Dear Editor: Home again. Home again, Jiggity Jig. Yay!!
What the heck am I doing back in Sitka? For good. In my house. Happy!
I may be spending the rest of my life trying to figure that out. Why? Why am I happy? Darned if I can answer that, but for now it feels wonderful. Even on this rainy, foggy, chilly fall day, I’m happy. Content. Puzzled a lot of the time, but it just plain feels right. I belong here. My hometown, Sitka, Alaska.
And I’m not a Nobody. But my capacity to think that I am a Nobody is a familiar, seasoned, depressing thought. I’m rather good at it. Depression is comfortable. Lots of experience. I’m a Somebody Nobody knows. And, until recently, that was okay. But I’m 89 and a half now and I have a helluva lot to say before I kick the bucket. I can’t really “talk” anymore with any confidence that my thoughts will come out clearly, coherent, with insights flowing smoothly and simply, from the amazing life I have had – this unearned privilege to still be living.
Every once in a while I will have what I call a neurological hiccup, a little mistake that might tumble out quite by accident – surprising even me. But that is okay. You can laugh with me. None of us has a script for what this crazy life as a human being holds for us, each of us as a single member of the weird species shared now with about nine billion other humans in all our magnificent genetic, linguistic, and cultural diversity. No script. We just sort of wing it through to the end.
Maybe writing, not talking, will be my way to muddle on through whatever…
One Vintage Voice,
Nancy Yaw Davis,
Sitka High Class of 1954
