December 2, 2010

Roots

Written by: Jake Todd, CITC Social Studies Teacher, Bartlett High School

I had been home for three days. Maybe four.

It is hard to tell after traveling from one side of the globe to the other. I remembered recuperating a lot quicker in my younger days, but this time was rough. I was having trouble keeping food down, sleeping, staying awake and just feeling OK in any respect. I had just returned from the Middle East, where I had been working as a teacher in the Peace Corps. During my toughest days, I had daydreamed about the second I could step off the plane at Ted Stevens International and become instantly overwhelmed with joy and happiness.

The reality was less fantastic. I had lost 20 pounds, had no job and no money. Even if I was ready to attack a bowl of my mom's caribou stew, the two or three spoonfuls that made it into my stomach would not have lasted long there. The slow struggle of reclaiming seemingly lost skills like speaking English, driving a car and showering more than once a week were dampening the joy of being in familiar surroundings again. It was not until a trip to the family camp near Montana Creek that I was finally able to take a full breath.

Being inside my family’s one room log cabin, where I had spent countless weeks throughout my boyhood, I was finally able to relax at the deepest level. There was no goat chewing through my electricity line, no boys throwing rocks at me, no forced eating of food that I knew would make me sick. I was alone. In that instant, I realized that the sand inside an hourglass had suddenly reversed its flow for me. I had spent the previous two years in a foreign place, thinking about this exact cabin in times of stress and bouts of homesickness. And now there I was, finally able to relax, listen to the local radio station, and sit so very still, in complete silence.

It was absolutely amazing, to realize that you are in exactly the spot in the universe that you want to be. Someplace familiar, like home.

That is my story of reconnecting with my roots, as I remember it.