To start reading from the beginning, go to May 11, 2008.
Sundays were a day of rest and relaxation. One of my last Sundays in Golovin, Martin had planned an outing. We were going snow machining. (They called them snow machines over snow mobiles). We bundled in our warmest clothing. Maggie prepared a thermos of coffee and I grabbed my camera.
Martin determined the passenger/driver match-ups. He drove one machine, Maggie and Sister shared another and I was on my own. I was apprehensive about the day. Right away I sensed something amiss and felt like the odd man out. I was surprised Martin gave me charge over a machine as he knew I had never driven one before.
I had been living with the family more than eight months with no plans on my part to leave. I was hovering between an adventure and the place I needed to be as a college graduate (with honors) and independent adult. Martin had asked me to stay the winter but I suddenly crossed an ambiguous time line where I was beginning to sense my limited services (helping Maggie in the store) were no longer needed or wanted. I had become a hanger-oner. It is embarrassing to think and write about now and I can't say what I was thinking -- or not thinking -- feeling or not feeling -- knowing or not knowing what I wanted for my life.
The four of us on three machines took off across the flat frozen bay toward land. Martin was about to ask me, for the first time, to leave without having to ask me to leave. He led us across flat snow and ice straight to what seemed to me to be a nearly vertical incline. "Oh, shit," I thought. I quickly realized this wasn't a leisure scenic Sunday drive anymore. We weren't going to the Ice Cream Palace where my dad used to take me and my four siblings for a rare innocuous friendly Sunday treat of square scoops of sherbet in cones.
I thought it strange that I wasn't afraid. I can't know but it seemed Maggie, with Sister as her passenger, were not expecting to challenge an obstacle course that calm snowy Sunday, but they plowed up the cliff behind Martin. I can't know, but I sensed they knew that if they didn't make it, my inevitable not making it would negate Martin's ulterior purpose. That is to say, asking me to leave without asking me to leave.
Eventually the three of them waited successfully at the top of the cliff looking down on me. All four of us knew I would not make it. I decided I would fail without apology or embarrassment I made it half way up before I stalled out. It took a fearless hand on the throttle to start up and another bite of courage to gun it even more to make the final push to the top and over onto horizontal ground. I let go of the throttle and felled the machine sideways into deep soft powder which kept me and the machine from sliding back down the hill. I grasped the camera in its case around my neck and traipsed up the hill while Sister, under Martin's order, trekked down to rescue my machine and valiantly ride it over the top of the cliff.
To show my deliberate nonchalance about my failure, I took pictures of Sister zooming past me.
For the next hour or so, we had a pleasant ride through willows, past ptarmigan and over frozen streams until we stopped for coffee. I feared Martin would lead us home down the cliff, which would be an ever greater challenge for me. I was prepared to tell him up front I could and would not try it. We fortunately skirted around the cliff and were back home before the late afternoon sunset.
A few more weeks passed before Martin, in his own way, would ask me again to leave. I would finally take him up on it.
(to be continued) copyright Tamara Ann Burgh, all rights reserved
Uncle Martin
Sister rescuing my snow machine
Laundry day -- the clothes are frozen but somehow they dry on the line.
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