Three months of almost unyielding sunlight. It's a race against the clock, because as wonderful as things seem now, every Alaskan knows that there will be many long and dark months ahead before the next time they can fully enjoy that warm glow. That's where I find myself in this kitchen memory. It's late June. I'm in the kitchen with my father. Mom's off at either a board meeting, or an event for one of the many community service organizations she dedicated so much of her time to. I can't recall and it's not important. It's my time with Dad.
Throughout my childhood, my father made his living in much the same way I do now, away for long stretches building the remote gravel pads and ice roads that make resource development possible in Alaska. Just as I know I don't have long to enjoy this summer, I also know my Dad will be leaving even sooner.
It's somewhere around nine in the evening. We've just gotten home from a little league game, and the sun is as bright as it was at three in the afternoon. My dad has just made me his signature breakfast dish, eggs with diced ham and "spuds". It's fantastic. It's better than mom's breakfasts and that's why I'm eating it for dinner. I've got to make up for all the Frosted Mini-Wheats, and 7-11 muffins that I will consume in the hasty rush to get to school in the Fall.
We're sitting next to each other at a hundred year old antique round table. I don't know why my mother felt it was necessary for a family of three to have such a hulking relic in their eat-in kitchen. The chairs are just as old, creaky and fragile. I'm eleven and my feet finally touch the floor flat when I sit in them. I'm eating my eggs off of a cheap white Correlle plate. It has some goofy gray and pink avant-garde floral design around the edges. It's a stupid design, and just like ladies with gigantic curled over bangs, it only belongs in 1993. I'm drinking water out of an old reused plastic 7-11 cup. It's decorated in a mishmash of Alaskan themed paintings that have started to fade after hundreds of cycles through the dishwasher.
Dad and I are reflecting on something, or he's telling me a story. Probably some fantastic story about getting caught in a winter whiteout for three days in the cab of a piece of equipment. It's the sort of grandiose tale fathers like to tell their sons to make them proud of them. I'm loving every minute of it and upset when it's interrupted by the ring of the telephone. Dad reaches around, takes the gigantic AT&T cordless phone from the cradle and holds it to his ear.
"Hello", my father says.
"Uh, huh... ", his fork falls to the floor, along with his jaw. He doesn't breath for what seems like an eternity.
He regains his composure, somewhat, and says "Okay, thank you". He presses the off button on the phone, and pushes down the metal telescopic antenna, which again, only belongs in 1993. I watch him gently place the phone on the table.
I know there is bad news on my horizon. Has he been called back to work early? Is my summer over this soon?
"What is it Dad?"
My father looks around him. He looks everywhere but at me. The long pause in his reply tells me this isn't work, it's something else. He's never been this way. Even the time he got the call to be gone for sixteen weeks, he still looked at me to tell me he had to leave.
"Dad?"
My father refocuses himself. He takes his glasses off and lays them on the table. He runs his hands over his face. Then he turns towards me, but can't look me in the eyes. Instead of looking directly at me he stares at the dog stretched out on the floor between us beside the table.
"Son...
Jason...
was killed in a car wreck tonight...
his grandfather too...
they were coming back from Homer...
towing the boat...
a fucking semi hit them...
and...
they're...
gone Son."
Before his words sink into me, my Dad has left the table. He's standing at the sink, looking out the window into the back yard. He's facing away from me. My Dad doesn't want me to see the look on his face, nor the tears in his eyes. My father knows that, through no fault of his own, what he has said to me is the most painful memory I will ever have in my younger years. It's now tormenting him, because he feels a double-dose of pain and guilt. Pain for the suffering he knows he's about to see in his son, guilt for bearing the bad news that hurts me.
I look away from my father and back to my breakfast. In an instant my once warm and bright evening meal has been ruined. The eggs are cold, the spuds are soggy. The reality hits me like an avalanche: my best friend is gone. Just like the warm and beautiful summer soon will fade, he has left. However, he's not coming back. There will be no more summers for Jason. No more winters. No more sharing car rides home from hockey practice on cold winter nights. No more anything. I will have to suffer through a cold and seemingly endless winter, alone, without the hope of a bright May playing baseball with my friend to carry me through. Just ashes in an urn and a hockey rink that bears his name, that's all that will remain of my beloved friend Jason Peterson when the winter comes in 1993.
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