I was.... relieved to be back on US 31 heading north. I felt like someone had played a trick on me on my journey back through Jefferson Avenue. How disappointing to find a pile of rocks where I had expected to see a mountain.
The beautiful drive along the highway a mile or two inland from Lake Michigan slowly brought me back to the present. Like a hunted deer suddenly alerted to its nemesis, I was startled awake by the sudden change in the air as the surrounding forest changed from predominantly deciduous to decidedly coniferous. Most novice travellers tell me they can sense a change when they pass a line running through the state east to west near Cadillac. They know then that they are "up north," or in "God's country." I know it as the pervasive odor of pines, hemlocks, spruces, and firs. The farther north you go, the closer you are to driving right into a stand of them, so crowded together are they. Stands of pine are the most intriguing. You can walk beneath them on a bed of needles. Their shadows create a sort of eerie hue. You could walk through a pine forest at night and have no clue where you are going. As soon as one tree comes into view, another passes out of sight.
At Ludington, the highway ended, and we had to drive east on 10 for a half hour before we could continue north towards Traverse City and Sleeping Bear Dunes. Ludington, home of 4th of July vacations since I could spit. My grandmother rented a room at Nader's Lakeshore Motor Lodge, for a week, nearly every single year. I was a certified shuffleboard king in those days. And everybody made such a big deal when I came anywhere close to hitting the "10"! "Whoa ho, Donnie boy! You're a natural! Attaboy!" Okay, sure, grandpa. I would play with him, then after I tired him out, I'd drag my dad out there, and then my brother, and then my mom, and, well, you get the picture. I was never not outside during the summer. I spent so much time in the sun it completely bleached my brown hair.
I went inside only to eat. Cereal in the morning. Those little travel boxes. Frosted Flakes especially. We have the same thing where I work now. It's odd how I pass by a rack of them every day without blinking an eye, though when I was a child I was absolutely fascinated. It was like the regular box, but little! Amazing! And I could eat the whole thing! I would take the plastic bag out of the box, play with the box, open the bag, play with it for a minute, put the cereal in the bowl, spill some, request milk, play with it some more until it became soggy (but not un-crisp), and then I would eat. It's no wonder four year-olds are not interested in girls. Who has time?
Grandma was responsible for making sure we had enough to eat, which usually meant putting food in front of us every ten minutes. Where the hell did she get it all from? I thought she must have had a secret walk-in freezer built into the side of her car. She also was responsible for reminding us to wear sun tan lotion. This looked quite like a racehorse prancing to get out of the gate. I was ready to run into the sun and go dive into the pool, grandma was holding me by my chubby little arm, squirting lotion all over me. I hated it. It always made the dirt stick to me more. Not that I minded dirt. All the more reason to dive in the pool. But that's grandma. It was her place, and Independence Day was her time to treat her family to a nice vacation.
My grandmother died a couple of years ago. She is buried a couple blocks away from Nader's.
My mother and her sister live in Ludington now, retired as they are. You can see Nader's from their front porch. I can imagine what a comfort it must be for them to have their mother so close to them all the time. I feel the same way about my mother. When she is near, I don't necessarily want to talk to her all the time (haha mom doesn't always want to talk to me either!), but I know that I am safe and loved. There is absolutely no substitute for that.
I'm rambling now.... stream of consciousness I suppose. Christmas this year was amazing. I drove into Muskegon to my brother's house on a snowy Christmas Eve. I am normally hurriedly passing through the holidays while trying to figure out how I can work and receive vacation pay. But this year I was persuaded to make it down for the Christmas Eve celebration. It was dark by the time I got into town. Everyone had already been to church and back (I wasn't unhappy about missing this).
I put a country station on the radio. Now, you must now, that since I was a child I absolutely hated the twang twang of this stuff. For one, it was the only station that came in clear in Muskegon, and EVERYONE listened to it. The pop and rock stations played music that was already two years old. I equated country music to all the backwards assholes who stole my books and beat the shit out of me because I was intelligent, or so I thought. But that's neither here nor there. There is one special recurring nightmare that sent me over the edge. Now, the neighbor where my bus stopped was an extremely kind woman. We waited outside during the spring and fall, but in the winter we would all gather in her house and drink hot chocolate while we waited for the bus. This happened to be the same time every single day. And as luck would have it, WMUS played 'Elvira' every single day just moments before the bus would arrive. This was the first time I thought about running out in front of the moving bus. With age came the freedom of being able to walk to school. It was as if I had been set free from prison. I was a babe with the blues.
So here I am, too many years later to acceptably think about, and I'm pulling into a McDonald's parking lot, blocks away from my brother's house, on a dark snowy Christmas Eve, just to finish listening to the country song on the radio! I still don't know what to make of this turn of events.
Anyways, it was a wonderful Christmas. I didn't feel the usual need to be anywhere else. I felt at peace. It dawned on me that I have spent a fair portion of my life in distress, and I've seen too many other people live their lives in distress. That's all it took for me to appreciate what it is to be home, among the people that I love.
I left for my mom's house in Ludington the next morning. I go there whenever I possibly can, and when I leave I want to come back. I don't know if I would want to live in Ludington, though it's not a bad thought. The little downtown is great. And by the way, if you are ever there, please eat at a little eatery and bakery called Chef John's. Seriously, and this is coming from someone who loves to cook, his food is the only thing I've eaten in the last five years that I have had absolutely no idea how on earth something could taste soooooooo good. Wow.
Anyways, I love driving around town, going into the old sections, trying to make a map in my mind of where settlement patterns must have occurred as the town was built, visualizing in my mind what kinds of work brought people to town, searching for places where the wealthy decided to build their homes (high ground, as a biblical 'City upon a hill'). I love the stretch of wild beach along the road that takes me to Ludington State Park. I love Silver Lake, just a few miles away, for boating and water sports and sand dunes and miniature golf. but mostly I just love my mom.
So, I think my adventures over Christmas gave me some insight on why certain people become so deeply entrenched in my heart. When you come to a place you can call home, and you realize it, and you are able to take it with you wherever you go, the people around you become much clearer. This has been happening to me for a few years now. Those who suck life out of the air fade away quickly. The light I carry makes them dim. I love people who chase their dreams honestly and sincerely. I love people who achieve their dreams yet do not get caught up in the hubris of what they have accomplished, who do not sell their souls, who are not unthinking tools. I love people who are willing to love something so much it could break them. It takes everything true and honest within you to make it through, but once you get there, it's not hard at all. It's just... home. I love when my nursing friend tells me she's made it through another clinical, or another exam, or another paper, even when she bitches about it incessantly. No matter her attempts at sarcastic humor, she is going all out because she loves life that much that she's willing to make it what she wants it to be. I love when my music friend sends me a snippet of a snippet of an idea he came up with on his keyboard or synth. There is always some idea on his mind. I love when my hospitality friend tells me she received an award for customer service, when I can see her confidence growing, when I can see her print growing larger on the world around her, when I see that she is safe and happy, when she experiences something she never has before. She is living her dream right now. I hate when they hurt or when the world around them does not meet their lofty expectations. All of my friends are living their dreams in some way. Some are more demonstrative than others. All of them, I think, are aware of what they are doing and why. Excellence abounds.
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