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“You going to make it out of here in this?” Myra asked
referencing what was becoming a decent rain with gray skies all around.
“Ruby is showing
no clouds and it is supposed to be good all the way to Fairbanks from there,” I
answered. “We should come clear of this
just outside of Galena.”
I sipped on
my one cup of coffee for the morning.
The best way to assure I would need to use a bathroom mid-flight was to
put me on a plane without plumbing. Our
little Tripacer definitely was not equipped.
Romay had
packed the night before, and as we shuttled her stuff from her room to the back
of Myra’s Scout, it appeared that she had included all of her worldly
possessions save her shot gun. They would,
after all, not allow her to have that in the dorms.
The next
day was scheduled to be her freshman orientation at the University of Alaska
Fairbanks, and much like my parents did when I went to Hope, I was going to go
with her to assure she was set up. Unlike
when I went to school, we didn’t have the luxury of packing two cars with the
stuff she would survive on for the year.
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| Mom and daughter under the wing and out of the weather before Romay and I left for Fairbanks. |
I credit both
playing Tetris as a kid as well as learning from a dad who packed and unpacked
UPS trucks for a living with my ability to cram as much cargo into as little
of a space as possible. When Romay and I
squeezed into the plane and out of the rain, all we had was a small spot that
looked like it had been molded to accept our bodies, my guitar from college
gently squeezed between the top of the pile and the headliner.
 |
| Just before getting underway... how do normal families do this again? |
Galena has
a long runway, but even loaded to the gills, we easily got off the ground and
climbed, the ground dropping away below as we pointed east toward
Fairbanks. The Yukon River was a brown
ribbon marking the basic path we would take.
Five minutes, and the rain was no longer coating the windshield, and a
warm sun began drying the fuselage.
“You want
to take the controls?” I asked over the intercom?
“No, I’m
good,” Romay answered, “I just want to enjoy the ride.”
Five more
minutes, and she was snuggled against my shoulder and breathing the deep
contented breaths of a hard sleep.
As a
freshman in high school, Romay had often visited with the guidance counselor
just as a place to hang out. Romay has
always liked to joke, and the counselor liked to laugh. On one such visit, a boarding school student
unfamiliar with Romay walked in on the conversation.
“This is
Romay,” the counselor had introduced the two girls, “she is Mr. Harris’
daughter.”
“Oh wow,”
the girl had said, “you sure look like your dad.”
“Yeah,
pretty strong genetics,” Romay had answered straight-faced, “I get that a lot.”
The
counselor just laughed knowingly without correcting the newcomer. She knew that Myra and I had adopted Romay
when she was eight. She also agreed how
uncanny it was how like me Romay was in looks and demeanor.
“You’re the
only Eskimo I know with a northern Michigan accent,” I had laughed when Romay
recounted the story to me.
The village
of Ruby, once a bustling town on the short list to become Alaska’s capitol, sat
quietly below and to the south of our path.
Romay shifted, pulled out her phone, snapped a picture, and then
repositioned her head against the passenger window. I could not even tell if she woke in the
midst of the process.
Our first
meeting replayed in my mind. A five-year-old
Romay bounced around in the waves at the beach just north of Unalakleet in Bering
Sea water that had been ice just three weeks before. Short pigtails stuck out from either side of
her head as she giggled and danced to a music only she could hear. The sun was warm, but the cold of the water
was evident in the light breeze. She
played until her lips turned purple and voiced her protest as we adults
insisted that she come out and warm herself by the fire.
At that point,
I had no idea that I would become her dad in three years. I was still trying to figure out how to convince
the woman who would become her mom that I was worthwhile to keep around. But there was something magical about the
little girl.
A little
turbulence rocked the wings of the plane and Romay awoke, “Was I asleep?” she
asked groggily.
“Yeah, you
were twitching,” I responded.
“Late
night. I hung out with Sweetsy, and then
didn’t start packing until after midnight,” she confessed.
Awake now,
but just dazedly looking out the front of the plane at the terrain passing
below, it was like she was still asleep.
I thought back to another early meeting.
“Jason!”
Romay squealed as she headed full speed down the road, rubber boots splashing
through the puddles as I knelt down to meet her.
I had come
to Unalakleet for teacher meetings and was walking down the road with some
other educators on our way to the store.
I opened my arms for a hug and was nearly knocked over backward, Romay
never slowing down before throwing her arms around my neck.
Romay was
six and a force of nature.
“When did
you get here?” she spoke with a light in her eyes.
“Just this
morning,” I smiled back. “I’ll be here
for a couple of days,” and just as quickly as she had tackled me, she sprinted
back through the mud and water to where she had left her friends playing.
“Dad,”
Romay brought me back to the present, “where are we?”
“Uh, just
south of Tanana,” I looked out my window to see if I could spot the village, “little
over an hour left. How you doing?”
“Fine. You would never think we started in rain,
would you?” she asked.
The day had
become beautiful. One of those late
summer interior days with crisp yellow light.
The air, for the most part, was smooth, and only a few wispy clouds
could be seen in the distance. A line of
hills that marked we were getting close to Fairbanks came into view.
I thought
back to when she first called me dad.
“So, can I
call you Dad?” she asked as she plopped down next to me on the couch of our
apartment in Koyuk.
She and her
brother had been living with us for a couple of months into what was only
supposed to be a year to help out her mom at that point. A small voice at the back of my head warned
me about getting too close to a kid I would be sending home at the end of the
year.
I ignored
the voice, “I’ll never make you call me dad, but if you want to, it would make
me proud.”
It was as
though a switch was flipped. One moment
I was just some adult in her life and she was just some kid I was taking care
of, and then the next moment she was my flesh and blood as though she had
always been mine. She was just always
with me after that. Hunting, fishing,
out for a ride, Romay was with me.
“We must be
close,” she commented as a car drove below us on the road between Fairbanks and
Nenana.
I dialed in
the weather report, got the information I needed, contacted approach, spoke
with the tower, and got cleared to land straight in at Chena Marina. It was not my first landing on the little
strip bordered on one side by tall spruce and on the other side by a float
pond. It had looked ribbon thin the
first time I had landed on it, and that was how it appeared to Romay as we
closed in on the ground for her first landing there. The mains touched, the nose wheel came down
and we slowed in order to be able to turn around and back taxi.
“Glad it
was you flying,” she commented over what had been an eerily quiet intercom
coming in. Evidently, she had been
concentrating just as hard as I had on putting the plane down smoothly.
Our friend and
mechanic, Steve, met us at the strip and shuttled us to the rental car place, we
got a car, drove back to Chena Marina, unloaded the plane into the rental car,
and at that point the trip to college became just like every other kid heading
off to school that fall loaded into the family sedan. On campus, Romay’s new roommate helped us
haul boxes to the closet the school called a dorm room.
We made
store runs, we picked up a computer, got her books from the book store, got her
settled in, and it came time for me to do the final drop off before heading
back to Galena.
I got out
of the car and smiled, wrapped my little girl in a tight hug and reminded her, “your
mom and I love you very much.”
“I know,
Dad.”
“Be good,
be safe, have fun,” I fell into the stereotypical father departure speech.
“I will,
Dad.”
“Okay then.”
“Thanks for
everything, I love you,” and she turned and walked up the stairs away from the
parking lot and toward her dorm building.
I sat in
the car and watched her until she crested the hill and out of my sight. Then I just sat in the car. Childhood passes so quickly for parents. A parent who starts with a kid who is eight
sees that childhood slip by that much faster.
My little girl. I waited for my
vision to clear enough to drive, slipped the car into gear and became just
another dad dropping off his daughter for her first year of college.
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| Romay saying goodbye to her little sister before getting in the plane headed to college. |
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