We were new parents when we moved from the Artic Circle to the Yukon Delta in 1963, having adopted a 22 month only old two weeks earlier. Luckily, I'd met the previous teachers of our new two-teacher school, and profited from their advice, which included the necessity to boil all drinking and cooking water and the name of the best babysitter in the village.
When we arrived the entire population was still at family summer fish camps doing commercial and subsistence salmon fishing. I put out the word through the Post Master, who came back to the village from his fish camp weekly to sort mail (on his kitchen table) when the mail plane was due. During a mail delivery from his open skiff, he told Susie that the new elitnarista (teacher) wanted to see her.
Susie was a four foot three woman, whose hunchback was the result of childhood tuberoses of the spine. What a little dynamo. At first sight she informed me, "Mondays I will do the wash (in a wringer machine); Tuesdays I will iron; Wednesdays I will clean the kitchen and bathroom; Thursdays I will mop floors and vacuum; Fridays I will bake bread."
After I caught my breath, I said, "Yes, Susie, you do that!"
All of that for $25 a week.
I'd learned to bake bread in Barrow the previous winter, but with my first pregnancy and a new-to-us toddler, I was happy to relinquish the chore.
Susie also took loving care of our three daughters as the years progressed. She took care of us for four years in her home village on the Yukon. Later she moved with us to another village on the Yuskokwim, until she returned home to care for her ailing father after a year and a half.
Susie also traveled to our cabin near Lake James. Although she had flown often in small airplanes, she was terrified of her first jet air travel. She thought we had arrived at our North Carolina destination and couldn't understand why we stayed so long in the Seattle airport. Having spent her entire 36 years on the flat, treeless tundra, she was awestruck by North Carolina's mountains and protested that she was "in jail" all summer, because she could not see any distance due to the tall trees on our property. Suzie complained about the sweltering heat and "wildlife," meaning light-bugs, wasps, bees and mosquitoes. She complained about NC mosquitoes, when Alaskan mosquitoes are as big as houseflies and flies are as big as wasps.
Susie was quite excited and impressed by Biltmore House where she walked around muttering, "Just like in the movies. I never believed it was real."
And she was highly surprised by "so many blondes."
While we hired Eskimo women in each of the nine villages where we taught during our 23 years in Alaska, there was only one Susie.
Occasionally on Saturdays teen sitters pushed our youngsters in a child size basket dogsled over the snowdrifts where stroller or pram would have been useless. Consistent with traditional childcare, I carried all of my babies on my back in a fur-lined "packing parka" out-of-doors. Indoors I often "packed" a babe in a qas'peq (the cotton parka cover) to free my hands for cooking supper, as pictured here.
Linda Edwards continues to be excited about her NC homecoming and remains awestruck and impressed years after returning to her 'Trail's End' cabin near Lake James. Linda is a member of Morganton Writers Group.
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