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.