Searching For Starfish

Below is an excerpt from Rasheena Fountain's forthcoming book, Starfish Blues: A Memoir. It will be released through Climate Conscious Collabs Press on April 22 and is available for preorder .

My daughter on Bainbridge Island, WA on July 1, 2016

Night had turned into day as I arrived at O’Hare Airport. I had arrived four hours early. In the back of my mind, I could hear the “I told you so’s” if anything were to go wrong on the journey. I didn’t want to risk making any mistakes. I nodded in and out of sleep as Faith sat next to me. She had never flown. I hate flying.

Days earlier she had told me I was ruining her life because I was ripping her away from her school and friends. She was nine years old. I carried the pressure of the move alone. I didn’t want any family to talk me out of what instinctually felt like a needed move for both of us. I told Dad through a Facebook message the day before my flight, and I never told Ma. I wondered if I was choosing ambition over stability.

At 10, when I visited Dad in England where he lived for a year after the divorce, he had tried to make me touch a sea star in an aquarium.

“Touch the starfish,” Dad said.

“No,” I said.

“Sheena , it’s okay. See, look, I touched it.”

“No,” I repeated.

No matter how much he begged me to touch it, I wouldn’t. I was afraid of a lot growing up: people dressed in Winnie the Pooh costumes even though I loved the character, the dark, dogs, bullets, people. Another part of me didn’t understand why I’d want to touch the weirdly textured creature sitting in the aquarium tank. What purpose did my touching it serve?

 Dad worried. To him, this small gesture might signal my limitations, that I wouldn’t reach beyond the systems that had entrapped so many of our family and friends in Chicago. He wrote this message to me repeatedly over the years in birthday cards when I lived in Chicago apart from him after the divorce: “Don’t be afraid to touch the starfish.”

I never told Dad, but I had the same fear as a child. Part of my decision to head west was because I wanted Faith to touch the starfish, to see life beyond cornfields and Chicago. I wanted to see what life looked like on my own terms, and I wanted her to see that too. I still couldn’t shake the feeling of irresponsibility during the trip. When we boarded the plane, Faith walked through the gate tunnel with her head down as if walking the plank. I felt scared too, but I had no room to show it.

...

There is something about the moment a flight takes off—the moment when you feel like you are losing the freedom to turn back. I held Faith’s hand during takeoff and pretended I was not scared of the moment, suspended in air, at mercy to gravity and my decisions. She had the window seat, and I closed the window shade so she couldn’t see outside—so I couldn’t see outside into the depths of my unknown. Faith looked unsure but secure enough sitting next to me. She relaxed on the flight when Sprite and Coke became an option, which I never let her drink on normal days. I grabbed onto hope and found safety within sleep on the flight.

If you have never flown across the flatlands of the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest, you might not know the transformation that can happen. Towards the end of the flight, when we drew near Seattle, I lifted the window shade to see the Cascade Mountains under thick clouds like enchanting smoke inviting us in. Faith looked out into the sky at the mountains and a clear view of Mount Rainier. She stared into the open sky. In that moment, I felt that I was ruining her life for her own good. 

Sam, a friend from Illinois, let Faith and me stay at their house in Ballard our first night in Seattle; they had moved from Central Illinois to Seattle years earlier. That evening Sam and their roommates hosted a barbecue in the backyard. We sat out late into the evening, and at 10:00 p.m., we watched the sun beginning to set. There I met my first California scrub jay. The bird, native to the West Coast, stood out to me because it was alone in the yard, hopping bravely on tree branches and squawking loudly. It was confident.

The next day, Jan, the director of the graduate program then, would be taking Faith and me across the Salish Sea to Bainbridge Island. The fact that Jan was also Black, which is rare for an environmental program, helped convince me to make the journey. One of the other reasons I decided to pursue the program was because it included people like me in their visions of environmental advocacy. It was said to center our experiences, even in cities. That morning Jan arrived in a black Mini Cooper to pick up Faith, me, and our lives reduced to suitcases. We would first drive to the Seattle ferry terminal to take the ferry to Bainbridge. Faith documented the trip on her tablet from the back seat.

My daughter seeing the Salish Sea for the first time on July 1, 2016

At the ferry dock, I met the Salish Sea for the first time as well as the big ferry that would transport us across it. I always say that pictures of the Pacific Northwest do not do it justice. I had watched nature documentaries, but seeing the blue Salish Sea, surrounded by the Olympics and Cascades, was the first time I experienced my breath taken away. I still get emotional when I look at Washington landscapes. I had seen the ferry in online pamphlets. To experience the pamphlets, the moving ferry coming to take Faith and me to our future, felt magical. I had not been on a ferry since crossing the English Channel to Calais, France, with Dad on my visit to England as a child. And this was Faith’s first time on a ferry. We walked on the deck. My favorite photo from this time is Faith bravely looking over the ferry’s banister into the Salish Sea. In the water’s gaze, maybe she thought she would see orcas on that first ride across, especially with them being the emblem of the city. Back in Illinois, we had watched videos on Seattle’s wildlife to prepare for the move, which helped lessen some of the nervousness. The videos of orcas swimming in the Salish Sea were our best distraction.

The campus where we would be staying temporarily was a short drive from the Bainbridge Island ferry terminal. One of the deal breakers in my decision to go to Seattle for the program was that we would have stable housing. Though, a few weeks before the move, the housing fell through. We were told that we would instead be living on Bainbridge Island, where the partnering school has a campus. The Bainbridge campus was for more traditional environmental education, and they hosted the overnight nature camp that Seattle Public School students attended. The traditional graduate program students had priority for that housing.

My program was part of new focus on cities and diversity. It involved us being stationed in Seattle while working in an environmental job as a practicum, which also provided income while studying. So, along with the other students in my program, I had a bit over a month to find housing in Seattle, one of the cities with the highest rent in the nation. I was upset at this development. I had already put in my notice at my job and was ready to head out; so, with some trepidation, and with some reassurance, I pursued the journey anyway.

I’m glad I didn’t know what was waiting ahead, but in the meantime, all of the out-of-state graduate students in my program would be staying for a little bit over a month in a cabin at the school in the woods. I had often taken Faith into the woods over the years, but this time we were not casually walking through as we did at Rock Springs Conservation Area in Decatur, Illinois, or strolling the prairie paths in Meadowbrook Park in Urbana, Illinois.

Redwoods and ferns lined the road. Birdsong greeted us. We soon entered a clearing, where we saw a cabin the size of a mansion. Faith and I were the first of the graduate students to arrive; we would be alone on the first night. Some school administrators greeted us; one gave Faith a key to the tree house on the grounds that we would need to locate by the map she also handed us. The tree house wasn’t just any tree house. Pete Nelson from Treehouse Masters built it.

Jan departed. Faith and I were left alone to explore. The mega cabin was intimidating; it had big glass windows and doors with no blinds or curtains over them surrounding us. It smelled of dried lavender in bunches on top of coffee tables. And it smelled of wood. It had two stoves, fridges, and dishwashers—two of everything one needs in a kitchen. It also had two stories. We learned we’d be on the bottom floor, but we explored upstairs anyway. I captured a photo of Faith staring out into the trees through one of the massive windows at the bottom of the stairway. This school in the woods was not like Camp Hastings in Illinois that I went to for a week in the sixth grade at Nash. Camping is fond memory from childhood, but I wasn’t prepared for this version of camping. Camp Hastings was a Jason movie. We’d be glamping on Bainbridge. I later learned that children helped design cabins. Watching Faith experience the campus helped ease a lot of the pressure I felt to make things work.

That night I experienced a deep darkness and silence. I couldn’t see any inkling of a streetlight. I was scared and unsure if this nature was still inviting, or if I had ventured further than I wanted. I’ve always been afraid of the dark, and I didn’t know what was in these woods. I stared into the darkness, wondering what was lurking, and paused at any sound. I was still in mom mode though, and I found ways to play down my fear.

Later that night, curiosity knocked on the door. I walked out the front entrance into the darkness. Close to the door, I saw a deer standing near me. It wasn’t startled. It stayed. I felt welcome. I stopped feeling fear in that moment.