Macy the cat takes a big leap; Happy birthday, Lisa!
Friday, November 22, 2013 at 8:57PM 
Nasuk was visiting Gabe when I dropped in last night. Macy took a big leap for him. And now I leap to the next anniversary I commemmorate today:
On the evening of November 21, 1985, I was checked in to the Top of the World Hotel in Barrow and I was plenty nervous. I was about to start a new magazine on behalf of the North Slope Borough to give some coverage to the Iñupiat way of life. I wondered what the hell had ever gotten into me to think I could even do such a thing. Plus, Margie was very pregnant, but still had two or three weeks to her due date. The phone rang. It was her. She had gone into labor. A neighbor was going to drive her from Wasilla to the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage.
I had been there for the births of all four of our children so far and wanted to be there for the fifth. It seemed impossible. Margie had undergone 13.5 hours of labor for Jacob and then each consecutive labor had been shorter and shorter up to Melanie, who took just over four hours to be born. There was no way I could get there in four hours.
In those days, the now defunct Mark Air had a red-eye flight that left Barrow at something like 2:30 AM and landed in Anchorage about two hours later. I booked myself a ride - I was the only passenger - me and two stewardesses alonr on a 737 jet. I wonder why Mark Air went out of business?
I entered the delivery room close to seven hours after Margie went into labor. She was still in labor. My baby had waited for her daddy. And so it was I greeted Lisa at her first breath. I loved my new daughter but to her chagrin believed myself to be a despiser of cats. On a hot day in July when Lisa was five, I sat down on the back porch to eat a ham sandwich. A skinny, adolescent kitty stepped out the woods, walked up to me and asked if I might share my ham with it. Lisa appeared.
"I'm going to cook this kitten for dinner," I told her. "No you're not!" Lisa countered. The cat stayed. I fell in love with it. So did the whole family. Happy birthday, Lisa! Thank you for not letting me cook The Whole Kitten, Kaboodle.
Reader Comments (1)
:) I am certain that if you HAD cooked that cat, your relationship with your beloved daughter would be quite different today.