I begin Christmas by taking a shower with a spider; we give gifts, eat, celebrate and the littlest among us falls ill

Late on Christmas morning, before the influx of family began to arrive, I took a shower. After I stepped out, I found this spider standing still on the shower curtain. I do not like to have spiders in the house, nor do I like to kill them. When I find a spider in the house between breakup and freezeup, I catch it and take it outside.

It seems cruel to do this in the winter, so in the winter, I apologize to whatever spider I find. "I am sorry, spider," I say. "I do not wish to harm you, but I just can't allow spiders to overwhelm my house." Then I will kill it.

When I looked at this spider, one word came into my mind: "Chooo'weet!" 

I could not kill it. It just simply was not in me to do. I dried myself with a towel, got dressed, left the spider in peace right where you see it and went out to greet family members as they arrived.

Jobe arrived with his mom brandishing a copy of the Anchorage Daily News. Whose picture do you think was in it...? Look close... heck, you don't even have to look that close... it's Jobe! Second from left on top, a crop from the Christmas card picture that I ran with yesterday's post.

Soon, Jobe took a seat on the floor. He looks good and happy as usual, but he had thrown up just a little bit earlier and he was not eating anything at the moment. None of us were too concerned. Babies throw up all the time.

You will note Kalib and Ama in the background. It is true that Rex is the one who discovered Ama and brought her into our lives, but I have to tell you, it was Kalib and Ama who were falling in love with each other on Christmas Day.

Jobe tried his hand at petting Jim. He was doing okay, but then he grabbed a big hank of fur and yanked. Jim turned around and meowed in protest.

Jobe was left with a clump of black fur in his paw.

When it came time for me to pass out the gifts, Jacob put a Santa hat on my head. Jobe came over and posed with Santa for this self-portrait.

Who would receive the first gift? I reached into the pile of gifts and grabbed one at random. It was addressed to Charlie, from Santa Paws. Which means it came from Muzzy and his family.

Charlie tore into the packaging to unwrap his gift.

It was a Betty Boop doll.

Well, actually, it was a grain mill. But if you squint until your eyes are almost closed and then look hazily at the box, those little pictures kind of look like Betty Boop.

Among the huge cache of gifts that cascaded down upon Kalib was this alligator, a triceratops, and a shark.

One gift was addressed to Diamond, Bear Meach and Poof, the cats who hang out with Melanie and Charlie. The cats had stayed home, so Melanie opened.

Somehow, I don't think those cats are going to wipe their paws.

As for me, I would rather wipe my muddy boots on the living room rug than to dirty this matt.

Margie held up a print of Jobe that I made for her.

"Joooooe - be!" Kalib said.

You will notice that Caleb is staying low key in the background, holding his throat. On Tuesday, he bought himself something to eat at Taco Bell and a crunchy taco shell scratched his throat on the way down. His throat grew sore and just kept getting worse and worse.

So he stayed low key, all day.

He didn't even play with Kalib.

Margie called me into the kitchen to tell me it was time to for me to carve the turkey, which she had just removed from the oven - with a little help from Lavina and Melanie.

Ama had been no help at all. As you can see, she had over-imbibed and had passed out on the dinning room table.

How could this have happened? This was an alcohol-free gathering.

It was Kalib that she had over-imbibed on. Kalib, and all his rambunctious energy.

So she passed out. Her head hit the table with a "thunk!"

I might exaggerate just a little bit.

As for me, I picked up the carving knife. The edge was dull. So I sharpened it, until it could have sliced right through a newspaper.

Instead, it sliced through the skin on the tip of my left pointer finger..

That knife was really sharp and went straight to bone, just like that.

Then Charlie brought some squash that Jacob had cooked with with berries and pine-nuts to the table. It was time to begin feasting.

Unrepentant and irreligious though I be, I have been walking a very ethereal edge these past five weeks and it did not seem right to start Christmas dinner without a prayer and a word of thanks. I did not feel up to the task myself and so I asked Lavina, whose strong sense of spirituality is rooted in her Dene beliefs. She agreed. I asked her to be certain to remember other members of the family who are grieving, those in South India.

She did, along with many others spread widely over vast distances.

Then it was time to eat. I put my camera aside and picked up my fork and knife.

Afterward, we were all stuffed. Turkey can put you to sleep. It put Rex to sleep.

But Rex would not be allowed to sleep long, for a shark came flying at him. It was Lisa who had hurled the shark.

Knowing how much Melanie hates the very image of a spider, I called her over and showed her the picture of the spider on my camera monitor. She shrieked, and almost dropped Jobe.

"Why would you do that, Dad?" she asked.

So I told about how the spider had showered with me and how I had left it in peace.

"Why would you want to shower with a spider, anyway, Dad?" Lisa chimed in. "Don't you know that a spider has eight eyes?"

Charlie had borrowed my guitar. The spider incident inspired him and he suddenly began to sing one of his improvised, on the spot, ballads.

I wish I could quote him, but I can't.

Anyway, the ballad was about a guy who took a shower with a spider. Everything started out fine, but then the spider got a little too perverse in taking in the sights with its eight staring eyes and wound up getting washed down the drain.

It didn't have to be that way, Charlie sang. Everything would have been fine, if only that spider had kept its eyes to itself.

As for Kalib and Ama, the two just kept at it. Melanie had given Charlie a top Canon Rebel. As the two frolicked, he read the manual so that he could begin using it.

Ama, by the way, is Jewish and also vegetarian. She grew up in New York and her family did not celebrate Christmas, but, as it was a holiday and they had the day off, they would usually go to a movie and a Chinese restaurant.

Readers who were with me then will recall that right after Thanksgiving, she and Rex flew to San Francisco and then joined Ama's family at Lake Tahoe. After that, they drove into Canada and then followed the Al-Can Highway to Alaska. On their way to Anchorage, they stopped here. It was the end of Hanukkah, and so they lit the last candle of the menorah, right here. I was in Barrow at the time.

Then they flew to New England but now they are back, Ama just found an apartment and will soon start her new job teaching massage therapy.

I lay down on the couch to rest a bit. I closed my eyes, and slipped into that place half way between sleep and awake. I am not quite sure how he got there, but when I opened them again, Jobe was on my shoulder.

Jobe truly adores me and I adore him.

So I did another self-portrait. A bit later, Jobe's mom put him down for a nap in his cradleboard. A bit after that, we heard a loud, awful sounding retching noise come from the master bedroom, where Jobe had been sleeping.

He had thrown up badly. He was feverish.

So Jacob and Lavina took him to the emergency room at Mat-Su Valley Regional Hospital.

Kalib stayed with us.

They came back about three hours later. Jobe had come down with some kind of mix of bacteria and virus and had been given medicine. He would be okay, the doctor had said. His spirits were good and his smile was there. His parents decided to spend the night here.

Kalib watched as his dad stoked up the fire.

By the way - today, Sunday, December 26, is Kalib's third birthday.

Happy birthday, Kalib!

How did it happen so fast?

And why do all events just keep shooting by, faster and faster?

About midnight, Jobe began to get fussy. He cried and cried and it was hard to see and hear - this little grandson of mine, who is always so happy and good natured.

Lavina picked him up and patted and soothed and rocked him. In time, he settled down. And he slept reasonably well until 5:00 AM, when he woke up and cried again.

He seems okay now, though.

While Jimmy had hung out with us through much of the day, we had caught only flashing glimpses of Pistol-Yero and we had not seen Chicago at all.

This was because Muzzy had come to visit. Jimmy doesn't care, he does not fear the big-hearted St. Bernard, but those other two stay away from Muzzy.

Now that Christmas, 2010, was coming to its end and it was bedtime, Chicago stepped half-way into the hall to see if she could determine what was going on.

Despite Jobe's temporary illness, it was a good Christmas Day, well-below zero outside but warm in the love of family inside.

I enjoyed it, and when Melanie brought up the memory of the exploding nitro-squirrels that we used to come upon when she was little and we would go walking, I laughed loud and hard.

Even so, were I to tell you that I went through the day without my eyes ever watering I would be lying.

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At the weekends important Alaska book signing: Jobe greets progressive Phil Munger in the gleam of Sarah Palin's smile; Jobe spills the coffee; Jobe rolls on the floor / Amazing Grace

Here is Jobe and Melanie speaking with classical music composer and Progressive Alaska blogger Phil Munger at the important Alaska book signing that took place this weekend. Phil's wife, Judy Youngquist, was one of Melanie's teachers during her days at Tanaina Elementary School, and sometimes Phil filled in and taught her, too.

Another substitute teacher that Melanie had at Tanaina was Chuck Heath. Undoubtedly by now, the reader has noticed the face of Chuck Heath's famous daughter, Sarah Palin, beaming out from the three books on the lower part of the shelf between Jobe, Melanie and Phil. Probably, cynical readers are imagining that I set this picture up just this way - but no, I didn't.

It's just how it happened. I didn't even realize Sarah Palin's face was in the picture until after I took it. I was rather pleased when I discovered this, because it gave me some opportunities to play with today's title a bit and thereby draw in those legions of potential readers who only stop by if there is a hint that Sarah Palin might somehow be on this blog.

While I have generally tried to stay away from Palin on this blog, Phil has not been so reticent. He has written a great deal about Palin, whom he has known for decades.

But I have begun with a distraction. I had come to this place, Fireside Books in Palmer, because a signing for a very important book about Alaska was taking place here.

The important book that was being signed was "Purely Alaska - Authentic Voices from the Far North," a collection of stories written by 23 authors, most of them Native, spread across the roadless regions of Rural Alaska. The writings were inspired, encouraged, compiled, and edited by John Creed and wife Susan Andrews.

The two both began their careers as journalists, but then became teachers of journalism and writing at Chukchi College in Kotzebue - an extension of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. They eventually set up a statewide, long-distance learning program conducted via the internet. The stories in the book come from their students.

They are the real thing, written for love, not money and driven by the human desire to communicate one individual to another, one culture to another.

So I would suggest that readers consider buying this book, just as did Heather McCausland, for whom John is seen adding his autograph to Susan's. It will be worth it.

John, Susan and family.

John photographs Jobe.

I met first met John in September of 1981, when I flew into Kotzebue for the first time. He took me to a fish camp in Noorvik and helped me in many ways. I came back again after freeze-up and it was a wonderful, glorious, thing, because Kotzebue Sound had frozen solid and thick but there was not a snowflake upon it - just miles and endless miles of clear, smooth, slick ice.

We walked out onto that ice and then could not stop ourselves from running and sliding, running and sliding, running and sliding, until we had ventured well beyond the limits of common sense and safety. We had no gun and had a hungry polar bear come along, we would have been defenseless.

But it was such great fun that we didn't care and we knew that the odds were in our favor.

Yes, there was another book signing this weekend, at Costco in Anchorage, and it drew a whole lot more attention than did this one.

Trust me, though - this book will be the better, most informative and enjoyable read. The power and strength of the stories in it will live on when those in the other book have fallen into their place as a political curiousity and trivia, lacking depth and substance; hyperbole - a memento of a strange fad that rose out of my own little town at a troubled time in America to place an absurd and perplexing grip upon my homeland for a limited number of years.

But if you want substance, not fad, then read "Purely Alaska." Read the other one, too, if you like and if you are up to the task.

After we left the book signing, Melanie, Jobe and I walked less than one block to Vagabond Blues to get some coffee.

I know - some are wondering how I could be so fickle as to go get my coffee here and not at Metro Cafe, but Metro is closed on Sundays and we were in Palmer, anyway.

You know what the lyrics to the famous rock-and-roll song say:

"When you can't drink the coffee you love, love the coffee you can drink."

Such is my philosophy on the subject.

We ordered our coffee, got it, sat down and then Jobe grabbed Melanie's and spilled it all over the floor. It was okay. She just got another and we proceeded on, unperturbed.

Jobe did not get a coffee. Jobe drank from a bottle of his own mother's milk. Then he and Melanie played with the bottle cap.

Jobe is a very bright fellow, by the way; observant. He takes in everything around him. He enjoys the magic of learning and each conscious moment is magic for him. He brings magic back into my own life, even now, at this time.

And to Sujitha, sister of Soundarya - he brings magic back to her as well.

Jobe found that the lid to a bottle of mother's milk can also make a nice hat. He was very pleased with his new hat.

I should note that when Phil Munger first came to Alaska, he piloted a fishing boat by the name of Jo-be, pronounced just the same as Jobe, from Ketchikan to Cordova.

The three of us lingered at Vagabond for probably close to an hour, every minute of it pleasant and wonderful.

Finally, we had to leave. I had driven to Palmer alone with Jobe. Melanie had driven out from Anchorage to meet us. We wanted to drive back to the house together, so we left Melanie's car in Palmer and I drove us home to Wasilla.

I didn't time it, but it usually takes close to half-an-hour, so I suspect that it did this time, as well.

When we pulled into the driveway, Jobe was fast asleep in his car seat.

The light was exceedingly dim, so, even though I was shooting at 6400 ISO, I had to drop down to a quarter or half-second exposure, - very difficult to do shooting free hand - so I took my time and took several shots.

I knew that from inside the house, all Lavina could see would be our headlights. She had not seen her baby Jobe since the day before. She did not discover that I had shanghaied him off to Palmer until she and Jake arrived at the house to find us gone. I knew that she was wondering why I was taking so long to bring him in. 

When finally we did go in, we found people baking, icing, sprinkling and eating Christmas cookies. I would have taken Kalib to Palmer with me as well, but he was asleep when I left.

Melanie observes Jobe as he rolls across the floor.

And this one from India:

This is just a few frames short of being the final picture that I took during the trip that Melanie and I made to India to attend the wedding of Soundarya and Anil. I took the picture as our cab driver approached the Bangalore Airport. As I have earlier noted, other than the wedding pictures, I have never had the time to sift through my take to see what I have.

It has now become very important to me that I do, even though the task seems immense and impossible, given my other responsibilities. I have put the entire, India, Part 2, take into my Lightroom editor and so I set out to skim quickly through to see if I could get some kind of idea of what I have - particularly when it comes to images of Soundarya, and of Soundarya and Anil, as well as the man who walked a scorpion, the monkey who jumped the gap and the dinner of bananas that Vijay fed to us.

I scrolled rapidly through the entire take over the course of maybe three hours, possibly four, bypassing hundreds of images at a time but stopping every now and then, especially when I would spot an image of Sandy.

As I did this, I had the radio tuned to KSKA. In the final hour, as part of whatever program was on the air, a female folksinger was being interviewed. Every few minutes, the interviewer would pause to let her perform a song. I was absorbed in the pictures and did not pay much attention, but she had a nice voice and it made pleasant backgroud music.

Then, to my dread, I came to the final series of frames that I will ever shoot of Soundarya. At the very moment - THE VERY MOMENT - that my final image of Soundarya appeared full-screen in my editor, the folksinger began to sing...

Amazing Grace...

...and she sang it beautifully...

.. she sang it for Soundarya, my cherished Hindu soul friend - she sang it for me, the rebellious, strayed Mormon who has chosen to walk an indeterminate path...

Here is Judy Collins, singing the same song, for any who might care to listen.

I have probably listened to it 20 times since coming upon that final picture. I am listening to it right now. My eyes are not dry.

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Jobe deceives his grandmother and causes things to get hot around here; Christmas Tree; the cold, empty streets of Bangalore

Just in case anyone might doubt that Jobe was actually a willing and not an innocent accomplice to the deception that was played upon his grandmother, I would note this about him:

Of all the babies that I have ever known in this world, it is Jobe who is the most pleasant. He is the happiest, most good-natured baby that I have ever spent time with. Seldom does he ever fuss, cry or scream and if he does at all, it is only because something is truly wrong and the moment that wrong is righted, he is cheerful again.

And... might I add before I continue... Jobe loves his grandpa! In fact, he adores his grandpa! If you do not believe me, just look at this picture.

This is Jobe, and how he feels about me... how I feel about him...

Anyway - the deception: While I was still in Barrow, I got a call from Margie. Jobe had fallen ill, she said. He had an upset tummy, apparently caused by a bug of some kind. He was crying and pooping, doing all the things that babies with upset tummies do. He could not go to daycare, so she was going to go into town in the morning to take care of him while his parents went to work.

I called her the next day while she was at Jobe's house with him.

"How is he?" I asked.

"He is doing better," she said. "But he was pretty fussy this morning."

Fussy?

For Jobe to have been fussy, he had to have been feeling downright uncomfortable.

But here's the thing - Jobe had not been sick at all. And Lavina and Jacob skipped work that day when Margie thought she was caring for a sick baby just so that they could go to work.

Melanie had been concerned about our woodstove, getting close to 30 years old now, and had persuaded her siblings to join her in buying us a new one as a Christmas present.

So, while Margie was babysitting a Jobe who was not at all sick and I was hanging out in Barrow, our children had come out to the house to oversee the installation.

Margie stayed in town one more night and then the next day picked me up at the airport. I then drove us home. When we entered the house, we were both surprised to see this new woodstove, glimmering with heat atop the rock slabs in the living room.

It even had a glass door, so that we could look through to see the fire burning and the coals glowing.

So here is Jobe, in the arms of Charlie, as seen in a reflection off the window of the stove brought into this house through his deception.

Thank you, Jobe! Thank you, children and grandchildren!

Even before she had been deceived, Margie had picked this tiny tree that was growing right beside the house and would have to come down at some point anyway. She waited until I was home, until most everybody was present, to begin decorating it.

Decorating the tree. Remember what I told you about Jobe adoring his grandpa?

Jobe observes as his mom hangs a birch-bark canoe ornament. Perhaps next year he will hang it himself.

Jobe scoots toward a tiny helicopter.

Jobe and the helicopter.

Charlie and Kalib look at a picture Charlie just took.

Kalib admires the tree. "It's a real Charlie Brown tree," Margie said when she looked at this picture. Yes, it is kind of tiny and scraggly, but when you see it in real life, it is very pretty and somehow seems just right.

When children and grandchildren visit, they soon must leave. Remember the Volvo that Jacob bought Lavina for her birthday? It has lost its front bumper already. They must get it repaired now.

And this one from India:

In the middle of the winter close to two years ago, I woke up and came to this computer to find an email from Sandy waiting for me. She was still engaged then and she told me how late the previous night or rather in the very wee hours of the morning, she and Anil had been wandering about on foot through "the cold, empty, streets of Bangalore."

I laughed at the very thought. Bangalore streets - cold, empty? The steamy, overflowing with the constant surge of humanity streets of Bangalore? Cold? Empty? Still, I put the image in my mind of the two of them out there alone on dimly lit streets in weather that might have plunged down to maybe 60 or even 55 degrees walking, talking, sometimes serious, sometimes smiling, enjoying, happy to enjoy solitude in a city with scant idea of the meaning of solitude... and it was a pleasant image.

I then went to Barrow and when I arrived the temperature was in the -40's... -47 or -48 if I recall correctly. So I took a picture late at night, with not a soul on the road and sent it back.

"The cold, empty, streets of Barrow," I typed.

As to the above picture, I took it the day after Sandy and Anil married. Several of us were in an auto-rickshaw with a smoky, two-stroke engine and she was sitting right beside me. We would all eat pizza shortly.

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We celebrated Jacob's birthday in Anchorage; two cling together in the Bay of Bengal

As already noted, Margie and I had brought the two little ones home to spend the night with us so that Jacob and Lavina could go out and have a Jacob birthday date, all to themselves. Now, the night was over and it was time to take Jobe and Kalib back to their mom and dad and eat a birthday lunch with them.

I had planned to have Margie drop me off at the airport so that I could fly to Barrow, but then I had to postpone my flight until early Monday morning, as I just could not get everything done that needed to be done.

I found Jobe ready to go, however - looking quite dapper in his new hat.

And Kalib was ready with his spatula. It was time to head to town, to celebrate the birthday of their father, our eldest child.

We left the valley in fog and when we drove into Anchorage, we found this snow-laden truck, creating its own mini-blizzard.

The plan was to meet at the Spenard Road House. Charlie arrived just ahead of us and walked to the door, his shadow tagging along.

Amazing, isn't it? How such a slender guy can cast such a burly shadow?

Kalib momentarily replaced his spatula with Color Crayons, most of which would wind up on the floor.

Jobe, of course, intently observed his surroundings. He is a most observant little tot.

And so I remembered that night 36 years ago when I took Margie to the labor room in Provo, Utah. She had been looking forward to giving birth to our first baby, but now she was not happy. It hurt and she did not want to go through with it.

"I've changed my mind," she said. "Take me home."

She wasn't joking, either. She was very serious. When I refused to take her home, she got quite upset with me.

Later, though, as she held this little one to her breast and then offered me a kiss, she completely forgave me.

As we sat there, remembering, Jacob put Jobe on my shoulders and held him there. Lavina could not resist and so took my camera away from me and turned it back on me.

It doesn't matter whether she is using the most simple, low-quality point and shoot or her iPhone, Lavina knows how to take a picture. She could be a pro, if that were her heart's desire.

She caught it all, right here - the sadness that I cannot conceal, even in the most happy situation, coupled with the essence of all that I have to live for.

I hope you catch this one soon, Suji - your little love Jobe, with your Uncle Bill, half-way-around the world from you but traveling this hard part of the journey with you.

And you, too, Gane. Maybe one day we will have a little granddaughter niece for you and she can be your little love.

That's Carl, Rex's friend that he met through Ama, sitting with us. As for Rex and Ama, they are right now driving through British Columbia, headed toward the Alaska Highway so that they can drive to Anchorage and then catch a jet to New York.

In the past week, Interior temperatures have been as cold as -50, so I am a little concerned about this drive.

Muzzy had missed the dinner, but insisted that I come out and say "hi" before we left.

Margie wanted a mint, so I stopped at the Holiday Station by Merrill Field. As I went in to buy her one, this plane came by on final -reminding me of a promise I once made but can now never keep.

And then we set off to drive home.

It was foggy on the Hay Flats.

My plan now was to get everything done by 10:00 PM, 11:00 at the latest, go to bed, get up at 3:30 AM and then head back Anchorage and to the airport, where my flight was scheduled to depart at 6:00 AM.

I was well on track to meeting that goal, when Lightroom misfired, and then launched a two hour process to diagnose and repair itself and then, at the very end of that process, declared the catalog to be corrupted beyond repair. So I had to start anew. There would be little time for sleeping ahead of me.

And this one from India:

The Bay of Bengal, about 30 miles south of Chennai: They play, and cling together.

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Saga of the spatula continues; Bangalore girl

Today is Jacob's birthday, so yesterday I drove to Anchorage with Margie so that we could pick up the little ones and bring them home with us. This would give Jacob and Lavina a chance to go out on a date, just like they used to do before the babies came along.

As we drove towards town, we saw that this blue car had left the road and wound up on the other side of the fence. There were a number of police vehicles around, but I saw no ambulance. I hope this means that no one was hurt, but I don't know.

When we arrived at the house, we found Kalib with his spatula.

Lavina wanted me to take a picture of her and her boys in their Christmas jammies so that she could make a family Christmas card out of it.

Kalib put on his jammies, but still he kept hold of that spatula.

The idea was to get Muzzy and everybody posed, but Muzzy was shooting all over the place and Kalib had momentarily replaced his spatula with a shovel. All he wanted to do now was to shovel snow - Christmas card pictures be damned.

So, do you think I managed to pull a worthy Christmas card picture out of this chaos?

I don't know. I haven't looked at "the poses" yet. We will find out in time.

Soon, Kalib was dressed, had once again recovered his spatula and was ready to head back to Wasilla with us. 

When he realized that his parents and little brother were not coming, too, he cried a little bit, but held fast to the spatula.

Now it is late at night and Kalib lies in bed, next to his grandmother. The spatula is nowhere in sight, but still Kailb will fall asleep.

As for little Jobe, tied snug into his cradleboard, he has already fallen asleep.

And now, one frame from India:

Bangalore girl.

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