permission to discover and actively create who I was, not who I felt pressured to be.
seven
calm within chaos
W hen I was in sixth grade, my dad moved us back to Anchorage so he could go back to school to get his teaching degree. We lived on the university property in campus housing. The house was dark and small, but I enjoyed having my own bedroom again. The backyard was also small, nothing like having the freedom of a horse and thousands of wild acres to escape into.
It was a new urban experience, and I had trouble fitting in with the city kids. Most of my clothes were bought secondhand, and I recall my snowsuit had “Roberts” written in bold black Sharpie down the arm, clearly the surname of the previous owner. I knew I was low on the totem pole when the nerdiest and greasiest kid in class began to tease me for smelling like horse poop. Someone had found out I lived on a homestead with an outhouse and that was enough to unify the group decidedly not in my favor. Every social group needs a common enemy to rally against. Every group needs to identify an “other” to define and unify their own identity, and I appeared to be it. The amazing thing was that I knew forcertain I did not smell like horse poop. I smelled like Irish Spring. All the time. That was the year of the Great Soap Decision.
Money was always tight, but perhaps tighter now that we did not have our own vegetable garden and beef we raised. We had to buy all our groceries now, and the strain in the house was obvious. I remember a tooth rotting, and one day it just crumbled into tiny shards in my mouth. I knew we didn’t have the money to fix it and worried about telling my dad. We did get it fixed, though I’m not sure how he was able to swing it. My dad came up with some ways to cut costs elsewhere. He announced that we were going to pick one soap for the house. All soaps and detergents were basically the same, he said, so why waste money on five different kinds? It was our decision, he said, empowering us with the mission. My brothers and I weighed our options. We could use shampoo for dishes and laundry. We could use laundry soap for dishes and hair and washing our bodies. Or we could use dish soap for everything, or a bar of soap. Bar soap it was. For whatever reason we settled on Irish Spring. Dad bought a pack of fifty bars the next day at Costco. I remember the first time I washed my hair with it, rubbing that bar into my long hair and making a foamy green lather that reeked of musky, manly scent. The result was clean hair, though the texture felt more like something one feeds to barnyard animals than the luscious locks my burgeoning preteen womanhood had hoped for. A bar was ever present by the sink for hand washing, and also to be soaked in a sink of hot water until it was potent enough to cut the grease on the dishes. Laundry was a bit trickier. We would cut flakes with a sharp knife, the soap peeling in buttery layers, and drop them in the washing machine. I got to where I hated the smell of that soap. And the teasing at school I seemed helpless to stop.
Luckily for me, a popular, pretty girl named Diane took me under her wing. Maybe she felt sorry for me. Maybe she liked me. I have no idea. I liked her. She was confident and had a cool perm that she wore in a shortmodern style and had the latest in clothing and jewelry. She was like a walking Jordache poster. Pastel Esprit shirts with the collars turned up, blue eyeliner, black spandex with turquoise leopard-print slouchy sweaters, acid-washed denim—she was the culmination of the best the ’80s had to offer, and I wanted to be her badly. I also thought she was rich, which, looking back, is funny, because I realize now that she lived in a large cluster of low-rent apartments. But her mom was nice and her dad was a pilot and they had clean white carpets and she had things . . . lots of things. A boom box and mother-of-pearl earrings and Popsicles. And she shaved . No one had explained
seven
calm within chaos
W hen I was in sixth grade, my dad moved us back to Anchorage so he could go back to school to get his teaching degree. We lived on the university property in campus housing. The house was dark and small, but I enjoyed having my own bedroom again. The backyard was also small, nothing like having the freedom of a horse and thousands of wild acres to escape into.
It was a new urban experience, and I had trouble fitting in with the city kids. Most of my clothes were bought secondhand, and I recall my snowsuit had “Roberts” written in bold black Sharpie down the arm, clearly the surname of the previous owner. I knew I was low on the totem pole when the nerdiest and greasiest kid in class began to tease me for smelling like horse poop. Someone had found out I lived on a homestead with an outhouse and that was enough to unify the group decidedly not in my favor. Every social group needs a common enemy to rally against. Every group needs to identify an “other” to define and unify their own identity, and I appeared to be it. The amazing thing was that I knew forcertain I did not smell like horse poop. I smelled like Irish Spring. All the time. That was the year of the Great Soap Decision.
Money was always tight, but perhaps tighter now that we did not have our own vegetable garden and beef we raised. We had to buy all our groceries now, and the strain in the house was obvious. I remember a tooth rotting, and one day it just crumbled into tiny shards in my mouth. I knew we didn’t have the money to fix it and worried about telling my dad. We did get it fixed, though I’m not sure how he was able to swing it. My dad came up with some ways to cut costs elsewhere. He announced that we were going to pick one soap for the house. All soaps and detergents were basically the same, he said, so why waste money on five different kinds? It was our decision, he said, empowering us with the mission. My brothers and I weighed our options. We could use shampoo for dishes and laundry. We could use laundry soap for dishes and hair and washing our bodies. Or we could use dish soap for everything, or a bar of soap. Bar soap it was. For whatever reason we settled on Irish Spring. Dad bought a pack of fifty bars the next day at Costco. I remember the first time I washed my hair with it, rubbing that bar into my long hair and making a foamy green lather that reeked of musky, manly scent. The result was clean hair, though the texture felt more like something one feeds to barnyard animals than the luscious locks my burgeoning preteen womanhood had hoped for. A bar was ever present by the sink for hand washing, and also to be soaked in a sink of hot water until it was potent enough to cut the grease on the dishes. Laundry was a bit trickier. We would cut flakes with a sharp knife, the soap peeling in buttery layers, and drop them in the washing machine. I got to where I hated the smell of that soap. And the teasing at school I seemed helpless to stop.
Luckily for me, a popular, pretty girl named Diane took me under her wing. Maybe she felt sorry for me. Maybe she liked me. I have no idea. I liked her. She was confident and had a cool perm that she wore in a shortmodern style and had the latest in clothing and jewelry. She was like a walking Jordache poster. Pastel Esprit shirts with the collars turned up, blue eyeliner, black spandex with turquoise leopard-print slouchy sweaters, acid-washed denim—she was the culmination of the best the ’80s had to offer, and I wanted to be her badly. I also thought she was rich, which, looking back, is funny, because I realize now that she lived in a large cluster of low-rent apartments. But her mom was nice and her dad was a pilot and they had clean white carpets and she had things . . . lots of things. A boom box and mother-of-pearl earrings and Popsicles. And she shaved . No one had explained
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