, I allowed myself to be persuaded.  The setting, away from our normal lives and worries, could make a difference.  The real treat, I thought, would be breaking through the surface of everything that hadn't been said over the years.  I felt a quickening, a small eagerness that seemed like a happy omen.  And it seemed to be coming true as we excitedly anticipated what each day would bring in this strange new world. 

Alaska is stunningly beautiful, but it was also intimidating with vast stretches of undisturbed wilderness and huge glaciers.  Cruising along the Inland Passage, we passed mind-boggling stretches of dense, pristine forests where wildlife abounded: brown and black bear, moose, Dall sheep, caribou, foxes, wolves, eagles and waterfowl.  These icy waters are home to whales, porpoises, sea lions, and seals.

So much of this state is accessible only by boat or air. Looking at this landscape, the first thing that struck me was the sense of isolation, this was part of the allure for those rugged individualists who wanted to carve a life out for themselves with their bare hands.  It also made me remember something deep inside I thought I'd forgotten.  It's harder to talk about the feeling a certain place has on your soul than it is to feel the tears in your eyes when you see it.  This place awakened in me loneliness so profound it literally took my breath away.  I think it was born from a lifelong sense of abandonment in my family- a wound that had become, over the years, my identity.

Less than less than half a million people live here, making Alaska among the states with the fewest residents.  It has other features too which make it inhospitable in my mind.  The cold, pale winter sun shines for a minimum of five and a half hours each day, closer to the Artic Circle that number drops to only two hours of twilight each .  Permafrost- permanently frozen ground- lies under much of Alaska, and it has places with more precipitation than anywhere in the other forty-eight contiguous states.  None of these features make life here appealing to me, despite the incredible beauty.

After sailing through the night, we approached the first glaciers in the clear early morning light.  Glacier Bay is a spectacular example of what nature has carved over the centuries.  Glacial rivers have retreated, exposing numerous inlets in a bay up to sixty-five miles long.  Spilling down between lofty mountains, sixteen sapphire blue tidewater glaciers plunge into azure, ice-choked fjords.  We stood spellbound at the ship's rail as we watched one of nature's most spectacular performances.  Standing with eyes transfixed by an icy blue wall, all our senses alert, we waited for the telltale crack to shoot like a thunderbolt through the ice.  Then, as if in slow motion, we watched an iceberg ten stories tall break free and slide into the frigid depths below.  Anyone who has witnessed a calving glacier knows that for one brief moment they have become part of something infinitely larger than themselves.  Perhaps this trip would be a breaking free for the three of us; a shedding of old identities carved out for us by years of conformity, habit and self-protection. 

Life aboard ship was an adventure too. Our staterooms were roomy and comfortable, the main dining room opulent with crystal chandeliers and fine china settings.  The food was delicious and copious, often with seven-course meals.  But we had brought along an old familiar family gremlin of discontent. 

We had assigned seating and the cruise line had gone to some trouble to match up compatible tablemates, as much as was possible.  At our table were a husband and wife in their forties and the husband’s elderly mother. What could be more perfect?  Trouble began when our mother, who could not hear well and disliked using her hearing aide, decided it was easier for her to just tune everyone out and make no attempt to join in the conversation.  My sister and I tried to carry the ball, but we could not help noticing the looks that passed across the table when questions addressed to our mother went unanswered or when she would sit through the entire meal with an angry, mean expression on her face. 

For better or worse, my sister and I decided to address the situation later that evening with our mother in our stateroom.  We exhibited a sustained resolve, despite our mother's cold opposition that was like a natural force. 

"You girls analyze things too much," she said. 

She hated the idea of us talking about her, probably because she knew that we always did,  couldn't help it, couldn't stop it.  We voiced our concern that she appeared unfriendly to these seemingly nice people, who apparently would be our tablemates throughout the cruise.  We started out saying we felt uncomfortable with her lack of graciousness at dinner.

"Do I embarrass you?" she sarcastically replied. 

Perhaps she was unaware of how she was coming across?  We gave her examples of body language, facial expressions and tone of voice. 

"What do I care what they think of me," she angrily snapped. 

Then she pushed herself up from her chair and lumbered off to her own stateroom. 

"This is ridiculous," I said in disgust. 

Our mother's pride, always touchy, had been injured to the quick.  We had shamed her.  The alternative, of course, was to allow her to shame us.  No use telling her that we had raised this so she would not be perceived in a bad light.  Or that we wanted mealtimes to be pleasant for us all, not times we would dread with a tightening in the gut. 

We both knew something important just happened, and what it was too.  We had spoken as women, equal with her, and not as daughters.  That was something, I realized later, that we were always pretty careful never to do.  This was a monumental step for us to have taken; we had planted our flag of independence.  Perhaps this was the beginning of a thaw to the frozen tundra of our family's code of silence that kept each of us trapped in our assigned roles for life.