Neebish Island 2017: Kite Flying

Zadie stands on the top of three cement steps at the front door of the cabin holding the keel of a spider man kite—one of the many treasures we picked up at the Family Dollar store in Kinross on the mainland.  Santi stands ten feet in front of her on the grass with the roll of string.  She counts, “One-two-three.  Go!”  She tosses the kite into the air and Santi takes off like the road runner.  His littlest of little legs are whizzing past one another faster than Michael Johnson when he broke the world record at the Olympics.  Spider man is in flight and ascending behind his stubby little man arm.  His every present life jacket doesn’t slow him down.  He buzzes 15 feet past the flag pole—which Keith made from a tree trunk.  The American flag is bustling with activity as a kite-perfect on shore wind leaves its mark on both symbols of American exceptionalism in the air.  Zadie and I squeal with delight together yelling, “Faster. Faster.” He runs up to the overturned, red row boat my mother painted last year as her summer project, makes a loop somehow keeping spiderman from the evergreens and runs back towards us. 

When its Zadie’s turn, I run behind her.  She is more my speed.  I pick the kite up when it nose dives and help her take flight again.  She is the lucky one on this windy Neebish Island evening.  On her run, Spider man climbs and climbs—first past the bird nest that once held the famous baby that feel from its home; the kite makes its way through the olden time wind mill that stands between the tool shed and the outhouse affectionally called, Old Faithful.  I realize I have never seen it.  By now the kite is just climbing and afraid she will lose the child-friendly spool of line I help her let out more string.  I am mesmerized by Spider Man zipping through the air with the seagulls and Santi and Zadie lose interest.  For them, the climax of un was take off.

After kites, we do bubbles.  After bubbles we change into pajamas and make Tollhouse, premade cookies.  The grandmas are at Euchre so we have the place to ourselves.  This is a foreshadowing for what our final week will be like when I move the Living Lovejoys down to the a two-room cabin, three properties over.  I think just the daily walk to and from grandma’s house will help pass the long days.  Yesterda, I discovered that having the kids to morning dishes, cut the morning stretch by an hour. 

Still deliciously alone at the house—with no Fox news to contend with—or Karin worried about ticks—we sit on the cement steps and share one glass of 2% milk for dipping, and take in the changing colors of the sky at Michigan’s 9:30 PM sunset. 

“What colors do you see?”  I ask. 

“Orange.  Yellow.” Santi answers first.

 “Purple.  Blue.”  Zadie offers as well.

“It is so beautiful.” Santi comments.

“Zadie wants more milk.” Zadie declares in the third person.

“Mom, when I am a grown up can we all still live together.  You, me and my sister?”

“Sure Santi. We can live here at Neebish island when I am old and use a four-point cane like Grandma.”  The math hits me again, the repurcussions of skipping a generation and having kids at 40 instead of 20.  When I am my Grandma’s age.  Santi and Zadie will be the age I am now—not my mother’s age.

Zadie points out, as she does at every meal.  “We didn’t take seven breaths.”

We have a group hug.  We inhale and we exhale a few times.  And then ask questions.

Zadie starts.  “What is your favorite candy?” 

“Chocolate.” I answer sincerely.

Santi follows, “What is your favorite boat?”

The joy is in the asking for Thing One and Thing Two at this stage.

“The blue canoe.”

I ask them.  “What was your favorite part of the day?”

Santi lights up and shares, “Playing in the sandbox with blue sand and my new friends.”  The boy is an introvert and could seriously use some more company than the four women in his life—ages two, fourty-four, sixty-nine and ninety.

Zadie says, “The Mc Stuffy puzzle.”  She is referring to another Family Dollar store treasure we picked up in Kinross when touring the prisons and other local landmarks.

I savor this moment on the steps.  The chocolate smeared on our hands and faces.  Being able to look the seagull in the eye as it caws and flies overhead.  The deeper blues, greys, and reds over the changing skyline.

Neebish Island 2017: Weaning My Cherubs

I see a mama duck, the kind with a mohawk on its head, paddle by the cabin with 15 ducklings paddling behind her.  They shuffle up to the front of the pack, climb on her back, take a free ride for a few feet and slide off her back.  Each baby duckling also has a mohawk on its head.  I grab my little three and four-year-old ducklings, still in their onesie pajamas, and tuck one under each arm to take them to the edge of the point to take in the Neebish Island ecosystem.  After observing the ducklings enjoy their mama’s back, we hustle back in and look up these unusual ducks in the bird book.

I get up to make a cup of coffee, wondering if we are still composting the coffee grinds, freezing the banana peels and burning the burnable garbage.  Our house rules change day by day.  I hold up an empty plastic container of coffee creamer and think about my chore of burning the trash.  The next thought I have is one that city living, never inspires.  What kind of creamer could I buy that produces the least amount of garbage?  I guess I need to find a store I can bring my own containers too.  My mind flits to the pint-size glass milk jugs in the tool shed which the last 100 years of men who manned this house have recycled to organize their 10,000 nuts and bolts.  I suppose the good ole days of suburban living are over when we all used cloth diapers, and a service picked them up and dropped them off, and Oberweiss dropped off the milk jugs and picked up the empties.  I hate to think about how much trash I produce. Having no garbage collection on the island changes my relationship to leftovers and containers of all sizes.  I find myself strategizing, like my grandma, on how to not throw anything away.  Living on the island is like camping, you have to consume, burn, or carry out what you take in. 

Grandma interrupts my thought, “I enjoy books. I invest in books.” She says as she brings me two North American birding books “A guide to field identification.” “You should really go out with a professional birder.  They know everything.  They are nice people.  I was a book buyer.  Not a novice.” She continues.

I take her in--her healthy skin and bones; her slight frame and pronounce, “Grandma, I think you will live to be 100.”  

“So do I,” she responds.  “I am healthy.”

We debate what a group of ducks is called.  Not a herd. Not a school.  Maybe a gaggle.  

“The ducks come each year with a gaggle of 15 ducklings, and leave with two or three at the end of summer.  The fish eat them.”

She watches me try to navigate my youngest child who has an even stronger character than her namesake, Maggie Lovejoy, my grandmother’s mother.

“You might want to get yourself of a copy of that book, The Strong Willed Child.  I raised five kids. I’m not ignorant on the subject.” She adds.

“Were any of your kids strong willed?” I ask innocently and probably knowing the answer.

“No, not really.”  But she sill has a lot of good parenting advice.  For instance, I recently tried to walk Santi through the six male dog characters in his favorite show Paw Patrol and the two female dog characters and talk about how our media consumption should have a balanced number of men and women in lead and supporting roles.  Grandma listened and suggested that instead of covering sexism and Hollywood with my four-year-old Santiago Lovejoy I should start by weaning them.

Neebish 2017: Live By The Ferry; Die By The Ferry

Grandma is in her rocker watching Fox and Friends.  Karin, still in her pajamas, is finishing scrambled eggs and an English muffin I had made earlier for the kids.  Santi and Zadie quietly watch a Thomas the Train video on the porch.  I move through my ninth sun salutation.  Between dainty bites, Karin, who has always been elegant, even in a granny butterfly t-shirt and a long jeans shorts with an elastic waist, says  “Maybe we could go to town today, drive to Cedarville, and I could look around the souvenir shops.”  I jump up, as fast as an aging 44-year-old woman can, and announce that we should do it.  Let’s mobilize.  Twelve days on the island is giving me cabin fever. We have 20 minutes to get in the car if we are going to make the 10 AM ferry. 

Live by the ferry, die by the ferry.

In fewer than five minutes, I have the cherubs in their Neebish Island uniforms, a backpack packed with snacks for all my kids, which now includes grandma—my go to snacks include apples, graham crackers, cheese sticks, and a three bottles of water.  There is no telling where we will find ourselves at noon, waiting for my mother to finish an errand, all buckled in the car surviving off this snack pack.  At quarter to ten, my three kids are all in the car with their seat belts on, I am holding the screen door open yelling to Karin, “The house doors are locked, the car is started, everyone is buckled in, let’s go.”  What does she do every single time to make sure we are always late and rushing for the ferry I wonder.

It is like her clock is set to “late, rushed, and panicked” as a set point.

She gets in the car and Santi asks a bit panicked, as the family worrier, “Is Grandma Karin driiiving?”

“Yes, she is.”  I say, not yet worried.

She looks at her clock and sees we will arrive at 9:55 AM, which she considers early.

“I ran out of the house so fast I forgot the two most important things—my cell phone and the trash.”  I ask if she wants to go back and skip the mainland excursion.  She passes. As we drive past the acres and acres of virgin tall grassland and falling down 1900s barns she decides to clean her glasses and steer the car with her knee.  As we veer into the dirt I holler, “Keep your hands on the wheels, you have four people in the care you love.”  Her mom agrees with me, “Use your hands Karin!” Stabilizing the car, she changes her glasses, swerves into the middle of the road and rolls over the thread in the middle of the road that lets sleepy drivers know they are heading for on coming traffic—a feature of Michigan roads that I love.  Unfazed by all of our warnings, she decides to take the wheel with her knees again and use both hands to reach for her bright red lipstick and apply it.  Looking down while she drives with her knees I notice a Trump campaign sign I have missed on all of the other scurrying trips we have made to the ferry dock.

Glasses cleaned, lip stick applied, and hands back at ten and two my mom says seriously, “Why did we leave so early?”

I decide to ask the obvious question, “What time would you like to get to a 10 AM ferry?”  Grandma answers for her.  “Ten minutes to the hour.”  My grandmother has been doing this ferry shuffle since she was three-years-old.  This year, she turned 90.  Karin says, “Five to.”  I don’t believe her.  I think my mom feels early if she isn’t late.

We make the ferry, drive towards Kinross, the stop-on-the-way where you can find the closest grocery store, The Kinross Co-op,  a Family Dollar store, the Chippewa County Airport, and two maximum security prisons—“Kinross correctional facilities East and West.”  My uncle who does prison ministry there says there used to be five prisons and they consolidated them into two to save money on staff costs.

We pull into the Dollar store to “buy a few things,” and Grandma makes the mistake of staying in the car.  She thinks we will only be a few minutes.  She doesn’t know what all that pent up demand does to people like my toddlers, my shopping mother, and even me with no access to a store, amazon, or the internet for a few days.  My mom’s cart is full of things like extra bottles of cleaning alcohol for the cabin and shower rods.  I tell my cherubs they can each pick out one thing.  Santi buys the 40% off $6 plastic vacuum cleaner.  Zadie chooses the 40% off $3 kiddie boom box that plays songs like Old Mc Donalad and Twinkle Twinkle in piano, clarinet, or drum version.  I tell her she can only listen to it on the screened in porch with the door shut.  She agrees and I throw it in the cart with all the other amazing things you can buy at the dollar store—reusable stickers, coffee creamer, kites, and every kind of bubbles you could need on an island.  I even buy myself some adult mandala coloring books I have always wanted. Eventually, Grandma shuffles in with her four-pointed cane asking what is taking so long.  When she sees our carts, thankfully she laughs and says, “You really hit the jack pot.”

I find myself settling into that meandering Meyer family road trip speed, where you are actually just lollygagging along the U.P. shore from town to town.  It is just like my child hood, when we came up in the yellow station wagon, except we are no longer listening to Kenny Rogers and The Pointer Sisters cassette tapes.  We have one CD in the car that I haven’t tired of—the soundtrack to La La Land. 

I announce to the two women in the front seat we affectionally call, “the grandmas,” that my favorite part of this outing is that we aren’t rushed.

Gradma jumps in and says, “We can have lunch in Pickford,” the next town over.  It’s faster and there is a destination restaurant people make a day trip of.”

My mom adds, “We can stop at the graveyard in Pickford.”

My mom loves visiting graveyards.

“Who is buried there?

“Not Grandpa Stalker but some of his relatives.”

Santi asks what it means to be buried.  I change the subjects to all the four wheelers and tractors for sale along the road.  Santi zones in on the golf carts with the monster tires.

Even though Karin recently lectured me on not eating candy in her car, she hands my kids a mini-Reeses peanut butter cup.  A tradition my mom couldn’t pass up when she bought the bag of candy at the Dollar store.  What is a road trip without junk food?

Driving through rural America where both she and her mother grew up, Karin offers, “I guess they don’t teach history in college any more.”  (A theme I heard I on Fox News).

I can’t help myself.  I declare, “They do.  They teach world civilization 1 and 2 as part of any core liberal arts education.

Karin counters, “That was when you went to college.  Do you know who said that?

David Mc Cullugh, a double Pulitzer prize winner.”

I start a conversation with my mom about her news sources.  “Can we please watch a little CNN up here?”

“A lot of those other stations are Fake News?” it is like it comes straight out of Trump’s mouth, through CNN, to the truth part of her brain.  “They conjure it up, slant, and they even make it up. Even NBC makes up the news. They even got fired for it.”  I try to explain how if a journalist makes something up with a credible news source, that that source will be reprimanded.  We decide to drop this awful topic and focus on the environment. “Where should we stop first, the junk shop?  Watson’s Shoe Store?  Or a second hand lot for tractors and farm equipment?”  Mom says we should push through and shop after lunch.  She is right.  I look out the window and see this billboard, “Life gotten messy? Jesus Can help.”

Grandma repeats what will become her mantra for the day.

“What did you all buy today?  You sure hit the jackpot.”

Mom offers other items from her loot as she answers. “Lighter for the fire. Charcoal fluid.  It will help me burn the trash.”

Santi shouts out, “Look. Some people have cement mixers in their yards.”

Zadie squels, “Look, a barn!”

There are no giant barns in Washington DC.

“Grandpa Stalker built one of these barns.” Mom explains.

She reaches in her jeans pocket, crossing into the on coming lane of traffic and bumps along the warning crevices in the middle of the road.

“See I have my phone.”

Speaking rudely I explain, “Mom, every time you go into your pocket you almost kill four people you love.”

“Any recommendations for lunch mom?” she ignores me.

“Case the joint first.”  Gradma says as we pull into Pickford.

“Which way do we go now?” Karin asks her mother, with dementia, at the four way stop sign.  “Try left.”

We are now three towns over from where we crossed onto the mainland and there IS STILL NO cell service.  I am dying.

“Lets go somewhere that has Wi-Fi.” Karin suggests for lunch.

“First, I am going show you Grandpa Behling’s cottage.” She jerks down a road and pulls the car back into her lane  “I don’t remember where it is.”  Karin says to her mom.  We really have the blind leading the blind here.

Santi notices a fire station.  “Mom do Michigan fire stations have fire poles?”

“No sweetheart.  They are only one story high.”

Karin pulls into the yard of my paternal grandfather’s cottage. I remember coming to this cottage as a child.  It is her father’s father’s place.  I won’t bore you with the sort of incredible details of the divorce and second wife who didn’t let the place stay in the family.  “See that cottage, that was Grandpa Behling’s cabin,” she explains to my kids.

We look at the dock in front of the cottage and Karin adds, “See that boat house.  Your grandpa and uncles used to waterski off the end of it without ever getting wet.  In fact, do you want to know how grandma met my dad.  Grandma was working as a waitress at the luxury hotel down the road called the Islington, sort of like the Grand Hotel on Mackinac.  Grandpa cruised by in his Dad’s Criscraft and asked all the girls who were sunbathing on the dock during their break if anyone wanted a ride.  She got in with some friends and was the cream of the crop.”

The conversation veers back to men and the poor choices they make with second wives.  A theme that touches my mom’s dad and my mom’s dad’s dad who once owned this cabin.

Grandma comments, “Even very intelligent people can get hooked.”  She is referring to her sister and her third husband who squandered a lot of her estate on her cancerous deathbed. 

“It is because of their unhinged sex drive.” Karin adds.

“I don’t know if that is the case.”  Finishes grandma.

We drive to the next town over from Cedarville, called Hessel and I decide to try to unpack one more time why Karin thinks we are Chippewa Indians.

Neebish Island 2017: Seven Breaths

8 AM Sunday Morning, July 2^nd.

I am half way through my summer vacation on Neebish Island with my mother, grandmother, and two small kids. I can handle putting them down for naps and bedtime as well as three meals a day with my mom’s help.   I can do the laundry by hand with the kids.  I can even attempt to burn the garbage and sort the food for composting, but having the stamina to hold the band together for 18 hours a day really depends on me having just a window, even a 30-minute window of time for myself in the morning to do yoga, meditate, or write.

On the island, I mostly feel like Laura Ingalls, living on the homestead.  Everyone works around the house.  I even spent the day picking up 100 goose poop droppings that spread out like a cancer across our waterfront lawn.  I used a children’s hoe, a Frozen beach shovel and a metal can.  I thought about Pa waking up in the mornings and feeding the horses or pulling weeds and decided it could be fun for three weeks to live like the Amish.  My mother’s sister (Aunt Linda) and brother-in-law (Uncle Steve) came up with their son for a night and they worked a lot on the property—mowing the lawn, cutting down weeds, taking the canoe and row boat out of the boathouses, getting the 6/hp motor set up while Karin cooked and I entertained the kids in with insects, lures, and casting lines. 

There is a tool shed here that would likely make any man weep with joy.  The men who man it have been gathering random wires, nuts, fishing poles, and dozens of saws/wrenches/screwdrivers for 100 years--literally.  My grandma’s last boyfriend, Keith, who she picked up at the Wednesday night Euchre card game after Keith’s wife had died on the island, really fixed it up.  All the odds and ends, like 10,000 nails and screws are in a cabinet, kept in little milk jars-the olden days kind that might of held a pint.  I can remember my Great Grandpa William Lovejoy cleaning the perch we caught up there for dinner.  He was born in 1900.  This morning, I am going to ask my Aunt to give me the basic outline of the history of this place.  I always think I should write more of it down.  Frame it.  Input it in Ancestry.com.

The two best pictures around here are two black and whites.  The first is of my living Grandmother—Doris Behling and her mother Maggie Lovejoy when Doris was three-years-old, 87 years ago.  Here she is on one of their first trips to the island in the early days of the car in 1929 with her mother, Maggie Lovejoy.  The second is of Doris, now 30-years-old or so, with four of her five kids.  Can you find my mom?  Her mother Maggie Lovejoy is there next to her.

If I could figure out how, I would frame get copies of these photos and frame them for our wall of fame in DC.

36-year-old cousin Lawrence, Aunt Linda and Steve’s son came up for the night.  We took the kids on canoe rides.  Zadie was captivated and she hollered, “Faster, faster,” “Can I hang my feet in the water?” or “Look the moon!” pointing up to what has moved from a quarter moon to a half moon.  Santi on the other hand, just said, “Keep paddling, keep your paddle in the water, don’t look at the moon, take me back to the beach.  We are sinking!!!”  These two cherubs couldn’t be more different.

I thought Saturday was the best day to get a big fix of our favorite card games.  The adults played cribbage and Euchre all day.  My grandmother is by far the most able card shark.  She can’t remember what trump is.  Or even really wrap her head around how the high to low card is re-ordered in Euchre depending on what trump is, but she wins every game.  As you would expect, I partner with her whenever I can.  My mother and Aunt taught Santi to play “Go-Fish” and “Concentration.”  I am not sure what is more adorable, watching him cast his fishing line or hold three cards in his hand and ask, “Do you have a two?”

I have listened to more hysterical, inflammatory, propaganda about religious liberties and how schools don’t teach American history anymore as all the liberals just set out to make citizens of the world this week on Fox news than I have in my entire lifetime.  The Wall Street Journal, which I read cover to cover every day in paper form is palatable.  But Fox news should be unplugged and censored for the long term damage it is causing people like my mother and grandmother. If you want to understand the Right’s hatred of Obama and Clinton spend an hour with it, if you can stand it.  My high of one of these days was when Clinton came on Fox and Santi jumped up and down yelling enthusiastically, “Look mom, it is Hillary Clinton!”  All night long, my grandmother listens to right-wing talk radio.  I asked her to turn it down last night so I could meditate to the fireworks.  It is hard to find your breath when a radio host is explaining why we shouldn’t complain about how Trump treats women as Kennedy was no better. 

We have found common ground at each meal when Zadie proudly says after we start eating, “But we didn’t take seven breaths!”  Confused as to how a meal can start without holding hands and pausing to take in the moment.  We invite our relatives who pray to pray, we breathe, and everyone enjoys a 15 seconds of peace.  Seems like the right thing to do to honor the Fourth of July.

Peace from the island.