Better Together - Cara Askren

I. 

“It’s always better when we’re together.” 

––Jack Johnson, “Better Together” 

2615 NE 35th Place, Portland, Oregon: “Our Very First House.” I would give it a more creative name, only I can’t say I recall much else about it, being the ripe young age of two and a half when we left it for good. 

But childhood photos and early home videos tell me it’s where I learned to walk, to talk. It's where I embarked on short jaunts to the neighborhood park in nice weather with my two older sisters––Emma and Ilsa––my mom, my dad. Emma carried me every moment I wasn’t in my stroller, like I was her real-life baby doll in a colorful striped dress. I bounced about limply, pink tongue sticking out to make her laugh. Nearly every other time of year, given Portland’s near-constant rain, my parents busted out tiny yellow raincoats and red rain boots shaped like ladybugs so my sisters and I could play in our sidewalk’s personal collection of puddles. I never let go of my “hoo-hoo,” my binky with an owl on it. When my sisters were at school, it was the house where I first begged to watch Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper on DVD while I sat in a fluffy bear-shaped chair and fell asleep. 

Still, my own, single memory of that home is a little different. It’s nothing but flashes of the view from the dark hallway where I stood, a mere three feet tall, while my parents sat at our wooden dining room table in dim light. From opposite ends of it, they screamed at one another.

“Please stop fighting.” 

I must’ve said it louder in my head. Because the little voice of a little girl isn’t heard over the pain of two adults learning that even if they yell louder, they still can’t hear each other. Fighting for love of one another isn’t enough, fighting against each other hurts, and the pleas of a young daughter fade out amongst the sound of their own big voices. 

They didn’t make it. Life carried on still, as it always does. 

Three sisters held tight to one another as they house-and-parent-swapped every weekend, and as Our Very First House became the first in a chain of many more. For my mom, it was followed by “Mr. Jesse’s House,” where my sisters and I plucked the indigo blooms of hydrangeas off the side of our driveway in late springtime. We played dress-up in Disney princess dresses, tapping around the hardwood floors in our mom’s high heels and putting on dance shows for her enjoyment. We played the spoons, accordion, and tambourine on the front steps of “The Big House” while our mom––and innocent passersby––suffered through the beat-less tunes we made up as we went. 

All the while, I was thoroughly daddy’s little girl. I loved being around my dad; everything felt magical around him then. Even his first rental after the divorce, a single room above someone else’s garage, which we still affectionately call “The Treehouse.” It’s where we once overflowed the kitchen with popcorn and were practically swimming in it––at least that’s how it felt to my young and imaginative mind. Then there was “The Shaver House,” where ours was the sidewalk graffitied with chalk-drawn daisies and notes of love for our dad. Ruby, our dad’s Collector’s Edition 1997 Toyota Land Cruiser, featured in photos of our masterpieces as she patiently awaited our next family adventure, chalky little hands welcome to ride in her back seat. Jack Johnson’s best bumped through her speakers every time, his music the soundtrack of life with our dad. The memories still hug close to her worn leather. “The One With the View of Mt. Hood” was as much a treasure as the others, full of brisk mornings spent on the back deck eating pancakes the size of our plates, something my dad was so talented at making. It was also the first one my sisters and I never really lived in. 

Because by then, June 2009 had come and gone, leaving a wound that cut my heart deep. For not even the pain of growing up with divorced parents, forever with hearts in two homes, can prepare three young girls for moving to another city with their mom, another state, while their dad stays behind. I attempted to stitch up the scar on my heart with the threads of my moms truth––about the divorce, my childhood, the move––and my own. But it wasn’t enough to put me back together when all I wanted to do was hold tight to my dad. Even amongst the revolving door of houses and apartments that Portland had held for us over the years, I could pretend I was balanced when he held my tiny hands in his or put me on his shoulders. But when we moved to California, I could no longer feel him, could no longer be held up by him. Nor could I continue to ignore the instability of the constant movement and separation I felt between my parents. And it just got worse. 

As little as I was, and as much as I couldn’t make sense of being away from my dad, I could still feel the pain of it. First grade in Los Altos was just me crying for the first hour of every day in class because I missed him, and a classmate named Brandon waved down Mrs. Sanderson to grab me a tissue. It was a complete 180 from what I had known, and I never understood it. I just knew that at first, my dad would visit us once a month, leaving stuffed animals for his three charms in the little red wagon outside their mom’s first California rental (less affectionately known as “The Bug House”––not to be confused with The Big House––as it was overrun with crickets and earwigs). But over time, my sisters and I saw our dad less and less frequently until we saw him maybe twice a year by high school. 

While I held onto us as tightly as I could for as long as I could, I felt he’d let go. We’d drifted, and I blamed him for it. Blamed him for not coming to Los Altos with us in the first place and choosing not to be there as my sisters and I grew up, because all I’d ever known was that my mom offered to have him join us, and he didn’t. I never knew why, from him. And it was a question I was far too afraid to ask given that, by the time I realized it was so important for me to know, we’d lost any real vulnerability between us to reopen a wound that had cut us all so deep––and possibly begin to heal it. 

So I stayed within a life of several more little houses and apartments in a new city that I came to call home after Portland, surrounded by my mom and two sisters in the sweet, safe urban wild of Los Altos. It was everything I knew so casually and loved so comfortably for many years, and I was only ever left to wonder about life beyond. But when I moved to Switzerland for university at 18, my first step into the unknown, my world began to unravel. A rocky roommate situation threw me, but my mom was there before I could fall. My comfort, safety, fierce protector. Together, we got me set up in a new room, the first little home of my own. We hung up my art and blasted Shania Twain, filling the space with the joy and promise of new life. We walked to the chocolate shop in the train station on Sundays during her visit because nothing else was open––a tradition I’d continue for myself in her absence. She created those moments of comfort for me, even when she wasn’t there. 

With my mom as my forever rock, I slowly began to take steps further into the unknown wilderness, into parts of the world that I always imagined I’d never touch, never reach, never know intimately the way I so wished to. Much akin to the feeling of wanting to know someone who was once so close to me, but over the years became more and more of a mystery: my dad.

II. 

“After all of this time, after all of these seasons, after your one decision to go to the water for reason, it’s only the ocean and you.” 

––Jack Johnson, “Only the Ocean” 

I was going to Antarctica.

I knew no one except my professor, Kevin; my bag felt embarrassingly large; I had to complete one physics final on the 14 hour flight and still had a calculus final to look forward to taking once I got on the ship. 

But I was going to Antarctica. 

I’d done scary things before: Leaving for Switzerland with little to go on but ambition and a desperate need for something new. Paragliding over the Alps to get over my fear of heights. Committing to study environmental science based entirely on heart, my passion outweighing any semblance of scientific knowledge I had at the time. Transferring schools after a couple years, in keeping with my parents’ longtime two-year housing streaks. But landing in Christchurch, New Zealand, after our long-haul flight from San Francisco, I was the farthest I’d ever been from anything I knew, and I was only going to get further. Not to mention, I had some fear of the fact that I’d only ever spent one day on a boat whale watching in the Monterey Bay before this, and I didn’t exactly do well without my nausea meds. And then of course the ship could sink and I could die. That was scary, too. 

But it was a choice I needed to make for myself, a commitment I’d made to help Kevin’s phytoplankton research, and a challenge I wanted to face for all the unknown excitement it held. So I’d do it scared. Equipped with sea bands to wear on my wrists around the clock, plenty of Dramamine, nausea patches for behind my ears, and two packs of ginger candy chews, I joined my mobile home on the sea: the Nathaniel B. Palmer Research Vessel Ice Breaker. She was a beast of a ship at 308 feet long, practically neon orange, and unlike any home I’d lived in before, but she’d be home nonetheless. 

At sea, 52 days. 

My first 14 days worth of journal entries are riddled with uncertainty and discomfort as I adjusted to the new routine. 12 hours on, 12 hours off, 3pm to 3am. Every. Single. Day. Sleeping, eating, working, playing with the same 15 faces, day in and day out. Balancing against the rocking of the ship and drowning out the constant background rumble of the engine. Celebrating Christmas and New Year’s with people I didn’t know. Resting in a tiny bunk, just big enough to accommodate me and the traveling teddy bear I’d bought myself in Switzerland a few years prior, named Honey Bunches of Oats. Testing instruments for research. Learning card games in my off time, never quite getting good at the game of Nerts. Spending all day outside just staring when we were passing through sea ice, every now and then catching a glimpse of an iceberg. Crazy to say I now have a favorite iceberg somewhere out in the South Pacific, but I have to speak my truth. (It looked just like the Colosseum in Rome!) 

Then January 7, 2025, rolled around. 

January 7, 2025 

Location: The ocean! 

It’s 2am, so shift is almost over, and Ali and I have been sitting dully in the Hydro Lab for the past hour, waiting expectantly for experimental water samples that will never come. It’s just our luck that Henry, one of the late-night marine technicians, barges in to share a piece of mildly exciting news: 

“Off the back deck, what looks to be a porpoise, starboard side!” he quips before abruptly leaving to see it for himself. Sometimes being on the ship felt like one long game of Telephone.

“Shit, do we wear float coats on the back deck? Which side’s starboard?” I ask Ali, frantic. 

“Umm… I wanna say yes?” She guesses. “And… I wanna say we’ll follow the crowd on that one.” 

So “Hysteria” by Def Leppard fades into the ever-present background whirring of the ship as Ali and I rush down the ever-tilting hallway. 

We’re shocked! The chance of seeing maybe what looks to be a porpoise! We’ll take it after all this nothing-but-open-ocean we’ve been seeing. We’re already running down the hall to the small closet teeming with bright orange, smelly float coats, overused rubber steel-toed boots, pairless gloves, and bright blue U.S. Antarctic Program hardhats. 

“Go! Go! Go! We have to hurry!” Ali urges as I sift through mountains of gear.

In an act of pure desperation to witness the possibility of wildlife on this otherwise wildly uneventful research cruise, I grab a too-large coat and am running after Ali, who’s running after Stevie, another desperately bored member of our crew. I keep forcing it on over my teal puffer jacket as the sleeves just get tighter and layer after layer bunches up around my elbows. Ew ew ew, gross, I think to myself––this happens to be one of my least favorite feelings texturally––tugging the sleeves back down to my wrists. 

By now, we’ve made it to my personal most-dreaded staircase on the ship! I mind my hands and feet, knuckles white as I hold the rail tightly with my right hand and watch that my salty Blundstones don’t get caught on the rough sandpaper of the stairs. With no medical team on board, I have to be more careful not to cause myself yet another ankle injury beyond the one I got last week in exactly this spot. Odd to say that on land, I have a phobia of crossing the street. In the open ocean, I guess I’m scared of climbing the stairs. 

Made it! It’s the little wins, really. 

Safely at the top of the stairs and now outfitted in our ridiculous coats (hard-hat and steel-toed-boots free, I will admit), we unlatch the dogs (latches) on the heavy door to the back deck and head starboard (that would be the right side of the ship). Wind whips at every inch of exposed skin, and suddenly I’m grateful for the extra layer of protection my float coat offers, even if it does smell like too many years’ worth of distilled mariners’ B.O. We push past a wall of wind and look out to sea where Henry, Stevie, and a couple others are already waiting expectantly. 

Before I even see anything of note in the water, I’m taken absolutely by the sunset. Vibrant oranges, pinks, yellows paint themselves across the sky, reflecting the most serene light onto the ocean waves, where— 

Oh my god?! Was that what I think it was? 

My hands grip the bright orange side of the ship as I peer farther over to get a better look. A pop of black breaches the water again, a small curved dorsal fin standing out against the cool blue of the ocean waves. Before I know it, a baby orca is playing in the ocean before me, backdropped by the most stunning sunset, and I feel like I could cry and pass out and scream all at once. Tears come first, my eyes misting at the sight but mostly from the wind. (No really, it was the wind, just like someone cutting onions.) And for a while, I just stare at her––the curve of her dorsal fin indicated her gender to me right away––the sweet baby wandering free in the open ocean, out there on her own. I giggle as she flips and twirls and plays before us. I take in the way her tough, black hide shines with saltwater and contrasts with the markings around her eyes and belly. Her size and the slightly orange-yellow hue of her markings mean she’s still quite young; it’s a sign of an underdeveloped blubber layer that will thicken as she grows. 

I can’t help myself from sending up a little prayer to the Universe, to Mother Nature, to God, to somebody, that she’ll make it out there, even if she does it alone.

Standing on that little, ever-moving and yet inescapable, oddly consistent version of home in the brutal, whipping wind of January at sea, I saw myself reflected in her. For who I was then: a young girl, a lone being in a vast expanse of unknown, open ocean. And for where I was now: still alone in a stretch of sea, perhaps having little sense of direction to the untrained eye, but a natural instinct within me guiding me where I needed to go. Instinct and intuition had guided both of us to exactly that moment, each thriving in our connected yet separate realms. I’d return home to family after this cruise. I hoped she, too, would find her way back to her pod and to her mother’s side, to be taught the ins and outs of orca-hood, learning to be a ferocious top predator to the ecosystem and gentle matriarch to her pod all at once. 

I considered how young orcas can’t survive in the wild without relying on their mothers for at least their first six months of life. Relying on them entirely for nutrients, protection, life skills, knowledge, hunting strategies, social rules. I was brought up by a strong mom too, for which I will always be eternally grateful. But humans aren’t just like orcas; a kid needs both her parents. The realization hit the moment I saw that baby orca, a very visceral reminder of precisely what led me to join this cruise. It was clear I’d been drawn to the wilderness over the years prior, in a desperate attempt to learn the unknown world in a way I felt I never would the wild, mysterious thing my dad had become to me, as the distance created a wall between us.

And it was finally time to break the barrier. 

III. 

“The best I can do is try to show you how to love with no fear.” 

––Jack Johnson, “My Little Girl” 

Maybe that baby orca, who I only know to have wandered the open ocean on her own in those early moments of January 7th, is back with her pod now. 

Maybe her markings have whitened with age. Maybe she’s something more like 12 feet long now, rather than the eight or so she was when I saw her. Maybe she’s participated in her first kill, maybe she’s still just learning to play. More than anything, I hope she’s where she’s meant to be, not left lost and wondering where her family is. I hope she knows them intimately as she’s supposed to and is able to rely on them as she’s designed to, for her first several years of life. I can imagine her doing her silly little flips and twirls in the waves next to her pod, the way she once did for me, the way my sisters and I once did for our parents back in Our Very First House. I can only hope that one day, she’ll move some other budding environmental scientist to  tears with the beauty and strength and perseverance that only a being like her can hold, inspiring them to fearlessly face the unknown, as she did for me in the few minutes we shared.

It’s because of her I can face my dad today, finally ready to voice a question I’ve been sitting on for over ten years. My voice and my hands shake as I throw it quickly out of my mouth so it doesn’t get stuck. 

“Why didn’t you come with us?” 

We walk the forest path along Terwilliger Boulevard behind his house, a road that has slowly become so familiar to me. It’s the longest I’ve known either of my parents to ever live in a single house: twelve years. I’ve come and gone from this one enough times to know where my things will always be, what the view outside my window looks like in each season, and that the street used to be a queue of consecutive potholes you needed a measure of luck to make it past before the city finally patched them up in recent years. I know that each time I’m here, I can count on my dad to have washed the sheets of the tiny twin bed I’ve had since 2005 and turned my comforter to the pink side, rather than the orange. He’ll have been watering my ponytail palm, Nico, who I placed in his care when moving abroad nearly four years ago. And he’ll have certainly already considered when during my visit might be a good time for some Por Que No (home of the world’s best tacos), since that’s always the number one destination on my list anyway. 

And so, on this path into a familiar, small wilderness, laughs make their way past tears as we reach one another again, and the wall between us comes crashing down. As we talk through the pain, through the wild, lesser-known truths of our family history, defenseless and curious. I rediscover the stability I once found in him before the move. I sense a third thread stitching its way through the scar on my heart so that it might, at last, begin to heal. I gather strength from the lessons of that early January moment, between only the ocean and me, as I trust that this step of knowing each other again will keep us together, loving one another without fear of losing one another, and letting us be better together.