If I 'click here,' is it clicking in there?

Not having the energy for our normal philosophical discussions or even our not-so-serious games of Scrabble while Layla was pregnant, we developed a habit of watching DVDs at night before bed. The circumstances are different with Luke around, but not our energy level at night, so we’ve kept the habit. Tonight, a group of U.S. agents are working vigorously to stop a virus from disabling their computer network security. If they fail, terrorists will be able to access their computers and use the information to attack our country.

The heavily dramatic music, aggressive camera angles, flashing lights and blaring sirens try to portray the sense of severity, intensity and stress facing the agents. To me though, it’s just a lot of stressed out people typing really fast and yelling geek talk back and forth. What happened to just shut it off and then turn it on again? That usually fixes most of my computer problems. Where’s the big rolling boulder or flaming cauldron that Indiana Jones was stressed about? Or Darth Vader and the fleet of Tie Fighters that had Luke Skywalker sweating in his spacesuit?

I can feel the intensity of bone-crushing boulders, fiery pits and even futuristic lasers. But flashing cursors and spinning hourglasses only stress me out when I’m trying to catch the updated scores of a close Carolina basketball game. Maybe it’s intense because they're just typing and waiting. They cannot tell if their code is correct or if it's working until the computer tells them so. Maybe, but it’s still lame TV. It does however remind me of how I sometimes feel with Luke.

Teaching Luke that his fingernails hurt, the trash can is not for climbing and that waving good-bye does not have to be a two person task is a lot like typing random code into a computer in hopes that it will give the desired result. You cannot see if it’s working right away. You just hope that the right connections are being made.

Over and over, I try new tricks, new code. I can see his hourglass and flashing dots on the screen of his face telling me something is happening, but are my efforts working? Are they hurting? How long is it going to take? Indiana Jones could see the boulder roll by after he just managed to get out of the way. Luke Skywalker could see the Tie Fighters exploding behind him as he flew into the Death Star. I watch Luke learn all sorts of things outside of what I teach him, but so far, regardless of my pleading, he gives no indication that he will ever learn that poopy diaper changing time is not the time to twist, crawl and reach for the, er, that.

Despair? Not us. The nation’s safety doesn’t yet depend on Luke’s ability to keep his hands clean, wave or stay out of the trash. Heck, even those on whom the nation’s security does depend have a hard time with two of those three. Luke has come a long way in almost a year of life. He’s even learned a few things I’ve tried to teach him.

He knows the xylophone is for playing and the pots are for banging. He can turn pages, drink from a sippy cup and beat himself in the head with a spoon. He learned that last one all by himself, so I guess that’s progress.

The last couple days Luke has been devouring everything we put in front of him, even food. He loves foods it took me years to learn to appreciate. He can’t get enough Indian food, pallack paneer specifically, Inupiat foods like caribou stew and maktak (Bowhead whale blubber), and cottage cheese, which I still think deserves the name it gets on our receipts from the Stuaqpak—“dairy by-products.”


He knows “high-five” means slap the hand someone is sticking in his face, and “no” means shake your head back and forth. He pulls himself up and pushes his walker around the house. He’s even getting the idea that the rings can go back on the post.

His first tooth broke through a week or so ago. He discovered that if he pulls his hair, it hurts, and if he does it again, and again, it still hurts. He knows that no matter how many times I show him how the shapes fit through the same shaped holes, it’s way easier just to take off the top and dump them all out for Dad to put away later.

We’re still working on gravity. Not that gravity is any different on the North Slope, just that Luke hasn’t learned to respect it. To Luke, beds, chairs, couches and laps are for crawling off of head first. How do you teach an infant not to dive off of things on purpose? Yeah, there’s that way, but I’m looking for another way. That way still seems scary and is likely to be ineffective. The kid is willing to sacrifice his body to get what he wants.


All in all, Luke is doing great. He’s escaped from a few flaming cauldrons and rolling boulders in his first year for sure. We are constantly amazed at how quickly he’s growing into his own individual identity. He’s shown no lack of love or self-confidence, and no fear for that matter, so we’ll assume we’re on the right track in the long run.

In the short term, he seems to be learning quite well even if he rarely, or at least not immediately, lets on that it has anything to do with the effort we put in to teach him. Sometimes that frustrates me, but just when I think the “crazy-dad” dances I do to amuse him might be more truth than act, the hourglass disappears from his blank screen stare, and he sends a message that his computer is loading successfully. So we try not to stress, even if we can’t tell whether the agents on the DVD will fix the computer and save the nation or if the airplane game will ever get Luke to eat his strained green beans.

What the bulldozer giveth, the bulldozer taketh away

Exhausted, I gaze through the window at the pink snow glowing on the mountains in the distance. It’s three o’clock, and naptime is finally here. But not for me. Picking up all those pointy little wooden blocks that always find their way under my sock feet, wiping spaghetti-O’s from the floor…and the walls…and everything else within a toddler toss of Luke’s high chair—I have plenty to do despite my dreams of dreaming. But I’ve earned the next five minutes of rest, and I’m glad I have the glowing view to help me enjoy them.

The great thing about Barrow in February is that the ever-increasing daylight treats me to sunrises after I awake and alpenglow in the mid-afternoon. Rose petal snow wisps across the streets toward mountains and rooftops pink in the light of the slowly setting sun. The view out my window transforms my couch into a snow drift bench at the top of a tough alpine climb. I stop to catch my breath and take in the view before clicking on my skis and floating down untracked powder to the other world below.

The mountains have long turned from push-up-pop orange to bubble gum pink, so it’s time to begin my descent. Just as I hit my internal snooze button, hoping to grab one last moment of relaxation before hitting the first steep drop, I notice something terribly wrong.

A giant Eskimo third grader, clad in camouflaged hat, Fox Racing goggles and a much too large, hand-me-down parka from a relative’s whaling crew appears on the summit ridge of the glowing mountain. His red mittens breaking false summits and toppling gendarmes like King Kong throwing police cars and small buildings, or like, well, like the kid he is playing on a roadside snow pile. The illusions of my past life are shattered.

Stunned and confused by reality, I toss my throw cushion skis from the couch, remove my goggles to rub my eyes and ease back into today’s “All Things Considered” on KBRW. There are no mountains in Barrow. The nearest of those grand ripples on the earth’s crust are a few hundred miles to the south. We didn’t even move our downhill skis to Barrow, and Luke can’t stand on his own, much less climb or ski. Strangely, as much a part of our lives playing in the mountains had been, it is now just as absent.

Yes, what my parents always said is as true now as it was unconscionable then. “Do that stuff now while you can. Once you have kids, everything changes.”

“Yeah right, my kid is gonna be right there with me. First in the backpack, then carrying his own,” I thought to myself in those days.

After dragging Luke up the Mt. Roberts trail in Juneau a dozen or so times, I realized that Luke may like the mountains someday, but now it’s just a bumpy ride and a chilly breeze on his drool-laden cheeks. He’d usually sleep the whole way then, and now, if his rides in the backpack around the track at Barrow High School are any indication, he’d rather be crawling than carried. Mountains are unnecessary and unnoticed by a kid who only cares about what within a short reach might fit into his mouth. Dragging him on a long hike now would be much akin to cramming my whole extended family into a Porsche and driving around a speed-bump ridden parking lot outside a racetrack. All the elements are there, but no one is having fun.
The day the red-mittened mountain masher yanked me from my nostalgia, the phrase that came to mind was, “the mountain will always be there.” It’s a common phrase disheartened climbers use when retreating from an unsuccessful summit attempt, but it applies nicely to steepaphiles with new babies living in flat places. In my memory and in my future, if not in my window, the mountains will always be there.

That time will come when we’re ready to hike, climb and ski as a family, and until then, we’ll be patient knowing that the mountains will be there when we’re ready for them. In Barrow our time here is not marked by peaks, places and expectations. Here, it’s blocks, books and bottles, and we’re happy with that. Luke doesn’t compete with powder days and clear skies for our focus, just the occasional snow pile daydream.

Most things in life are ephemeral, like snow piles, and the time, energy and especially the energy to go mountaineering. The uncompromised attention we’re able to give Luke will have eternal benefits. We’re finding that it’s much easier for us to do that when it’s 20 below and everything outside is flat and white.



A day later, the bulldozers returned to take the snow mountains away. Even the Eskimo third graders have to spend some time on the flatland. Like our time in the mountains, the snow piles will be back soon enough, although in a slightly different form. In the meantime, sofa-cushion mountains and peek-a-boo will have to do.

'til then, peek-a-boo