Alaska was officially named the 49th State in January 1959. All members of my family welcomed the new state with big cheers. Every kid in every class at my school did some kind of show-and-tell project on Alaska.
Fourteen years had passed since the end of World War II, and Americans of all ages were primed to celebrate another we-are-the-champions moment. Alaska was so big it had dethroned Texas as the largest state in the union. My family loved big. Alaska was untamed. My family loved wild, from the comfort of our living room, and were still smitten by the abundance of the new state’s natural resources. Alaska was freakishly cold. We oohed and aahed and wowed over the ‑40 Fahrenheit temperatures. We marveled that anyone could live in an igloo. I mean, you would have to go out in the cold to pee. And we were thankful for having 24/7 U.S. surveillance right on the Bering Strait to keep an eye on Russia.
One early summer morning, I came down to the kitchen for breakfast. My mother sat at our Ethan Allen Early-American table with a cup of milky coffee with two sugars and buttered toast. She was pouring over another magazine with another story on Alaska. There were pictures of monster-sized cabbages and potatoes and carrots and turnips. Alaska’s latest harvest. She flipped through pictures of muddy farms after the spring thaw and muddy farmers in their muddy trucks with their muddy livestock on muddy roads. I saw she had a pen and paper by her side. A picture of a downtown somewhere in Alaska that looked like a street in a spaghetti western with a lot less charm stopped her flipping. She started writing.
“Mom, what are you doing?”
“Looking for places in Alaska.”
“For vacation?” We’d never in my ten years on this earth been on a family vacation, but if we trekked up to Alaska, I’d have plenty of great material for my “what I did on my summer vacation” school essay in September. All the other kids would think I was so cool.
“To move.”
No way. A vacation would be okay, but a move. Nope! The farthest my mother had ever traveled from Brooklyn and Massapequa Park, New York was Niagara Falls for her honeymoon and Virginia when she was pregnant with me.
“It’s a new frontier. Opportunity. A chance to make a fresh start.”
I didn’t know why my family needed a fresh start and wasn’t about to ask. I didn’t bring to my mother’s attention that it would be hard to get to Sunday dinner at her parents’ house every weekend. Or that she was cold when the thermostat dropped below 70 Fahrenheit. Or that our car probably wouldn’t make the eighty-eight-hour, 4,475 mile drive. I was a kid. I ate my Cheerios.
“Maybe I should write to the Alaskan Chamber of Commerce.” She scribbled a note to herself, and I left the kitchen while her list of names of towns and cities kept growing.
A few weeks later, the “Visit Alaska” brochures arrived. My mother and father read them cover-to-cover.
“Look at the antlers on this moose, babe,” my dad.
“They’re looking for road crews to build highways,” my mom.
A few more weeks passed. The brochures moved to the end tables in the den and soon were stained with coffee cup rings. Next stop, was top of the pile of old newspapers ready for the trash. The letter from the Chamber of Commerce was spared, moved to the napkin holder where my parents stacked the mail. Behind it was a big manila envelope I hadn’t seen before. What was in it. I could open it and never hear the end of why was I looking at things that weren’t mine for the rest of my life or I could pray that the envelope didn’t hold four plane tickets to the frozen north. Alaska was looking to grow its population and fast. I chose to pray.
I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I almost puked on the morning my mother and father, holding that big envelope I’d seen in the kitchen, called me and my brother into the living room for a talk. My mother was thirty-six. My father was thirty-eight. They both blushed when my mother said, “I’m having a baby.” I cried. My mother asked if I was okay. “Yes, I’m happy.” And I was and grateful, so grateful for this new baby. At thirty-six in 1959, my mother was considered an older, high-risk pregnancy, and she was also a nervous wreck. At ten, I knew her well enough to know pioneering would be off the table with a brand new baby. Alaska was a no-go. My prayers had been answered.
