Annual Stock-taking

Every now and then, but especially near my birthday, I take stock of my life by thinking of two Arvays. One is the Arvay of 8-10 years prior, and the other is the Arvay of 8-10 years into the future. Are they doing well? Am I doing right by them? It's my own personal reality check.

Past Arvay is easier, because I already know her pretty well. In the current case, she is soon to graduate with her bachelor's degree. She is engaged to marry a man she is not in love with. She is about to start a job she is not particularly excited about. If she had started my now-annual tradition before then, she might have realized that 2008 Arvay would not be quite so pleased with her and would urge her in a different direction. Nevertheless, I consider my mistakes of that time to be nonfatal and educational, and I am pleased with the long-term outcomes of even my bad decisions thus far. But, I know I won't always be lucky, so that is why I turn to Future Arvay.

Future Arvay, I am already indebted to. I took 3-5 years of her income that would have contributed to her nest egg, and passed it up to live in Fairbanks and earn a PhD. To do right by her, I must give her some half a million dollars worth of experience, joy, knowledge, and education. Of these, the PhD is the only tangible one. But I hope that she will always remember the singular beauty of an Alaskan Winter. How any moon over a quarter full provided enough ambient light to walk by. Stark, cold runs at sunrise, through crystalline air, my neck gaitor freezing into shape by my exhaled vapors. The warmth, love, and steady, devoted companionship of two dogs that will have already passed away (a thought that Present Arvay can hardly bear)--their beauty that literally stopped traffic, the feel of burying my nose into the thick, soft fur of their necks, the way they zipped to my side if I slipped on an icy surface, and wouldn't resume their explorations until I was back on my feet. And more specific things: the first heavy snowfall of last Winter, when my normally morose then-landlord stepped outside, looked up at the white confetti exploding from the sky, and laughed out loud with pure joy. The crunch of ice flowing on top of the river in the process of freezing. My own utter delight in seeing my first tiny moose tracks in Spring snow. The gentle, quietly beautiful dawns, the Winter sun hanging low in the sky, layering orange and purple over an otherwise pure white snowscape.The aurora throbbing in the sky, its violent drama juxtaposed against its utter silence. Wind so infrequent that the slightest breeze created a blizzard of long-accumulated snow floating down among the trees. Holding my fingers over my eyelashes to thaw the frost from them so I could blink freely.

The thing about memories is that it seems that you can't really chose which ones you get to keep. You can plan what you hope will be a memorable day, but a few weeks later, you have already forgotten the details. Yet ordinary things sometimes crystallize in our minds and stay with us for life.

I just hope that whatever Future Arvay is facing with the economy and the job market, whether the PhD turned out to be a good decision or not, she looks back on this time and decides that her half a million dollars were well-spent.