I've been writing numerous emails to various dog training places asking if anyone trains trainers. Despite the fact that I find these email addresses on websites promoting the people as teachers of dog trainers, the responses to my queries have been few and of those responses, everyone has said they don't do that kind of work. Then they add names of others I might try, but even those people have resulted in dead ends.
How does one change her profession when she cannot get trained in the new profession of her choice?
The latest response has been yet another name of someone who is looking to hire dogwalkers and then from there, they may or may not train you as a dog trainer. Interesting. I suppose this is where the leap of faith comes in: Do I quit my job to earn $8 an hour as a dogwalker in "hopes" of becoming a trainer?
I don't leap easily.
Still, I have one more year of teaching (at least, that's the plan) and I'm hoping to save enough money to make the leap a bit less painful.
And I'm ready to beg. Not for change, but actually go to the dog training facilities and beg them to take me on as an apprentice.
Not as I'd planned, but I guess leaping requires flexible and creative thinking...something I haven't practiced for awhile.
Better limber up, eh?
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Heat
Scorcher, as predicted. We sit in our steaming house with all the windows open, two fans pushing around the hot air, and a curly dog tucked under our feet...the floor apparently the exact place to be.
Ann and I promised each other we'd go for a swim or for a workout at the Y, but neither of us can muster up enough energy to do anything other than pour ourselves another glass of iced lemonade.
The radio is on and during every break they announce the temperature. 72 degrees was the temperature at 7:30 this morning, then it rose to 78, then 82, and then 88. Just now I heard the announcer decry 92 at 1:40 p.m.
This does not look promising.
We took Rubin to the lake this morning. We walked through the woods and ended up at the edge of the water where he was more than ready to dive right in. Since he's just a pup and the waves can be a bit overwhelming, we purchased a floatation device for him yesterday (the flyer with the vest insisted this was not a life vest, but rather a floatation device!). He was skeptical of it yesterday when we went o visit our friends Doris and Stephen who have a small pool built into their backyard. He sort of flopped around in it, worried by the straps that dangled at his feet. Actually, Rubin was skeptical of the pool itself, but once he found the short step leading into the clear, blue water, he tumbled right in.
His bravery waivered though after he swam across the pool responding to Ann's call and shortly realized there was NOT a short step OUT of the pool. After a wee bit of panic, we swooped him out of the water and he raced around the edges of the pool while we took a swim to cool off.
This morning we strapped him into his floatation device, threw his favorite blue ball with the orange string into the water, and off he went fashionably dressed in lifesaving orange!
Not much to do today but find a cool place to rest and perhaps finish the young adult fiction book I've been reading. The cool places are far and in between though, so I may have to join Rubin on the floor.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Eating Denmark Part Two: Driving with Corpses
“People will wonder why you’re driving around with three corpses in your car.”
My aunt was asleep in the passenger seat, or so I thought. Her head bobbed a bit, but I glanced over just in time to see her smile when she said “corpses.” I smiled, too. It was another example of her dry wit and it caught me a bit off guard.
We’d been driving from Glen Arbor back to Sutton’s Bay; about a 45 minute drive through the back roads of Michigan. We’d spent the day at the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes and then picnicked at a nearby park. Ahead of me was my cousin, Mary, her call filled with the teenagers from our group. Behind me, an array of cousins and second cousins, a caravan of relatives. In my car, Aunt Edith, my cousin Sally, and my mother, no one except me, under the age of 70. They’d been talking as I drove, clarifying details of the past like sorting buttons in an old sewing kit. At one point Aunt Edith, about to comment on her daughter’s choice of car ahead of us said, “Well, I just wish she would…” and her voice trailed off. I caught my mother’s eye in the rearview mirror and we shared a knowing smile. Sure enough, when I glanced at my Aunt she was drooping, head slightly bouncing back, fast asleep. Within moments, the whole car was silent and when I looked in the mirror at my mother again, she and my cousin Sally looked like bobble head dolls, nodding to the rhythm of the road.
I focused on the road for the next 30 minutes, a bit drowsy, and willed myself not to turn on the radio for fear of waking my elders. It was the first quiet moment since we’d arrived in Michigan four days earlier and though I was tired, I relished the opportunity to listen to nothing.
My mother is a storyteller. She spins long, detailed memoirs at the dinner table remembering every name, every location, and almost every date. Even when my father tells a story, my mother fills in the names, corrects the dates, and raises a questioning eyebrow at the settings of his tales. The stories are never straight. They do not follow along like chapters in a book but rather unfold like origami and then fold back again from bird to flat paper and then back into a magnificently intricate winged bird.
I thought this ability to float a tale in the air was purely a skill of my mother’s, but after my first day with her extended family I was beginning to understand it as more of a genetic trait.
“Well, you know, Maryellen,” my aunt would begin, “That’s the time Norman stole checks from Dad and he was lucky to walk away alive from that mistake.”
“That wasn’t the first time Norman tested Dad’s patience,” my mother interjected and from there the two swapped story after story of Norman’s mischief and misdeeds and my Grandfather’s angry reprisals.
My mother and my Aunt are almost spitting images of each other even though seven years separate them. Their round faces and high cheekbones are haloed by a circle of gray curls (what I’ve jokingly called a poodle cut) and when my mother takes out her dentures, the resemblance is uncanny. It’s not only their looks that mirror each other, but their speech cadence, the set of their jaws when intently listening, and the lift of their eyebrows when a story strays from a detail they remember a different way. Even their laughs are identical and only when they sit side-by-side are their differences readily apparent.
For starters, my mother is a devoted Democrat, working for the political party most of her adult life. Aunt Edith, on the other hand, is a religious Republican, unafraid to share her opinions with anyone who will listen. My mother is an amazing cook, whipping up gourmet meals and desserts for political dinner parties and social gatherings. My aunt can cook, but her idea of gourmet is a layered salad slathered with sour cream, canned peas, and pearl onions. At one point during the visit, I was ordered (for my Aunt can phrase any plea for assistance more like a command than a request) to report to the kitchen no later than four in the afternoon for my tutoring in how to make (construct, really) an ice cream cake.
Ice cream cake is one of the few things I remember about my Grandmother. When we drove back in the summer from the Pacific Northwest to Des Moines, Iowa when I was a child I’d run into my Grandmother’s apartment and check her freezer never to be disappointed by the layered pastels of a sherbet frozen cake wrapped in thick whipped-cream frosting.
“It’s time I passed on the tradition,” Aunt Edith informed me and for the next hour we cut angel food cake with an electric knife, added drops of food dye to Cool Whip, and positioned slabs of rainbow sherbet so the cake lay level and round.
Later, she roped me into making a fruit salad claiming she couldn’t read the recipe she most likely read a million times before. After stirring the brown sugar and the walnuts and the marshmallows and the coconut and oh yes, the canned mandarin oranges and pineapple bits (which constituted the “fruit” in the fruit salad), we pulled the setting ice cream cake from the freezer just in time to thickly spread the Cool Whip icing around the edges, over the level top and stuff it down through the hole in the center.
Other differences between my mother and my aunt are in their level of patience. The double entendre of “it’s all relative” comes to mind. There are times, with my mother, that I feel we are always in a rush to get somewhere or complete a task or even just move through life. Patient is never a word I’d really use to describe my mother since she rarely sits down and when she does, is continuously busy with something – a book to read, a shirt to sew up, a letter to write. She works at a pace that exhausts me and though her words may sound supportive and patient, there’s an underlying edge that has always made me feel a bit doubtful of my actions.
But compared to my Aunt, my mother is the poster child of patience and acceptance.
“Well, I just want us to be aware of the time,” my Aunt would say again and again. “We don’t want to be late or keep the restaurant waiting!”
It was perhaps an hour before we needed to get going when she said this and her daughter, Mary who’d made the reservation and knew how to get where we intended to go was no where to be found. It was a like a push-me-pull-me cartoon – Aunt Edith wanted to get a move on while Mary was still putting all the pieces together – dressing her kids, walking the dog, finishing a conversation with another relative.
But we moved like a herd of cats throughout the week heightening my Aunt’s need to be early and rushing my already scattered cousin.
I had vowed weeks before my arrival that this trip was all about my mother. Truth be told, I didn’t really want to go to Michigan, but it meant a lot to my mother so I bought the ticket and packed my bags. Throughout the journey there I practiced my deep breathing and when our plane was delayed in Chicago making our connection with my sister in Traverse City hours late, I was a model of yogic patience.
Still, I stayed calm reading my book, intermittently solving a Sudoku puzzle or two, and when my eyes were tired, people watching.
I find Midwesterners to be a friendly bunch, but distinctly different than those of us from the Pacific Northwest. I was born in Iowa City, but when I was nine months old, my parents packed up the Plymouth Valiant station wagon and shipped us all – my brother, sister, and I – to Bremerton, Washington. For a few years after the move, we’d travel back in our Plymouth to spend our summers in Iowa while my father worked on his PhD. Though I was born in the land of corn, I have always considered myself a Washingtonian with Washingtonian affects and a penchant for cool, rainy weather.
My partner would disagree. Ann’s a born and bred Wisconsinite, a Madisonian to be specific and I still chuckle when she flattens out her vowels as she excitedly tells a story. My parents, Midwesterners too, love it as well. Ann says that you can always tell a Midwesterner because they can carry on a conversation anywhere, any time, and yes, about any subject though they prefer talking about the weather. When I ask for specifics about why she sees me as more of a mid-country person than a West Coaster, she’s short on examples usually ending the conversation with “I can just tell.”
While my mother and I sat stranded in the O’Hare Airport, I still didn’t see much resemblance between me and all the others seated around us. Then my mother struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to her and before I knew it, I was involved in the conversation at first because I was embarrassed that my mother was sharing so many family stories and later because I wanted to add details to her tales.
“Oh my god,” I thought, “I AM a Midwesterner!”
By the time we got on the plane I was exhausted. I’m not a very comfortable passenger on planes and generally I don’t sleep for any length of time. But the second the small plane took off, I could feel my head toss back and melt warmly into the headrest. I woke up only once during the flight, to the weight of my jaw slack and heavy and then nodded back to sleep, an upright corpse on her way to Traverse City or as I jokingly came to refer to it – Traversity.
My aunt was asleep in the passenger seat, or so I thought. Her head bobbed a bit, but I glanced over just in time to see her smile when she said “corpses.” I smiled, too. It was another example of her dry wit and it caught me a bit off guard.
We’d been driving from Glen Arbor back to Sutton’s Bay; about a 45 minute drive through the back roads of Michigan. We’d spent the day at the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes and then picnicked at a nearby park. Ahead of me was my cousin, Mary, her call filled with the teenagers from our group. Behind me, an array of cousins and second cousins, a caravan of relatives. In my car, Aunt Edith, my cousin Sally, and my mother, no one except me, under the age of 70. They’d been talking as I drove, clarifying details of the past like sorting buttons in an old sewing kit. At one point Aunt Edith, about to comment on her daughter’s choice of car ahead of us said, “Well, I just wish she would…” and her voice trailed off. I caught my mother’s eye in the rearview mirror and we shared a knowing smile. Sure enough, when I glanced at my Aunt she was drooping, head slightly bouncing back, fast asleep. Within moments, the whole car was silent and when I looked in the mirror at my mother again, she and my cousin Sally looked like bobble head dolls, nodding to the rhythm of the road.
I focused on the road for the next 30 minutes, a bit drowsy, and willed myself not to turn on the radio for fear of waking my elders. It was the first quiet moment since we’d arrived in Michigan four days earlier and though I was tired, I relished the opportunity to listen to nothing.
My mother is a storyteller. She spins long, detailed memoirs at the dinner table remembering every name, every location, and almost every date. Even when my father tells a story, my mother fills in the names, corrects the dates, and raises a questioning eyebrow at the settings of his tales. The stories are never straight. They do not follow along like chapters in a book but rather unfold like origami and then fold back again from bird to flat paper and then back into a magnificently intricate winged bird.
I thought this ability to float a tale in the air was purely a skill of my mother’s, but after my first day with her extended family I was beginning to understand it as more of a genetic trait.
“Well, you know, Maryellen,” my aunt would begin, “That’s the time Norman stole checks from Dad and he was lucky to walk away alive from that mistake.”
“That wasn’t the first time Norman tested Dad’s patience,” my mother interjected and from there the two swapped story after story of Norman’s mischief and misdeeds and my Grandfather’s angry reprisals.
My mother and my Aunt are almost spitting images of each other even though seven years separate them. Their round faces and high cheekbones are haloed by a circle of gray curls (what I’ve jokingly called a poodle cut) and when my mother takes out her dentures, the resemblance is uncanny. It’s not only their looks that mirror each other, but their speech cadence, the set of their jaws when intently listening, and the lift of their eyebrows when a story strays from a detail they remember a different way. Even their laughs are identical and only when they sit side-by-side are their differences readily apparent.
For starters, my mother is a devoted Democrat, working for the political party most of her adult life. Aunt Edith, on the other hand, is a religious Republican, unafraid to share her opinions with anyone who will listen. My mother is an amazing cook, whipping up gourmet meals and desserts for political dinner parties and social gatherings. My aunt can cook, but her idea of gourmet is a layered salad slathered with sour cream, canned peas, and pearl onions. At one point during the visit, I was ordered (for my Aunt can phrase any plea for assistance more like a command than a request) to report to the kitchen no later than four in the afternoon for my tutoring in how to make (construct, really) an ice cream cake.
Ice cream cake is one of the few things I remember about my Grandmother. When we drove back in the summer from the Pacific Northwest to Des Moines, Iowa when I was a child I’d run into my Grandmother’s apartment and check her freezer never to be disappointed by the layered pastels of a sherbet frozen cake wrapped in thick whipped-cream frosting.
“It’s time I passed on the tradition,” Aunt Edith informed me and for the next hour we cut angel food cake with an electric knife, added drops of food dye to Cool Whip, and positioned slabs of rainbow sherbet so the cake lay level and round.
Later, she roped me into making a fruit salad claiming she couldn’t read the recipe she most likely read a million times before. After stirring the brown sugar and the walnuts and the marshmallows and the coconut and oh yes, the canned mandarin oranges and pineapple bits (which constituted the “fruit” in the fruit salad), we pulled the setting ice cream cake from the freezer just in time to thickly spread the Cool Whip icing around the edges, over the level top and stuff it down through the hole in the center.
Other differences between my mother and my aunt are in their level of patience. The double entendre of “it’s all relative” comes to mind. There are times, with my mother, that I feel we are always in a rush to get somewhere or complete a task or even just move through life. Patient is never a word I’d really use to describe my mother since she rarely sits down and when she does, is continuously busy with something – a book to read, a shirt to sew up, a letter to write. She works at a pace that exhausts me and though her words may sound supportive and patient, there’s an underlying edge that has always made me feel a bit doubtful of my actions.
But compared to my Aunt, my mother is the poster child of patience and acceptance.
“Well, I just want us to be aware of the time,” my Aunt would say again and again. “We don’t want to be late or keep the restaurant waiting!”
It was perhaps an hour before we needed to get going when she said this and her daughter, Mary who’d made the reservation and knew how to get where we intended to go was no where to be found. It was a like a push-me-pull-me cartoon – Aunt Edith wanted to get a move on while Mary was still putting all the pieces together – dressing her kids, walking the dog, finishing a conversation with another relative.
But we moved like a herd of cats throughout the week heightening my Aunt’s need to be early and rushing my already scattered cousin.
I had vowed weeks before my arrival that this trip was all about my mother. Truth be told, I didn’t really want to go to Michigan, but it meant a lot to my mother so I bought the ticket and packed my bags. Throughout the journey there I practiced my deep breathing and when our plane was delayed in Chicago making our connection with my sister in Traverse City hours late, I was a model of yogic patience.
Still, I stayed calm reading my book, intermittently solving a Sudoku puzzle or two, and when my eyes were tired, people watching.
I find Midwesterners to be a friendly bunch, but distinctly different than those of us from the Pacific Northwest. I was born in Iowa City, but when I was nine months old, my parents packed up the Plymouth Valiant station wagon and shipped us all – my brother, sister, and I – to Bremerton, Washington. For a few years after the move, we’d travel back in our Plymouth to spend our summers in Iowa while my father worked on his PhD. Though I was born in the land of corn, I have always considered myself a Washingtonian with Washingtonian affects and a penchant for cool, rainy weather.
My partner would disagree. Ann’s a born and bred Wisconsinite, a Madisonian to be specific and I still chuckle when she flattens out her vowels as she excitedly tells a story. My parents, Midwesterners too, love it as well. Ann says that you can always tell a Midwesterner because they can carry on a conversation anywhere, any time, and yes, about any subject though they prefer talking about the weather. When I ask for specifics about why she sees me as more of a mid-country person than a West Coaster, she’s short on examples usually ending the conversation with “I can just tell.”
While my mother and I sat stranded in the O’Hare Airport, I still didn’t see much resemblance between me and all the others seated around us. Then my mother struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to her and before I knew it, I was involved in the conversation at first because I was embarrassed that my mother was sharing so many family stories and later because I wanted to add details to her tales.
“Oh my god,” I thought, “I AM a Midwesterner!”
By the time we got on the plane I was exhausted. I’m not a very comfortable passenger on planes and generally I don’t sleep for any length of time. But the second the small plane took off, I could feel my head toss back and melt warmly into the headrest. I woke up only once during the flight, to the weight of my jaw slack and heavy and then nodded back to sleep, an upright corpse on her way to Traverse City or as I jokingly came to refer to it – Traversity.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Eating Denmark: Part One
On a recent family-reunion vacation, my mother described her dream to me.
It was her mother's birthday and my mother had designed a beautiful chocolate cake in the shape of Denmark, the birthplace of my grandmother. The cake was laid out on a flat-mirrored platter and was detailed down to the last little isalnd floating on the reflective surface. The birthday celebration was to be head at one end of a large gymnasium surrounded by tiered levels of an arena. Before the event could get stared, two full basketball teams, complete with cheerleading squads swarmed down the aisles and onto the court bouncing their balls, running their warm-ups, and shaking their pom-poms. Mother, as she recounts the dream, said she was furious. She could feel her anger hot in her face, her hands clenched tightly along the edges of the mirrored cake platter. But everyone at the party -- relatives, long-time friends and aquaintances -- told her not to worry that everything would be all right. So they packed up the celebration and moved to a room upstairs away from the sweaty basketball teams and their adoring cheerleaders. Meanwhile, the cake slowly melted and my mother had to lick the drippings off the sides with her fingers.
“What does it mean?” I asked her when she’d finished recounting the dream.
“Oh, honey, I don’t know,” she sighed. “I’d have to look up all the symbolism in my dream books to really get down to all the layers.”
We were sitting at my aunt’s dining room table just outside of Sutton’s Bay, Michigan. My aunt, my mother’s older sister, was 87 at the time and the point of our visit was a female family reunion. The Jensen clan, my mother’s family, consisted of three daughters and three sons, but of the 17 grandchildren, 11 of them were girls all of whom agreed to gather mid-June in Michigan at the request of Edith, now the oldest matriarch of the family.
Growing up I was aware of my extended family, but not particularly close to any of them. My father’s side of the family is minimal compared with my mother’s and except for a few summer visits from cousins and our belligerent and hateful paternal grandfather, my father’s family was a mystery to me. My mother, on the other hand, always kept in contact with her sprawling cousins and their children, sitting down every Christmas to send detailed letters folded into holiday cards and mailing stacks of them off to all four corners of the globe.
Still, despite her diligence at maintaining the family tree, the names on the envelopes did not register faces in my memory.
If the Jensen clan is known for anything, they are known for their longevity. My mother, now 80 often outlasts me, her pace only slower recently because of a bum hip and swollen knees. Aunt Edith walks with a cane and bends slightly to the left with a bad back and recovery from a broken hip, but she can still challenge the likes of the Energizer bunny even under the influence of Vicadin.
Ten years ago an even larger extended clan met in Sutherland, Iowa birthplace of the Jensen children for the celebration of my Aunt Anna’s 90th birthday. In the basement of VFW halls and churches, long tables held the food I fondly remembered from my childhood – egg-yellow potato salad, Jello concoctions filled with fruit and marshmallows, and my personal favorite, cold slaw with just the right blend of tangy dressing. Stretched out on another table were huge displays of the various branches of the family tree. My grandfather, Christian, had three brothers and one sister each of whom appeared to be as prolific as my grandfather. During that reunion, I met more people who looked vaguely familiar if only because we shared the same high cheekbones or unusually broad shoulders. Inundated with names of relatives I didn’t quite know, I asked my mother to explain relationships by referring to one of the many family trees. It was during that vacation that I finally grasped the concept of second cousins twice removed though now I’m not certain I could explain it to anyone else.
Aunt Anna died at age 96, crippled with arthritis, almost completely blind, and uncertain of her surroundings at any given moment. My mother, 18 years younger, looked to Anna as more of a mother than a sister especially after their mother died when my mother was in her early 40’s. I, too, looked to Anna as more of a grandmother than an Aunt and therefore viewed my cousins as more of aunts than contemporaries.
I was 10 when my grandmother died, but I did not travel back from the state of Washington to Sutherland, Iowa to attend her funeral. In fact, I have very few memories of my grandmother though I do remember her straight, straight back, her powdery smell of lavender, her ice cream cakes, and the one time she let me undo her gray hair from its tight bun so I could comb it in the downstairs bathroom of our 17th Street house.
Traveling to Michigan to Aunt Edith’s brought many of the scattered pieces of my family tree together for me this time. No longer were relations just names branched out on butcher paper, but they were faces, some of whom I knew, some of whom I did not and stories, like stones in a river, each with their own unique patterns and weight, curves and textures.
We were called together, I learned in the middle of the trip, to hear the stories of both my Aunt and my mother. On one night, they were to tell the tale of my grandfather and grandmother’s life in Denmark, their meeting and marriage in Iowa, and the birth of their six children. While that night did occur, the stories flowed throughout the week and by the end, were repeated more than once to those of us who stayed the longest.
By the end of the week, I was exhausted by late nights and overlapping stories, by my energetic and demanding sister, and my equally forceful and demanding aunt. Many of the conversations that week were exercises in minutiae – details of minute-by-minute accounts describing the purchasing of a particular cereal or the recounting of a recent doctor’s visit. At first, all conversations were polite, the audience attentive, listeners locked in eye contact with the storyteller. By the end of the week, relatives stood up and ventured into the kitchen to choose from the abundance of snacks mid-story leaving the storyteller hanging on details they felt to be of the greatest import.
In other words, the beautiful cake of Denmark dripped at times, melting over the edges of even the best-laid plans. There was not much else to do, but lick the fingers of our mess and turn to each other and say, “Don’t worry, it will be all right.”
It was her mother's birthday and my mother had designed a beautiful chocolate cake in the shape of Denmark, the birthplace of my grandmother. The cake was laid out on a flat-mirrored platter and was detailed down to the last little isalnd floating on the reflective surface. The birthday celebration was to be head at one end of a large gymnasium surrounded by tiered levels of an arena. Before the event could get stared, two full basketball teams, complete with cheerleading squads swarmed down the aisles and onto the court bouncing their balls, running their warm-ups, and shaking their pom-poms. Mother, as she recounts the dream, said she was furious. She could feel her anger hot in her face, her hands clenched tightly along the edges of the mirrored cake platter. But everyone at the party -- relatives, long-time friends and aquaintances -- told her not to worry that everything would be all right. So they packed up the celebration and moved to a room upstairs away from the sweaty basketball teams and their adoring cheerleaders. Meanwhile, the cake slowly melted and my mother had to lick the drippings off the sides with her fingers.
“What does it mean?” I asked her when she’d finished recounting the dream.
“Oh, honey, I don’t know,” she sighed. “I’d have to look up all the symbolism in my dream books to really get down to all the layers.”
We were sitting at my aunt’s dining room table just outside of Sutton’s Bay, Michigan. My aunt, my mother’s older sister, was 87 at the time and the point of our visit was a female family reunion. The Jensen clan, my mother’s family, consisted of three daughters and three sons, but of the 17 grandchildren, 11 of them were girls all of whom agreed to gather mid-June in Michigan at the request of Edith, now the oldest matriarch of the family.
Growing up I was aware of my extended family, but not particularly close to any of them. My father’s side of the family is minimal compared with my mother’s and except for a few summer visits from cousins and our belligerent and hateful paternal grandfather, my father’s family was a mystery to me. My mother, on the other hand, always kept in contact with her sprawling cousins and their children, sitting down every Christmas to send detailed letters folded into holiday cards and mailing stacks of them off to all four corners of the globe.
Still, despite her diligence at maintaining the family tree, the names on the envelopes did not register faces in my memory.
If the Jensen clan is known for anything, they are known for their longevity. My mother, now 80 often outlasts me, her pace only slower recently because of a bum hip and swollen knees. Aunt Edith walks with a cane and bends slightly to the left with a bad back and recovery from a broken hip, but she can still challenge the likes of the Energizer bunny even under the influence of Vicadin.
Ten years ago an even larger extended clan met in Sutherland, Iowa birthplace of the Jensen children for the celebration of my Aunt Anna’s 90th birthday. In the basement of VFW halls and churches, long tables held the food I fondly remembered from my childhood – egg-yellow potato salad, Jello concoctions filled with fruit and marshmallows, and my personal favorite, cold slaw with just the right blend of tangy dressing. Stretched out on another table were huge displays of the various branches of the family tree. My grandfather, Christian, had three brothers and one sister each of whom appeared to be as prolific as my grandfather. During that reunion, I met more people who looked vaguely familiar if only because we shared the same high cheekbones or unusually broad shoulders. Inundated with names of relatives I didn’t quite know, I asked my mother to explain relationships by referring to one of the many family trees. It was during that vacation that I finally grasped the concept of second cousins twice removed though now I’m not certain I could explain it to anyone else.
Aunt Anna died at age 96, crippled with arthritis, almost completely blind, and uncertain of her surroundings at any given moment. My mother, 18 years younger, looked to Anna as more of a mother than a sister especially after their mother died when my mother was in her early 40’s. I, too, looked to Anna as more of a grandmother than an Aunt and therefore viewed my cousins as more of aunts than contemporaries.
I was 10 when my grandmother died, but I did not travel back from the state of Washington to Sutherland, Iowa to attend her funeral. In fact, I have very few memories of my grandmother though I do remember her straight, straight back, her powdery smell of lavender, her ice cream cakes, and the one time she let me undo her gray hair from its tight bun so I could comb it in the downstairs bathroom of our 17th Street house.
Traveling to Michigan to Aunt Edith’s brought many of the scattered pieces of my family tree together for me this time. No longer were relations just names branched out on butcher paper, but they were faces, some of whom I knew, some of whom I did not and stories, like stones in a river, each with their own unique patterns and weight, curves and textures.
We were called together, I learned in the middle of the trip, to hear the stories of both my Aunt and my mother. On one night, they were to tell the tale of my grandfather and grandmother’s life in Denmark, their meeting and marriage in Iowa, and the birth of their six children. While that night did occur, the stories flowed throughout the week and by the end, were repeated more than once to those of us who stayed the longest.
By the end of the week, I was exhausted by late nights and overlapping stories, by my energetic and demanding sister, and my equally forceful and demanding aunt. Many of the conversations that week were exercises in minutiae – details of minute-by-minute accounts describing the purchasing of a particular cereal or the recounting of a recent doctor’s visit. At first, all conversations were polite, the audience attentive, listeners locked in eye contact with the storyteller. By the end of the week, relatives stood up and ventured into the kitchen to choose from the abundance of snacks mid-story leaving the storyteller hanging on details they felt to be of the greatest import.
In other words, the beautiful cake of Denmark dripped at times, melting over the edges of even the best-laid plans. There was not much else to do, but lick the fingers of our mess and turn to each other and say, “Don’t worry, it will be all right.”
Monday, July 02, 2007
Memory Fishing
Ann attended a writing class (on how to teach writing) and had to actually write an essay. I helped a smidge, but asked her if I could post her piece on my blog. She agreed so here it is:
Forty years later my older brother, Phil, cut the engine of my dad’s car as we arrived at my Dad’s house. The surrounding cornfields hadn’t been plowed under yet to make way for the new spring plantings. The stalks lay broken and bent. I was thankful to step out of the stale smell of the car’s interior to the fresh country air. I stretched after my long hours sitting on a plane and took in the full view of the farm land around me.
“We’ve been cleaning the house the past week while Dad’s been in the hospital,” Phil stated matter-of-factly. “It was really disgusting. I think he hasn’t been cleaning the house for the past few months. You better prepare yourself.”
I hesitated, positioning myself so I was the last to enter. We walked up to the front door, but the screen door resisted and stuck so Phil had to use both hands to pry it open. It remained open and that’s when the decades old cigarette smell burned my nostrils. I thought, “God, I’m so glad I didn’t arrange to stay here at the house.” As usual, seeing my dad was always a secondary experience to the assault on my senses. I blinked rapidly as my eyes watered from the intense concentration of stale smoke.
Then I saw my dad sitting in his new recliner that we, his three kids, had bought him the previous Christmas. The recliner was massive; a blue raft. He looked as if he were floating down a river minus a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Instead, I saw the whitecaps of used tissues surrounding him, and ahead, instead of the bend in the river there was a brand new wide-screen HDTV tuned to a golf tournament.
He looked so small.
When he saw me, my father raised his head to give a nod and a grunt, and then he rubbed his head as if he were sick. My father was never sick. Until now. I moved to give him a hug and a kiss and felt him having trouble keeping up with my swift greeting, his lips still puckered after I had withdrawn to sit down. He quickly spat into a tissue and soon I saw that he did this with the same timing as when he puffed on a cigarette. The white plastic garbage bag was full and had become his new ashtray.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Not so good,” he grunted and shook his head and again rubbed it.
Phil began talking and soon his voice filled in both sides of the conversation. I got thirsty and excused myself to go to the kitchen. Phil came up behind me and explained how he and his wife had removed all the food and drinks from the fridge and cleaned out the cupboards now that Dad couldn’t eat or drink. He pointed to case after case of Dad’s liquid food for his G-tube, a tube inserted into the stomach into which Dad poured the cans a few times a day. The stacked cases reminded me of the dog food from my own home.
Esophageal cancer was the diagnosis; a six centimeter cancerous tumor had blocked his esophagus and was migrating rapidly throughout his body. Phil explained how the doctors were talking about chemotherapy so dad could at least swallow, but the outlook was grim.
At the sink all the old ashtrays I’d grown up with were stacked and clean for the first time ever. I also noticed the old instant coffee pot on the bare counter unplugged and stained from old spills. My dad loved his coffee and we used to laugh at the sound of the spoon rhythmically hitting the sides of the mug long after the sugar had dissolved.
Suddenly, I thought, “If he can’t eat or drink, how can he breathe?” I practiced with my own mouth and nose, breathing-swallowing-inhaling-exhaling-swallowing, it became confusing since it was all so automatic for me.
I immediately thought He could actually smoke if he wanted to. I asked him and he said he had no desire to smoke since his throat was so dry. I looked at his pale, drawn face and gave him an ironic smile. Finally, my wish had come true. My dad had quit smoking.
When I returned home to Seattle a few days later, I received the dreaded phone call in the middle of the night. The next morning I was back on a plane, driving through the cornfields and turning into the driveway, once again at my father’s house. My brother and sister-in-law had done most of the cleaning, attempting to elbow grease the yellow stains from the walls and fabric of a 70 year old man’s bad habits. Still, there was sorting to do, combing through and divvying up our father’s belongings.
There wasn’t much I wanted, but in the basement, hanging in the rafters I spotted my special fishing pole. The memories of the aluminum boat washed over me; my dad’s grin, his hand on the steering wheel, and the flopping Northern Pike in the belly of the boat. I easily could have taken the pole. It was mine and my father had kept it all these years perhaps with the knowledge that I’d return for it after his passing. But in the end, I left it for my brother’s grandkids knowing one day, he’d take them on a quiet lake somewhere and gently rock his way into their memory as my father had done with me.
Every summer our family of five went on vacation camping in Northern Wisconsin. The trips always involved fishing with my dad. Just the two of us in a simple aluminum motorboat; me, sitting high at the bow with my puffy life vest on and Dad grinning at the back while steering the small outboard motor holding a cigarette in one hand and with his other hand. holding onto the side of the boat as he tried to bounce me over the waves.
We’d fish for hours without a word exchanged between us, the silence only broken with by childish scream every time I’d catch the abundant perch or on special occasions, a good size Northern Pike. At those times, I’d look over to my dad to confirm the fish’s identity and he’d let me know if it was big enough to keep. His eyebrows raised and I’d see his face light up. “That’s a pretty good one,” he’d grunt and we’d go back to our silence. I loved sharing these times with my dad, but I hated each cigarette’s red hot end and the smoke that always hung in the air between us as we fished on quiet, calm lakes.
We’d fish for hours without a word exchanged between us, the silence only broken with by childish scream every time I’d catch the abundant perch or on special occasions, a good size Northern Pike. At those times, I’d look over to my dad to confirm the fish’s identity and he’d let me know if it was big enough to keep. His eyebrows raised and I’d see his face light up. “That’s a pretty good one,” he’d grunt and we’d go back to our silence. I loved sharing these times with my dad, but I hated each cigarette’s red hot end and the smoke that always hung in the air between us as we fished on quiet, calm lakes.
Forty years later my older brother, Phil, cut the engine of my dad’s car as we arrived at my Dad’s house. The surrounding cornfields hadn’t been plowed under yet to make way for the new spring plantings. The stalks lay broken and bent. I was thankful to step out of the stale smell of the car’s interior to the fresh country air. I stretched after my long hours sitting on a plane and took in the full view of the farm land around me.
“We’ve been cleaning the house the past week while Dad’s been in the hospital,” Phil stated matter-of-factly. “It was really disgusting. I think he hasn’t been cleaning the house for the past few months. You better prepare yourself.”
I hesitated, positioning myself so I was the last to enter. We walked up to the front door, but the screen door resisted and stuck so Phil had to use both hands to pry it open. It remained open and that’s when the decades old cigarette smell burned my nostrils. I thought, “God, I’m so glad I didn’t arrange to stay here at the house.” As usual, seeing my dad was always a secondary experience to the assault on my senses. I blinked rapidly as my eyes watered from the intense concentration of stale smoke.
Then I saw my dad sitting in his new recliner that we, his three kids, had bought him the previous Christmas. The recliner was massive; a blue raft. He looked as if he were floating down a river minus a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Instead, I saw the whitecaps of used tissues surrounding him, and ahead, instead of the bend in the river there was a brand new wide-screen HDTV tuned to a golf tournament.
He looked so small.
When he saw me, my father raised his head to give a nod and a grunt, and then he rubbed his head as if he were sick. My father was never sick. Until now. I moved to give him a hug and a kiss and felt him having trouble keeping up with my swift greeting, his lips still puckered after I had withdrawn to sit down. He quickly spat into a tissue and soon I saw that he did this with the same timing as when he puffed on a cigarette. The white plastic garbage bag was full and had become his new ashtray.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Not so good,” he grunted and shook his head and again rubbed it.
Phil began talking and soon his voice filled in both sides of the conversation. I got thirsty and excused myself to go to the kitchen. Phil came up behind me and explained how he and his wife had removed all the food and drinks from the fridge and cleaned out the cupboards now that Dad couldn’t eat or drink. He pointed to case after case of Dad’s liquid food for his G-tube, a tube inserted into the stomach into which Dad poured the cans a few times a day. The stacked cases reminded me of the dog food from my own home.
Esophageal cancer was the diagnosis; a six centimeter cancerous tumor had blocked his esophagus and was migrating rapidly throughout his body. Phil explained how the doctors were talking about chemotherapy so dad could at least swallow, but the outlook was grim.
At the sink all the old ashtrays I’d grown up with were stacked and clean for the first time ever. I also noticed the old instant coffee pot on the bare counter unplugged and stained from old spills. My dad loved his coffee and we used to laugh at the sound of the spoon rhythmically hitting the sides of the mug long after the sugar had dissolved.
Suddenly, I thought, “If he can’t eat or drink, how can he breathe?” I practiced with my own mouth and nose, breathing-swallowing-inhaling-exhaling-swallowing, it became confusing since it was all so automatic for me.
I immediately thought He could actually smoke if he wanted to. I asked him and he said he had no desire to smoke since his throat was so dry. I looked at his pale, drawn face and gave him an ironic smile. Finally, my wish had come true. My dad had quit smoking.
When I returned home to Seattle a few days later, I received the dreaded phone call in the middle of the night. The next morning I was back on a plane, driving through the cornfields and turning into the driveway, once again at my father’s house. My brother and sister-in-law had done most of the cleaning, attempting to elbow grease the yellow stains from the walls and fabric of a 70 year old man’s bad habits. Still, there was sorting to do, combing through and divvying up our father’s belongings.
There wasn’t much I wanted, but in the basement, hanging in the rafters I spotted my special fishing pole. The memories of the aluminum boat washed over me; my dad’s grin, his hand on the steering wheel, and the flopping Northern Pike in the belly of the boat. I easily could have taken the pole. It was mine and my father had kept it all these years perhaps with the knowledge that I’d return for it after his passing. But in the end, I left it for my brother’s grandkids knowing one day, he’d take them on a quiet lake somewhere and gently rock his way into their memory as my father had done with me.
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