May blog

Today is my daughter Karen’s 55 birthday. I look back on that time so many years ago when I knew I was carrying her. I felt the child I was carrying would be the light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Although our time in Kivalina had come to an end and although we had experienced so many wonderful times there, we had also experienced a tragedy that would live with us forever.

“On our last night, Mildred brings over a huge bowl of Eskimo ice cream as a parting gift. It’s full of fresh blueberries and blackberries, and it looks delicious. After she leaves, Tiger manages to find a spoon and starts to dig in with gusto. He hands me the spoon. “Here, have some,” he says. “This is probably the best we’ve ever tasted.” 

My stomach turns at the sight of the purplish sweet. “I can’t eat it right now,” I tell him. 

“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t.”
I do know, but I’m not saying a word about it, not yet. I am carrying our baby, who will arrive next May. I can hardly wait to share the news with Tiger when I’m sure I’m not going to miscarry again. “ excerpt from Journey Through Fire and Ice published March 2021

I remember that night so clearly — the akutaq that Mildred brought over to us and the look of delight on Tiger’s face as he ate it. Eskimo ice cream was always a treat for us but for me, on that occasion, the sight of it turned my stomach. The next day, we left Kivalina, 

“We wait at the airstrip with Pepper and Clover at our side. The whole village is here to say goodbye. I look around at the familiar faces—women, men, and children. What adventures I’ve had here, marvelous adventures, terrifying adventures, challenging adventures. I’m not the naïve young girl who came here with her new husband sixteen months ago. I’m a woman ready to face whatever lies ahead. (excerpt from Journey Through Fire and Ice.)”

Charlotte and Bobby and Sarah were part of the crowd who came to say good bye to us at the airstrip.

 As we left, I wondered if I would ever return to Kivalina. I hated saying good bye to these people who had accepted me as a friend.  

We did in fact return there: once with Karen and Sarah  when we lived in Kotzebue from 1969 to 1970 and again in the summer of 1976. We spent two weeks in the village with Karen, Sarah and David. We probably experienced the best weather we ever had. Karen and Sarah made friends with Cheryl Sage (known to people in Kivalina as Girlie.)

David never missed a chance to play with the dogs who wandered freely around the village. I look back on those times and I remember the village as I knew it: the blue hills in the distance, the sound of the waves lapping on shore and the people we knew and loved when we were there. Most of the elders were alive in 1976 and the visit we made will be with me forever. Tiger had always promised that we would return there one day but it never happened. Most of the elders we knew are now gone but many of their children and grandchildren still live there today. Now, Kivalina is on my bucket list. As an elder, I may never return but at least I can keep it tucked away in my heart as a pipe dream. 

A mother is one who loves. A woman who steers her dependents, cares about their well-being and social contribution. A mother is love. If she provides love when in their presence and struggles with the desire to improve the world for her loved ones, she is a mother. (written by neice, Amy Mcleish)

I was lucky to have three wonderful women in my life who gave me the strength to become who I am today.

The first was my grandmother,Jenny Christmas,whom we fondly called Gage ( pronounced Goggy.) Her strength was remarkable as she was married with children, living in a remote area in British Columbia with a husband who was ill. He died four years after they were married. Gage had the strength to carry on and bring up her children as a single mother. I often think of her and the stories she told me. Without her in my life I would not have learned resilience.

My mother, Ruth McLeish ( and father) brought my brothers and I up in a happy home, and loved us unconditionally. She was the epitome of what a mother should be, often sacrificing her wishes for the sake of her children.

And then, there was my mother in in law, Elsie Burch who had the strength to live through the tragedies in her life. She greeted each day with optimism and wanted to be strong for all of us. She was a role model to me and to my children.

As I think back to my life in Kivalina, there were two women there who provided me with love when I was in their presence. I was a young woman and didn’t realize this at the time but as I wrote my memoir: Journey through Fire and Ice, I realized what a profound influence they had on my well-being. 

The first was Ruth Adams. Because she shared my mother’s name, I could have called her Ana, the Inupiaq word for mother. She was a mentor in a way to me, teaching me the ways of the native life in Kivalina. She helped me make my rabbit skin parka and we would sit in her house and talk like mother and daughter. 

The second woman was Mildred Sage. She lived behind me and was like a mother to me as well. When I was alone ,she came to check on me making sure I was all right. When Tiger and I came  home from our fateful camping trip she arrived to find I was freezing. Seeing this, she lifted her skirt and made me warm my feet against her body.

Another time, I rushed into our house which was full of smoke after the men had come to carry Tiger who had been badly burned out. I was in shock, and unable to move. Despite the smoke, Mildred arrived, found my parka and hurried me out of the building. After our return to Kivalina, she continued to be one of the best neighbors I could have asked for. I remember her saying to me after she saw Tiger’s scarred face “We don’t care how  he looks as long as he has the same smile.”

I think of so many of the women elders there, most of them long gone. and how they welcomed other children into their home and became a mother to them. To Mildred and Ruth, I was not a child but I was a young naïve woman who was in need of a mother at that time and both of them welcomed me into their life as one  of them. How lucky I was to have had them at what was for me a time when I was far away from home and in need of a mother. As my niece, Amy McLeish said on Facebook today, a mother is one who loves and both these women showed me love when I needed it.