A dream lost

The job advertisement all but leapt from the page. It was exactly what I’d been looking for all these years since we left Denmark and – with it – Greenland, where I had been working as a mapping geologist in the summers. The job was managing a research station on a remote island in Disko Bay in central west Greenland. Disko Bay is where I had started my Greenland adventures. That first year, working from small boats on the south side of the bay was imprinted on my mind, a part of my vision of Greenland. Brilliant blue skies and glittering sea marked by towering distant icebergs standing impossibly tall, like turrets of icy castles. The freezing freshness of water on my fingertips, trailing over the side of the zodiac. And on days when the fog was low, hunched in our warm clothes against the cold heavy air, creeping over the mirrorlike water, weaving between stolid blue-grey icebergs that seemed to hang there, immoveable, like sentinals in the gloom. Wild days when the wind whipped white water across the bay and we watched from the safety of rocky islands. And my final day, that beautiful still day, working alone in a silent world, when a black shape rolled in the slick, blue sea, wet darkness sliding from its giant frame. A whoosh and a spray, rolling, wallowing, raising its mottled black and white fin high in the air, hovering, and then slapping it down against the still water. The whale and I shared this moment, this quiet memory. And all throughout, the dark, cliffed peaks of Disko Island, far off in the bay, stood in the background to all my memories of that first Greenlandic summer. Now, here was an opportunity to live there.

The day of the interview arrived. The early morning was already steaming in the tropical Darwin heat, blinding sunlight pouring through the window into the living room where I sat, preparing, on the cool tiled floor. Outside, the clattering screeches of hundreds of brightly-coloured parrots burst from a giant raintree. I trembled in anticipation, dreaming of cool Arctic mornings, distant icebergs, a vast silent world. I had delivered my infant son to his daycare centre and taken the day off work. Noone was home but me. Noone but my husband knew that I had applied for this dream job. The thought of it gripped me. Finally, waiting with my notes laid out before me, calm and prepared, the time finally arrived. The phone rang exactly at the arranged time. I answered,

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Cathy from the daycare centre. Your son is quite ill. He has stomach cramps and you need to come and pick him up.”

“….Are you sure I need to come right now?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yes, definitely, you need to come straight away.”

“OK, I’m coming.”

Immediately after I hung up, the phone rang again.

“Hello. This is Jørgen. I have the selection panel here for your interview. I’ll start by…”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, interrupting, “I’ve just had a call about my son, who is ill and I have to go and pick him right now. There’s noone else who can do it. I’m so sorry but we’ll have to postpone.”

There was a short silence and a half-hearted, “That’s ok. You have to do what you have to do,” and I hung up and raced out the door.

Later in the day, I sat once again in the sun-drenched living room, my young son in my arms, the weight of his small body heavy on my chest, lying limp, exhausted, sleeping. With a deeper heaviness, I thought back to that brief silence at the end of the phone line and I knew that my dream of Greenland was gone.