lackluster
I spent the better part of this past week in Northern Michigan with my family. It was our first trip as a family of six. Kylie and I have been planning since April; I spontaneously decided that I wanted to go to Harbor Days, and we were off to the races. It was always a hugely special event for me. So many of my childhood summers included watching my grandfather selling ride tickets and collecting money for the Saturday evening fireworks show that would illuminate Lake Michigan. He would save tickets for all of the grandkids, and we would get dropped off at the carnival to spend the afternoon unsupervised. It’s the type of town where you can still do that with your kids. Even now, I have a small collection of nostalgic cardboard Harbor Days posters, one of which is framed on my kitchen wall.
I haven’t seen my dad in upwards of two years. He still lives in my grandparents’ house, the one that they moved into when he was five. It has changed dramatically from the place of my childhood. The front porch used to hold a rusty metal swing. Steps with peeling paint led down to the front yard where my grandma proudly tended to her tomato plants and flowers. In the basement, she stored vegetables on the back shelves, old children’s toys tucked beside them. Remnants of my grandpa’s woodworking station lived on the opposite side. Growing up, I always thought that the musty old basement was haunted. I had no idea that one day it would be their ghosts that remained.
My dad has had some chaotic health issues over the past few years, and I feel terrible to have not been there in person for any of them. He would land in the hospital, and my horrid aunts will call me in hysterics and tell me that he was going to die and that I am a terrible daughter for not moving there immediately. There have been countless arguments, and I have since blocked all of their phone numbers. At some point, I had to choose peace by cutting them off. I really thought that I was going to lose my dad, and it was an immensely gut-wrenching feeling.
The house has been on the market for a year now. I can’t adequately describe the feeling of pulling into my grandparent’s driveway and seeing the ugly red “For Sale” sign tacked in the front yard. Or walking inside and realizing that the house had been stripped of everything that had once given it its soul. Stacks of puzzle lined the wall. A couple of boxes of Avon cologne bottles from my grandma’s collection in the shapes of cars and other oddities in my grandpa’s closet. My dad showed them to me and mentioned how cool they would look if he gets his own place after the house is sold. The only photos remaining on the wall were of my grandparents and my dad. He was the last one left there. No wonder his heart has been broken all these years. For the first time, I saw the house through the eyes of an outsider. So much work to be done, remodeling to undertake. It might be easier to tear it down and start over. The potential buyers can keep their upper class money. I hope that the house never sells.
Every street that I turned on was filled with echoes of sisters who don’t speak to one another anymore and cousins that I have no desire to see. A place that was once so full of life to me was oddly quiet. All around me were people enjoying the sun and the sand, and I looked at all of them and thought, “Don’t you know that everything is wrong now?” Why are they even here anyway? No one else can possibly love this place as much as I have.
Michigan was not what I needed this time around. Or maybe it was. Maybe I needed to be able to say goodbye. I am happy that I brought my daughter’s sweet baby boy here. He won’t remember dipping his toes in the Great Lakes for the first time, but I will remember for both of us, and that is enough.
We are heading for home now, back to our normal days of laundry, making dinner, running errands. Maybe next year I will want to go back again, but maybe this little family of mine will choose somewhere new to make memories. We can choose a place that will be most special to us.
Maybe my dad can come, too.
