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“Hey, I know you,” I said with my best used car salesman
grin, “You’re famous. You’re the girl
from the poster.”
The girl
from the poster sheepishly grinned and continued walking up the ramp that I was
walking down on her way to the Northwest Campus building.
Her rate of travel seemed to increase.
The school
district had flown a bunch of us to Nome in order to take a class for our
Alaska School Activities Association coaching certification. The training can now be taken online, but
this was in 2001, back when the internet in the villages was even less reliable
than now. We were to complete the course
work at home and then mail it (yes using a stamp and envelop and everything)
back to the university when done. The
district was doing its best to comply with ASAA’s edict concerning coaching
certification. It was not the first time
that ASAA had claimed they would “take action” if schools didn’t fall in line,
but this time they “really meant it.”
It was my
first year of teaching, and I was slotted to begin coaching cross country
skiing as well. I was living in Savoonga, and this class was
a great chance to get off of the island, get a burger cooked in a restaurant,
and maybe meet some new people.
The Bering
Straits School District has a program that highlights homegrown teachers, at
the time it was called Bering Strait Success Stories, and I had walked by this
young woman’s photo every day on my way to my classroom. From the stock introductions at the beginning
of our coaching class, I had learned that she was attending to become certified
to coach basketball. Based off of how
she spoke, she was intelligent. I would
have had to be blind not to see that she was young, athletic, and attractive.
We ended up
sitting diagonal from each other on opposite corners of a conference table
slapped together by putting four folding tables into a large rectangle. I paid attention in class… I do still carry
the certification card I earned from that weekend in my wallet, but I couldn’t
help but having my train of thought hijacked.
“Mike,” I
called out as I walked into the fifth-grade teacher’s class back in Savoonga,
“who’s this Myra Slwooko girl?”
“Ah, Myra…”
Mike had been around the district forever and knew pretty much everyone, “had
her in my class when she was in 2nd and 5th grade.”
“Really?”
my interest peeked.
“Yeah, good
kid,” Mike continued. “You could do a
lot worse, but if you hurt her, I break your knees.”
Like
previously stated, Mike had been around for a while, was much slower than me,
but was also a former wrestling coach.
He was twice my size. The comment
had been part one guy ribbing another and part promise. I decided to proceed with caution.
“Where you
going?” Mike called after me as I carefully backed out of his door.
“I’m concerned
for my knees,” I honestly responded.
“Come in,
I’ll give you some dirt on her,” and Mike gave me a brief history of the girl
on the poster summarizing it with, “She’s Unalakleet’s sweetheart.”
Myra Slwooko during her first year of teaching in Elim standing with Crystal Ivanoff |
A month
later found me leaving the island again and headed for Unalakleet where the
teachers for the entire district would be attending a weeklong October
inservice. Every site would be
there. She would be there.
I walked by
a session on social studies curriculum.
I was an English teacher… but I went in to learn more about social
studies. One open chair left…
“Well, hi
Myra, I didn’t know you would be in this session.”
She smiled
warmly, and I decided that I would need to learn all about the district’s
approach to the social studies curriculum.
That evening,
I walked into the classroom that the single male teachers were staying in and
got ready to lay down with my book.
“Think I
saw Myra in the gym playing ball with a couple of other young teachers,” Mike
said in my direction.
I dropped
my book and grabbed a pair of shorts. I
imagine watching a swimmer play basketball is much like watching the hippos’
ballet in Disney’s Fantasia, but I played all night, and the next night.
Back on the
island, I hearkened up the courage to send Myra an email. The next day after school, I checked my inbox
to find a message from her in it. I
clicked the button for it to download and watched as the spinning beach ball
taunted me. I got up and walked to the
post office about a half mile away to check my paper mail. When I got back to the school, the beach ball
greeted me, and then the message opened.
I read it three times and carefully crafted a response.
Each day
after school I would click on the message and then walk to the post office,
read, reread, respond. Then the weekend
came that I would be traveling to Elim where she lived to coach the Savoonga
ski/biathlon team.
“Jason,”
Jennifer, one of my younger skiers said, “when we get to Elim… can I just sit
under a tree?”
It was an
earnest question from a young girl who had never seen a tree larger than the
scrub willow that grew near the airport in Savoonga.
Myra met me
at the school when the team arrived. She
was poised and beautiful. I was awkward
and clumsy. So, we were pretty true to
our characters. I coached my kids and
Myra hung out with the team. At the end
of the couple of days, I got back on the plane with the kids and headed back to
the island.
The email
pattern continued. I amped up my game
and started closing with something a little more daring like “sincerely” up to
the day when I got brave enough to write… “thinking of you often.”
My kids
traveled to White Mountain for skiing and Myra rode her snow machine west on
the Iditarod trail to hang out with the team again. And then the next weekend for the Western
Interior Ski Association Meet also held in White Mountain marking the end of
ski season.
With ski
season over, I called the airline and booked tickets for our first official
date. I would fly from Savoonga to Nome,
Nome to Elim, stay at the house of the ski coach there, cook a romantic dinner,
spend some quality time without the ski team, and then fly home in time to be
at work on Monday morning.
“How much?”
I gasped when told the price of tickets.
As I hung up the phone I remember thinking how I would need to determine
if I was marrying this girl early in the relationship.
I looked in
the mirror the day before getting on the plane.
I had been on the island, aside for Christmas break, for almost an
entire school year. I have never been a
fan of haircuts, and the man looking back in the reflection very much resembled
Grizzly Adams: hair down to my shoulders and at least two inches of bushy
beard. I wasn’t about to give myself a
haircut, but I could do something about the facial hair. A weed whipper would have been more
effective, but after an hour with my razor, I could finally see skin that had
not been exposed since August.
Myra wouldn't stand a chance against the newly beardless me. |
Myra
greeted me at the airport as I deplaned, “What happened to your beard?” she
looked disappointed.
We had a
good home cooked meal with the venison I had brought back from my Michigan
Christmas visit, went for a snow machine ride during which I got Myra’s machine
epically stuck, hung out, listened to music, talked, played outside, and had
our first kiss. It really was the thing
that Hallmark movies are made of.
I boarded
the plane at the end of the weekend and headed back to the island. I really didn’t need the plane, I could have
walked about four feet above the waves all the way to Savoonga. The price of the plane tickets did not even
come to my mind as I went to sleep back in my own bed that night. I started to wonder about the price of rings.
ive always wondered how many relationships the ski program fostered
ReplyDeleteAs a new teacher, coaching skiing was one of the best things I could have done. It got me outside, kept me physically active (no swimming pool in Savoonga), and allowed me to travel the region seeing new places and meeting new people. Wonderful opportunity... and I met Myra.
DeleteSo cool to read your stories! Very descriptive.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Glad you enjoy them. It has been a lot of fun to write and reflect.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your story. But once you identify yourself as an English teacher I am forced to point out something. :-) "Whose this Mary.."? I believe you meant "Who is this Mary..."
ReplyDeleteMade the fix. Thanks for the edit. I am now an admin, and I find myself pouring over emails before I send them because I know someone will find a grammar error in one knowing that I am an English major. I read these posts about a hundred times before posting, and it all starts looking like mush by the time they go up.
ReplyDelete