I haven’t always lived in Alaska, although I’ve been here long enough for my blood to be chilled by the 40-below winters.
My wife, Bobbi, and I moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, in 2002 shortly after getting married in Washington state. The two of us lead very quiet lives — fulfilling, but quiet. I’m a reporter at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and she is the Rural Development Director for the Farthest North Girl Scout Council.
I grew up in Utah (although I was born in Idaho) and lived in the Seattle area for a few years before moving to Alaska. My childhood was great, a fact my three older brothers, who seem to feel like they suffered through the Great Depression, remind me of constantly. I look almost exactly like my father did when he was my age and with any luck, the similarities won’t just be skin deep.
When I was a kid, writing “news”articles for my own newspaper, I always thought I’d get to travel the world as a reporter. As it turns out, Bobbi (the Girl Scout) does all the traveling while I sit at a desk most days writing stories about people doing amazing things I’ll most likely never get to do.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my job. I get to talk to some of the most interesting people, not to mention some of the most powerful people in the state of Alaska and even in the country. I’ve spoken to senators, commissioners, world-renowned scientists, CEOs of multi-billion-dollar corporations and kindergartners. My work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, News Week, National Geographic, USA Today, the Seattle Times and my mother’s scrapbook. I’ve written about scandals, murders, baseball games played outside at midnight without artificial lights, elections, dinosaur discoveries, the war in Iraq, the local science fair and Congressional education hearings in Washington, D.C.
It’s a great job. I’m very lucky.
But it takes up far too much of my time. I don’t go on enough walks with Bobbi. I don’t spend enough time with her in the mornings in bed, you know just talking, caressing her feet with mine. I wish we could take more trips together, even just driving down to Anchorage for the weekend. I don’t write enough — actual writing like I used to do in high school, plots and characters, language rich with metaphor and allegory. I’m a journalist now, not a writer.
You’re probably wondering where the “fulfilling” comes in from my earlier statement. It’s there, but like I said, my blood’s a bit chilly. Pessimism aside, my days outside of work may not be filled with the childish luxuries I imagined would be mine once I was finished with school and “settled down,” but I get to cook dinner with Bobbi almost every day and when we pray together, even when it’s just over a meal, I feel so very close to her. When she laughs at the antics of Patrick McManus, I know why I married her. And when I hold her in my arms as we fall asleep, my hand gently resting on her belly, feeling our child growing within her, I thank God for bringing us together and allowing me to share in her quiet life.
Quiet, but fulfilling.
