Birthday

“When he turned 34, but who’s counting?

He couldn’t find anyone who wanted to party…”

-Dar Williams 

Last week, I turned 34 years old. When someone asked me if it bothered me, getting older, I thought for a moment and said, “I’m lucky to be here and to be able to get older.”

It’s true—while I’m not thrilled about the silver hairs that break through my red hair dye every five weeks, and while I can’t help to be slightly dismayed how fucking fast ten years can pass, I’m not exactly crying the blues to now be in my mid-thirties. Of course I can say that now, when I am still unafflicted by arthritis and failing livers and god knows what else, but since now is all I know I have, I may as well just fucking revel in it.

I don’t necessarily live each day with a grand purpose or even an overwhelming sense of profundity, but I do try to go about  my business with some purpose. That’s where my planner and my endless lists come in. I don’t care if it makes me seem anal or OCD—if adhering to lists keeps me paying my bills on time and getting my books read and getting creative projects done, then at least I won’t be likely to wake up on my 40^th birthday saying, “What the fuck have I been doing with my life?”

That’s what this boils down to: I do know what I’ve been doing with my life. I’ve gotten a master’s degree and spent the last eight years becoming more comfortable in my profession. I’ve been trying to learn how to let things go and to not judge too much. I’ve been writing fanfic and scrapbooking and getting more comfortable with admitting to both. I’ve read about 250 books in the last two years alone. I’ve consciously been pondering topics of sexuality and fidelity. I’ve done a modest amount of traveling. I’ve tried to make people laugh and I’ve tried to come to terms with people and I’ve tried to balance Living Out Loud with Minding My Own Fucking Business. I’ve been trying to learn about the mercy of the fallen. I’ve tried to establish friendships and relationships, with family old and new, with colleagues and supervisors, with friends in real life and online. All of these are major accomplishments, at least to me, and by god I will own them. That’s my gift to me, as I turn 34.

Happy  birthday to me. 

A Mom, or a Mother?

Five months ago, it was a Monday afternoon.

Five months ago, I was stressed. I was preoccupied with multiple major projects at work. I was maybe getting a little shrill with my colleagues. I was struggling to get shit done before I flew out to Florida for the holidays, to visit my sick mother.

Five months ago, I paused in my busy workday to send my eldest sister a text, grousing about all of this…and then another text, grousing that our mother was even then calling me.

Five months ago, my middle sister called me, and I learned that it hadn’t been my mother calling me. It was my mother’s neighbor, calling to tell me Mom had died.

We’ve gone through our first Christmas without her, and our first New Years. We have gone through her birthday. My sisters have gone through their first birthdays without her. Most recently, we went through our first Mothers Day without her. That was a weird one, Mothers Day. I’ve always been a little oblivious to the hype of holidays like this one. But I’m not that oblivious.

I came across an article on CNN last week: “A Mothers Day…Whenmother is Gone”. I started reading it, but stopped about halfway through. All of the sentiments within were good and accurate ,they just didn't apply to me. Because halfway through the article it occurred to me: I don’t recognize the mothers that this woman is talking about. This hasn't got a thing to do with me.

Five months ago, the woman who gave birth to me passed away. Since then, I have cried. I have missed her from time to time. I have visited her childhood home, and spoken to people who had known her for years. I tried to understand who she was as a child, a young woman…and then I realized I was focusing so much trying to know who she was before I was born because…well, I couldn’t understand the woman she was after I came around. I turned deeper into her past to try to understand and know how we came to be here, now.

I tried to feel deeply grief-stricken, and failed.

Five months have passed, and I have accepted that I don’t mourn my mother. I mourn the mother that I never had, or else the one that I stopped having when I was ten. I mourn the loss of Elaine. But I don’t mourn the loss of my mom.

Dispatches from the Midwest, Issue 10

Saturday, 8 March 2014

Towards late morning, it’s time for me to leave my friends in Mount Pleasant and head south (relatively speaking, anyway) to Ohio. I do so with some reluctance—the two days of pointless lazing about that I have done have been badly needed…and it feels like I could use a few more. But despite my friends’ best efforts (we all hypothesize that it’s quite possible that if they sat me down in front of the TV and put The Avengers on an endless loop, I would willingly submit to perpetual captivity), I pack up Optimus Prime and soon set off.

It’s a long, long, long drive down, even with the beauty of the grey clouds hugging close to the Middle American landscape. Still, I don’t mind; with one hand on the wheel and one hand extending my camera phone out, I just keep clicking, hoping that somehow I manage to capture a few good images of the snow-covered fields, the stalwart trees, the occasional barn. I remember an ex of mine who was born in Michigan once told me that this was “God’s country”, and while I have a pesky lack of belief, I do see this, over and over again. The beauty of this region is diminished not one whit by its simplicity, and there is a richness that goes beyond the fertility of the soil, and has something very much to do with the people.

In the late summer of 1985, my grandparents, my mother, my sisters, and I all got into a couple of cars and drove south from Cincinnati, Ohio to Florida. My grandparents had retired and decided to move to Florida, and because my mother was dependent upon them, we all moved, too. Since that time, I never, not once, went back to Ohio.

Last year, my cousin’s husband, who is kinda  a big fuckin’ deal in the military (at least I like to think so) got transferred to an airforce base just outside of Dayton. So they packed up their kids and moved again, and so it was that my cousin Lynne found  herself, once more, in the state of her birth and all of her childhood. And so it is, now, that I find myself driving down to visit Lynne and her family, finally, in the state of my birth. 

She’s waiting for me, Lynne is, in her house just outside of Dayton, and her arms are open and she’s ready to welcome me and  and be my family and give me thethe comfort of her company, whether or not she realizes the pricelessness of it.

It’s good to be home.

Dispatches From the Midwest, Issue 9

Thursday, 6 March: Morning

To me, it’s maybe just a little miraculous that I’m able to rise so early the next morning, but there’s nothing for it; I have a long road trip in front of me. I need to make my way from Central Indiana to Central Michigan, and I have to be there before noon.

So as the weak, wintry sun rises over the fields and forests, it sheds light on Optimus Prime and me, both of us charging resolutely forward. The next portion of the trip is the one that’s going to be the  most interesting and unpredictable: I’m going to meet one of my Internet friends  In Real Life (IRL). I’ve met plenty of people through Craigslist and Meetup and the like, but never before have I crossed state lines to initiate contact. Should I be alarmed that this sounds something like a crime?

Thursday, 6 March-Friday, 7 March

Fortunately, my friend does not turn out to be a serial killer, or even a socially awkward person, and we spend a couple of pleasantly unremarkable days together. We read, we write, we watch Frozen and Rush, we drink a lot of wine. I dimly recall gleefully (and drunkenly) swatting at wickedly sharp icicles hanging from eaves, in order to keep them from lobotomizing unsuspecting pedestrians.

I also begin to realize to never, ever take high quality sushi or authentic Mexican food for granted again. Middle America, I love you, but there are some gastronomical delights you simply should not attempt to offer the world. We’re not ready. And neither are you.

Mount Pleasant, Michigan: who says there aren't any mountains?

Dispatches from the Midwest, Issue 8

 Wednesday, 5 March: Evening

The friend that I am staying with, Danielle, is possibly one of the few females I know who is actually more geeky than I am. She’s such a hardcore geek, she’s actually a gamer. While I am not nearly as committed as she and her friends are, I do miss having companions such as her…so when she tells me that I’ll actually be staying over during Weekly Game Night, I’m absurdly gleeful. And request a rousing round of Cards Against Humanity, of course.

When I finally get back to their place that evening, Danielle and Robbie are sitting down to dinner with one of their gamer friends. Two more soon arrive, and I spend a few minutes trying to explain why I’m spending two week of hard-earned vacation time traveling around the Midwest.

“It’s so beautiful!” I enthuse. “And fascinating! The landscape…”

“It’s boring,” says Friend #1.

“Yeah,” agrees Friend #2. “A barn…another barn…”

Of course, this gets me started on the barns. All of the barns. Particularly the broken-down ones. I’ve nurtured an enduring fascination for them since I first moved to the Midwest. Barns everywhere! Of every age and condition! I have always been in awe of how they endure, decade after decade, despite their encroaching decay. I’ve always  thought there is something noble and dignified in how they are still standing, all these years later. And anyway, why don’t the landowners and farmers tear down the old structures? Is leaving these barns standing a conscious decision? Is there a deep and possibly proud and profound reason why they leave them up?”

I’ve reached the end of my soliloquy about barns (and how often can one say a sentence like that) and I’m quite impressed with my own perceptivity. And then…I encounter a prime example of the unsentimental Midwestern practicality that I secretly adore:

“Well…” Friend #1 says. “What’s easier…tearing down a barn, or not tearing down a barn?”

I snort with laughter, because it’s so sensible and laissez-faire, but because I’m me, of course I look more into the seemingly dismissive statement. And let’s think about it: really, when you’re a farmer, tending thousands of acres of land and trying to hold your own in the Big Agribusiness Industry, do you really have a lot of spare time to be spent worrying about clearing out some old barn? Really, it’s the same as any beleaguered office, where we allow files to accumulate year after year.

And yes, I totally just compared a farmer to an office worker.

Much, much later, after we consume several bottles of wine between us, I pour myself into bed. I have to be up at the ass-crack of dawn to make tracks for Central Michigan, but I am loathe to abandon a game of Cards Against Humanity which gives gems such as this:

Dispatches from the Midwest, Issue 7

Wednesday, 5 March 2014: Daytime

In Thanksgiving of 2011, my Aunt Carla died rather suddenly. She was the second of my grandparents’ children to pass away, and with her death, only my mother remained. I was 31 by that point, and had long lived far away from my family and from the Midwest, and so I was beginning to appreciate the precariousness of my family. The older generations were dying out. So as my eldest sister cooked the turkey and my middle sister yelled as loudly as she could at our near-deaf grandparents, I joined my mother out on the screen porch. As she smoked away, I talked to her, hammered her with questions, tapping away on my iPad as she recalled everything from the address of her first home to the foods she used to hate to eat. She endured and answered these questions for a surprisingly lengthy period of time, before finally saying with her slightly-amused, slightly-sad smile, “I’m tired of this.” So I put away my iPad, and she and I went back inside. All in all, I was rather satisfied—I had gotten a chance to ask her about her memories of her childhood, her family, her life, and she had given me a lot to go with. And there was still plenty of time to ask her more questions.

December 16, 2013: Time’s up.

No more chances to ask her anything. All I have are the things that she told me, and whatever information my family cobbles together in conversations. But I have my fancies, and I have my ability to conjecture and imagine. And I have Optimus Prime, too, and a pretty solid GPS. So we head out, and north on the 19, through little towns called Cicero and Atlanta. Soon we enter into Tipton County, and I cannot help but to get a little shiver. This is not only where my mother is from, but my grandfather, too. As far as I am concerned, this whole county is his old stomping grounds.

Soon I see the Tipton Water Tower, clearly visible over the flat, barren fields, and then the beautiful courthouse tower. And then, I’m in downtown Tipton, Indiana, where my mother and grandfather both grew up. I’m not crying, dammit, I’m not crying. It's just one more tiny-ass Indiana town, but goddamn it, it's mine. It's perfect.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t planned my day down to the T. First I go to the Jim Dandy Restaurant and chow down a behemoth Hoosier specialty, a pork tenderloin sandwich.

 As I do, I eavesdrop on the conversation of a few local men—farmers, late 50s perhaps or even older, predictably overweight. They could have gone to elementary school with Mom, I think to myself, but of course, say nothing.

After lunch, I follow my GPS to 425 North Independence Street. I make sure I have the right location, and park Optimus Prime, and trudge through the grey slush to the house up close. There it is—the old white house with the porch out front and the little old “carriage house” at back. There’s still a porch swing out front, just like Mom remembered, but this one is a modern contraption, and portable. This is it: her childhood home.

From there, I make my way to the town library, where I spend a couple of hours, and then I move on to the Heritage Center, which is an eye-opener. It’s a cramped building, filled to the brim with not only the usual historical documents but also a huge assortment of various odds-and-ends: generic objects like dresses and dishes and farm equipment and medals that were probably just ordinary or treasured belongings of Tipton residents over the last 150 years, but now are revered as part of the material history of one humble Midwestern county. I fucking loved every minute of it.

There’s a big-ass cemetery out behind the Heritage Center, and I can tell that many of my grandmother’s family—including her beloved mother, the much-renowned Stella Massey—are buried there. I get the data for the plot locations and trudge my way out to what I interpret to be their approximate burial plot…

…but forty minutes later, I concede defeat. The temperature is dropping, and all of a sudden, it’s snowing, and what the hell, it wasn’t supposed to snow today! Wearily, I throw in the towel, and soon after, Optimus Prime and I are on our way back to Noblesville.

It was a good day—sad yet comforting, rewarding, full of the usual sentiment. And a valuable lesson learned: when locating old family graves, know where you are going. And try to avoid looking for them at the end of one of the harshest winters in memory.

It's okay. I'll be back. Sooner rather than later.

Dispatches from the Midwest, Issue 6

Tuesday, 4 March: Afternoon and Evening

Shortly after I moved to California and became a librarian, I was flipping through a PW magazine one day, and something caught my eye: an article on small bookstore chains. It wasn’t the article itself that caught my eye, but rather the picture. To most, it was simply a picture of a bookstore. But to me, I knew it immediately as a seating area of my favorite bookstore, Half-Price Books in Indianapolis. I had spent many happy afternoons there, and although it had been a good long while since I had browsed there, I never forgot.

I still don’t forget. Every time I am in Indy, I go there, to the Half-Price Book Store on 86^th and Ditch. This trip was no exception, and on my way up to see Danielle and Robbie in Noblesville, I stopped in at my old stomping grounds. The layout is different, but the atmosphere the same…as is my propensity to spend more  than I ought!

From Indy, I head north to Anderson, to the Library there. This the Library that my friend Danielle has worked at since we graduated. She’s now the Digital Services Coordinator there, and it looks as though she’s engaged and happy in her work. And then, on the way home after work, as we stop at the liquor store, Danielle mentions she won’t be drinking.

“Why, did Robbie knock you up again?” I ask absently as I search for the cheapest wine labels.

“Yup,” she admits sheepishly, and I squeal with delight.

At their house in Noblesville, a suburb (oh! Suburbs! My secret dirty love for you) Robbie and Danielle and I catch up, and I watch as they play with their son Jace, and then give him a bath and put him to bed before marching down for a dinner of pizza. It’s a quiet, Middle-American evening, and of course I cannot help but to wonder about roads not taken. And that pondering doesn't stop when I go to sign on to the WiFi and see Middle America's quiet acknowledgment of the modern suburban way of life:

So many WiFi networks! Too many WiFi networks!

Too many roads not taken.

At least Middle America still has an honest sense of absurdity.