“Oh. My. God!” I shriek into the darkness. “There is a wolf outside our window!”
Sherman rolls over on our air-mattress, not even batting an eye-lash. “It’s all the way down the tundra. This isn’t Little Red Riding Hood. It’s not going to try and get you.”
“I can see it,” I stammer. “That’s bad enough.”
This scenario plays itself out at least once a day: me freaking out over the smallest thing because I remember that I have moved to the Arctic Circle with my polar bear of a lover and our cat, Miss Richard Hatch. Perhaps Sherman is right to shake-off my lunacy; I did name my cat after a reality television star after all. I haven’t exactly pulled my life together is what I’m getting at. On the other hand, he could show a little more empathy, too. I did leave a wonderful life of unemployment several thousand miles below the 60th parallel in exchange for a life as a mediocre art instructor in the land that ice takes a vacation to get away from—flying on a twin Otter no less.
Fortunately, I am a little bit in love with Sherman. This is partly because he is so good at complementing me. “You really remind me of Cameron Diaz,” I recall him howling the other night after watching a bootlegged version of Bad Teacher that ended up being dubbed in Korean. Admittedly there isn’t much to do up here in the Arctic. Especially when you bed-down with a polar bear, since the obvious activities are hunting polar bear and eating polar bear. Not wanting to kill one of Sherman’s relatives—not yet anyway—we end up watching a lot of movies.
I have been losing a little weight around my mid-section, but that is really no reason for Sherman to compare me to the most ridiculous celebrity in America, next to Tori Spelling. “You mean because I am looking so svelte these days?” I asked, knowing what was coming next.
“No, because I think you are probably about as good of a teacher as she is,” he burst out laughing. “Plus, you have a bit of a drinking problem.”
It’s true, but it’s not what you think. I don’t have a drinking problem when it comes to alcohol. Alcohol and I have a very stable relationship. The kind most people mistakenly associate with lesbians. You know, where two people have found that magical place where they complete one another without causing a hangover in the morning.
No. My problematic relationship is with Dr. Pepper. I love that stuff so much that if it were legal, I would marry it, divorce it and take it for all it’s worth, before coming back to Sherman.
This isn’t really an issue up here in the land that time forgot though since we rarely have access to anything carbonated, let alone pop. However, yesterday when I took my daily stroll to the Co-operative to harass some of my students to come back to class, my jaw dropped and the fat kid inside of me came rushing out. There, on the counter, was a box of Dr. Pepper. A box! Beside this was my other addiction—limes.
After my inner fat kid took a moment to rub the hamstring we pulled running the three feet it took to get over to the precious elixir, I read the label accompanying the sweet, sweet nectar: Dr. Pepper ONLY 3.50$ a can!!!
“What the ba-hiffy!” I screamed. I couldn’t believe they were trying to charge three dollars and fifty cents for a can. Where was Ashton Kutcher and why was I being punked? I mean, a bottle I could see, but this was just a can. I had to keep myself in check though. I remember the last time I lost it in the Co-op over the frozen pizza that was only fifteen dollars. If I continue yelling at processed foods the people of my new land are going to think I am a lunatic. Which I am, but that’s a nugget I like to share only with the polar bears I sleep with. So I purchased two cans and bolted—my go-to finishing move.
As I opened a can of the sugary goodness, I looked around the tundra to assess the notion that I am not entirely unlike Cameron Diaz.
Don’t tell Sherman, but the thing is that I wouldn’t trade any of this. Don’t get me wrong. There are things that I wish were true about myself—my life—that will probably never come to fruition. I wouldn’t mind being taller, smarter, or a little lot better looking. But, if I could have those things, I would undoubtedly be somebody else. I wouldn’t make that trade for anything. Well, maybe if I could be Gerard Butler, but only before he filmed The Bounty Hunter.
“I’m definitely not Cameron Diaz,” I finally muttered, defensively.
“You mean because you don’t bleach your hair anymore?” Sherman quickly responded. He certainly does have a swifter wit than I do, but that’s not saying much.
“No. I mean, you’re right,” I granted him. “That was an epic fail.” Bleach blonde is a look that barely works for anyone this side of the nineteen-eighties. This is especially problematic for someone who looks like Chucky, and not in a good a way. I actually lack the one redeeming quality of that deformed lunatic doll—motivation.
No. What I was getting at was a quote David Foster Wallace once told a school of new graduates as they took that next step in the maturation process—defaulting on their student loans. That real freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad, petty, little, unsexy ways, everyday… whether we see them or not.
I thought it sounded nice at the time. Quaint even. The way a person might recall something as a mantra or if they were to post a link to it on their Facebook page without ever really getting around to breathing life into the words themselves. But now, as I look around the tundra and consider the mental image of me with Cameron Diaz’s bangs, I think I get at least a hint of what Wallace really meant that day.
When we love people we move mountains for them. Not real mountains. Not metaphorical ones either. When we really love the people around us we care about who they are in the banal, imperfect moments of their everyday lives. We move mountains within ourselves to make space for them. We climb over our stereotypes and we deconstruct our long-held perceptions of how we saw the world before they entered our field of vision. We change the landscape of our hearts because those people become a part of how we see the one thing we always thought was unchangeable—ourselves.
Or, maybe it is they who move the mountains inside of us. Because it is their presence within us that changes us in ways our eyes and minds have yet to understand. The people we really love become a part of us and we are forever different in subtle, yet, foundational ways that defy the logic of our misbegotten world.
Sometimes it just takes a little time and the application of a few snow tires to get over those mountains, especially the ones that first appear so daunting—the very ones most worth excavating.
“No. What I meant was…” I began to say. Then I paused. Sherman has moved an awful lot of mountains for me this year. I mean, he adopted a cat named Miss Richard Hatch, sight unseen. That’s love. “You’re right. I am kind of like Cameron Diaz.”
On the outside, I am just some Cameron Diaz doppelganger. I probably always will be. The reason I forget this most of the time is because of Sherman. It’s his little sacrifices, the ones that go completely unnoticed most of the time, that make me believe I can do anything. Even move to the Arctic Circle and carve out a life in the snow.
As I collect some ice to chill the last of my Dr. Pepper with zest, I don’t know what comes next. What I do know is that the version of me that will find out is part polar bear, part rabid doll and a little bit Miss Richard Hatch, because, well, those are the people that have moved the mountains inside of me this year. They changed my world and, in the process, became a part of my soul. A part now obscured by the Northern Lights in a land free of mountains, flush with snow and in need of a screen for that window.
