Transitions: Kaktovik to Wasilla and my grandsons, to Utah where Thos got married before the milk expired, a beautiful reflection of India
Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 5:19PM 
I have fallen terribly behind - in large part for the reasons explained in my entry of October 15 and in part simply because life just seems to plunge relentlessly forward at an ever-increasing pace and I simply cannot keep up or ever pause long enough to make sense of it all.
Before I fell into this blog hole, readers will recall that I had been in Kaktovik, where I took this picture nine days ago (really? Nine days already???), where I had gone to cover the Healthy Communities Summit.
I was riding with big Bob Aiken in the truck that he had borrowed from his aunt, The Reverend Mary Warden, and we had gone out to look at the mountains of the Brooks Range, a bit to the south.
Don't let this picture fool you. You cannot drive a car from Kaktovik to the mountains. You can only drive a little ways - in this case, a couple of miles from the village to the land fill. However, the water between Barter Island and the mainland was rapidly freezing over and I am certain that by now, people from Kaktovik are driving their snowmachines to the mountains and some have undoubtedly taken some snow-white, bighorn Dall sheep.
Just before I left Kaktovik, the temperature dropped very close to zero F, if not all the way.
This is not all that cold for this time of year, it's just that recent years have been so warm. In fact, I remember that in our first winter in Wasilla, the snow set in for good on October 2 and within a week of that we had had our first sub-zero temperatures - and Wasilla is a much warmer place than Kaktovik.
That winter was colder than average, but the fact is, Alaska is just not as cold of a place as it was when we first moved here.
A bit later that same afternoon, I saw the snowplow clearing the runway. I left Kaktovik the next afternoon, Saturday, October 9. As I did, I shot a very nice little photo story of riding around beforehand with Big Bob, of airplanes, coming and going, of people deboarding and boarding, of flying to Barrow, where I had less than two hours before I had to board my flight to Anchorage - but that was enough to get a picture of Roy Ahmaogak with some of the slabs of maktak from the whale his Savik crew had landed - and then of the flight home.
But I can find none of those images now. I have this horrid feeling that I accidently erased them.
The Alaska Airlines flight arrived in Anchorage late in the evening and Margie came to pick me up. As we drove back to Wasilla, I sent a text message to Lavina, "I need a Kalib and Jobe fix!"
And my dear daughter-in-law! What did she do? After I had gotten some sleep and rest, she drove them out to Wasilla, just to give me that fix.
Here is Jobe, soothing my soul.
Since I left on these latest rounds of travel, Jobe has entered daycare. Margie no longer must go to town to spend her week days babysitting him. While she is glad to be able to stay home - and I will be glad to have her here, something I have not yet had the chance to experience - she already greatly misses hanging out with him all day.
Kalib went out into the back yard to golf.
Before taking his first shot, he contemplates, seeks to psych himself up.
He zeros in on the ball...
...and drives it hard and far. I would tell you it was a hole-in-one, but there was no hole in which to drop it, so there was no hole in one.
It was a darn good drive, though.
I had barely gotten my fix when the two got strapped into their car seats and their mother drove them back to Anchorage.
;)
Soon, I was on a red-eye flight that left Anchorage at 12:47 AM and arrived in Salt Lake City just after 7:00 AM. I had a "B" seat - a middle seat.
It was not a pleasant flight.
After I exited the plane, I followed these two pilots toward baggage claim.
During my short time in Wasilla, Margie kept after me to get a haircut, but I had too much to do and couldn't take the time.
"I'll get one down there," I said.
She was doubtful.
After I arrived in Salt Lake, I went to the house in Sandy that my brother Rex inherited from my parents and lay down upon his bed to take a short nap.
That damn short nap lasted until about 2:25 PM. This aggravated me, because I did not want to waste my day napping, but I guess I needed it.
I then spent about an hour visiting with the ghosts of my parents as they now manifest themselves in their old house and then went to breakfast at the nearby IHOP. I finished breakfast a little after 4:00 PM. Then I headed over to "Great Clips" and got my hair cut.
I got my beard trimmed, too. It is no where near as long now as in this picture.
This is why I dropped everything and flew to Utah: to be present during the time of the wedding of my nephew, Thos Swallow, to Delaina Bales. The wedding had been scheduled for 10:00 AM Friday, and I and all the other family members who could not attend were told to be there by 10:40, when they would emerge as husband and wife from the granite building behind.
The drive took me a few minutes longer than I had anticipated and I arrived about 10:48. The sun shone brightly and reflected off the nearly white granite with an intensity that hurt my eyes. I found the temperature shocking - already into the mid-70's.
I looked all around, and while many people, including other new brides and grooms, milled serenely about, I could not see Thos and Delaina, nor could I spot a single familiar face.
I did not think that I had come so late that they had already taken their post-ceremony pictures and left, but I was just a little bit worried, so I called my sister, Mary Ann, Thos's mom, to see where she might be.
She had not yet arrived, but was wandering around down below with her husband, the granite building in sight above them, trying to find the road that would take them there.
As I was talking to her on my cell, I saw Thos and bride Delaina emerge from the wedding hall. He, too, was talking on his phone. She had to shield her eyes from the harsh glare that she had just stepped out into.
Here they are, the bride and groom - Thos and Delaina Swallow, outside the Draper Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) in which they had just married.
That golden fellow blowing his trumpet toward the east, the direction from which it is prophesied that Christ will appear at His Second Coming, is the Angel Moroni. Moroni was a huge character in the intense life that I grew up in and that I can never step fully away from even though my thoughts and beliefs have traveled into new territory.
The Church is very particular about who it will allow to enter its temples and, notwithstanding the fact that my direct ancestors hung out with Joseph Smith, set out across the plains toward Utah with Brigham Young and received multiple wives in wedding ceremonies conducted by him, I no longer am numbered among those allowed to enter.
In some ways, it is kind of a funny feeling to travel over to 2000 miles to be present during a wedding that you know you will not be allowed to attend, but I understood all this before I left. Margie and I did the same thing to her parents and family on the day nearly 37 years ago that we married in the Provo Temple. As I have noted in the past, I feel bad when I think about that now, but I do not want Thos and Delaina to ever feel badly that I found myself subject to the same exclusion at their wedding.
I understand - but as for my father and mother-in-law, they had already been excluded from so much by the larger, mostly white and Mormon society that had taken over so much of their country and had then surrounded them on their reservation. I deeply regret the fact that, at our wedding, Margie and I added to that feeling of exclusion.
In the case of my nephew and his wife, the one thing that matters to me is that he, Thos, be given the assurance that his Uncle Bill loves him and admires him, that he is an important man in my life and that she knows that I honor the commitment that she and he have made together and that I embrace her as a part of this, in many ways shattered and scattered, family.
To give them that assurance, I traveled far to be present for their wedding that I knew the Church would not allow me to attend.
On September 30, Thos wrote this on his Facebook page:
"By the time the milk in my fridge expires, I will be a married man.
By my standards, I restrained my photography on the day of the wedding. As regular readers know, I am not a wedding photographer and Thos and Delaina had hired a real wedding photographer to shoot the event for them. She worked hard and from what I could tell, did a good job. She was cordial toward me, but I could see that my presence with my camera did annoy her a bit, so I did my best to restrain myself.
Even so, I took a fair number of pictures. I have it had it in mind to do a good photo summation of the day, as I experienced it. Yet, except for the two images at the temple and this one, I have not yet had a chance to even look at my take. I still hope to produce a summation of the wedding day, plus at least one or two other posts dedicated to my trip to Utah, but, as usual, life continues to rush forward. Images rush through my camera in a non-ending blur and Utah is now behind me. The bright, warm, sun has been replaced by the cold and gray of post-fall Wasilla in need of the grace of its white blanket.
I got to bed a bit before 4:00 am this morning, took Margie to breakfast at Family Restaurant at noon and have a non-revenue generating project (most projects seem to be this way, these days. Now that everybody has a digital camera, this concept that photographers have no need to make a living just seems to be growing and growing and I buy into it myself, as this blog proves) that I have committed to my underfunded client that I will finish before I go to bed tomorrow morning.
So maybe I will get a chance to post those other Utah stories and maybe I won't. I hope I do. I want to.
We will see.
But, in case I don't, after I pulled out the two pictures of Thos and Delaina coming out of the temple, I zipped way down through the take, very near to end of that day, and quickly grabbed this picture.
This is Ada Lakshmi Iyer, 17 months old, the most recent member born into this family. Ada is the daughter of my niece, Khena and her husband, Vivek Iyer, who grew up in India. The fabric for her beautiful little dress was selected by her grandmother, Vasanthi, a devout Hindu, and sewn by a tailor in Bangalore.
Ada was born in Minneapolis, but recently paid a visit to India, where she was reportedly loved and adored by all.
As for Vivek, who married into my once devout Mormon family, he says he is now pretty much an atheist, but that does not mean he is no longer Hindu, because one can be Hindu and still be atheist. As Vivek's dad, Murthy, also devout Hindu, once explained it to me, one can be just about about anything, Mormon included, and still be Hindu, because in the end, however many journeys it might require before one undergoes all the hardships, purification and education necessary, one will find his or her way back to God and the truth, whatever God be, whatever truth be.
Me, I still don't know and don't ever expect to. I'm just shooting through life, amazed at the hard and beautiful wonder of it all, trying to capture a few images and hazy meaning along the way.
Little Ada Lakshmi! So beautiful, so adorable, so full of life and excitement! I just wanted to pick her up and hug her, but she is not the kind of person to sit still long enough for that. Just before I left, she did let me give her a hug as her mother held her.
When I did, she smiled.
It is good to be alive.
Reader Comments (10)
Thank you, once again, for sharing your life with us. You always give me hope for a better world.
Tell my sister Lavina that I need a fix to see my nephews too. Love your blog Bill. I get my cup of coffee and I sit and read.
Laurie
I am beyond amazed, Kalib is all grown up now!
Thanks. What beautiful pictures
wish your nephew and his bride all the best in the future and i adore the picture of Ada, what a precious little girl
good to see the boys again. great shot of little ada in her blue gown, not to mention the b'ful bride w/her red shoe peeking out! you do get around, bill! ps - on my recent trip to cleveland i told people about your blog.
First picture. Seems like the see is made from sand.
Both boys seem oddly grown since I saw them last. You captured the joy of childhood very sweetly w/ your picture of little Ada. I could almost hear giggling when I looked at it.
The idea of one group judging whether another group is permitted into their holy spot strikes me as wrong. Thou shalt not judge. We've been told about that again and again. But still we do. We judge, and it does cause pain.
What a great post and what fabulous photos of our growing family. You captured Ada's personality perfectly in that photo. I do hope that I meet your grandsons before they are men. They are growing so fast!!
It hurt to read "shattered and scattered family." I never thought of it that way. But I do see the truth in it. We are all over. And have many wounds. But, for the most part, I think we are strong and the wounds have healed, regardless of the scars. Still, there is a great truth to that statement, and I'm certain there is much that I don't know behind it.
Thanks for all the pictures, particularly my son and little Ada.
The comment about the milk expiring is so typically Thos.
Glad to see it.
Is Caleb, the Elder, schooling Kalib, the Younger? Or did I miss something?