Monthly Archives: October 2009

Travel Observations


In spite of its less than stellar beginning, the trip back to Iowa has exceeded expectations. We have seen, were seen, and by this time tomorrow – the goddess willing – we will be getting ready to land in Minneapolis for the final leg of our journey home. Home, where apparently winter is getting ready to take up his nine month residence. No joke. Snow by week’s end. I plan to console myself with a new pair of winter boots.

The wedding went off with only the slightest of hitches. The groomsmen were hungover and the bride’s wedding band had been sized too small. Aside from that every detail announced my niece – her personality, taste and style. Only she could use every shade of pink known to man in a way that was elegant rather than Disney princess.

The hotel where we stayed was on the plaza recreation of a canal street that had only just been finished the last time I visited Pella with Will. It is – interestingly – just across the street from his grandmother’s house, a house she bought with the proceeds of the life insurance policy of Will’s late father. I noted that the building belongs to a historical preservation society now. I haven’t any idea where Lucy is. She could be dead. She is old enough to be dead.

Rob and I walked the town square on Sunday morning. The day was crisply fall. As Rob snapped a photo here and there, it occurred to me that this was what Will and I had done on that last visit. It was Easter of 2001. We’d been coerced/guilted into including his relatives on a stop on our way back from my folks. After a quick bite, we’d escaped the dagger looks of disappointment from his mother for a stroll in rather bitter spring air. She was angry because Will’s cousin announced her pregnancy that day and there she was without a grandbaby or one on the way.

“I should be the one wearing the grandma shirts,” she complained to him.

We strolled the canal that day. Took photos. Never dreaming that someday he would be dead and I would be there again, remarried and ruminating a bit on the twistyness of life.

Staying in a hotel on our own has become this wonderful treat. It’s like Idaho Falls again except we do get outside the room for more than just food. I am not sure how much longer we will be able to leave Dee with my mom overnight. It struck me forcibly this trip that she is nearing eighty. The nephews One and Two stay the weekends with her frequently, but they are used to the autonomy. And so are their parents. We are not as keen on the running wild aspect for Dee. Fostering independence is one thing and leaving children with the impression that they are the masters of their known universe is quite another.

We spent Sunday afternoon at the wedding brunch. Sis and Bride each made promises to sit and chat with me that really never came to fruition. I was not disappointed because I have been a bride and know that personal time is premium. Everyone wants to bask in your glow.

I did have time to talk a bit with Sis about things more personal. She was asking about the memoir and I mentioned that I was afraid I might offend or hurt feelings with my take on life back then.

“I feel badly that I didn’t help more,” she said. “I should have been there more for you at the end.”

We’ve never discussed this. I was distant for many months because of the events of those last days, but I never told her how hurt I was or that I was upset by it. Mostly because there was no point. Sis is my family, and there is no question of our connection.

“I was upset,” I admitted. “But I have come to realize that there is no handbook for events like these and people will do what they are able. You can’t ask more from anyone than they have to give and you accept people as they are or not. I am okay now. And I made my mistakes too.”

The time with immediate family has been pleasant to actual fun. Rob and BIL get along much better than BIL and Will ever did. It makes hanging out possible. Although we don’t have a lot in common. I am a “dance mom” and DNOS is a hockey mom. They are Republicans and we are Canadians, so many topical conversations are off limits. We are middle-aged though and have historical mile-markers in common. Sadly, we are also old enough now to veer off into discussions of the physical betrayals of age. BIL regaled us with his bladder habits.

While here I have shopped. And will shop again today. It’s hard not to consume when in the land of consumption. Leafing through the Sunday flyers in the paper, I happened upon the Target ads. I actually hugged them. We don’t have Target. I couldn’t live here again and not become a devotee of the place. Best that I am a foreigner.

At the wedding brunch, I spent quite a while chatting with Sis’s Norwegian cousin, Helge*, and his wife. I am not surprised to find that I have more in common from a common sense stance with Europeans than with people from my homeland. I haven’t ever met Helge before though they come to visit at least once a year. He invited Rob and I to call upon them when we are overseas if we should ever make it to Norway.

Today is our last day of non-travel. There is a laundry list of things to do with Mom, and actual laundry, to do. Wish us luck for tomorrow. We will be victims of the system.

*Quick aside, we noted that Chicago had lost its Olympic bid and after listening to Helge recount with considerable disgust the practice the U.S. has adopted of photographing and fingerprinting foreign visitors, I am not surprised. Rob didn’t have his vitals captured and secured at customs though there were large signs everywhere reminding people that they could be and what the process was. Canadians are still exempt for the moment. I am a bit disconcerted by my country’s need to collect and store data. It sounds more Nazi than healthcare to me.

Irregular Conditions


I don’t travel well. No, it’s true. I don’t and I freely own it. I am especially awful about air travel. Despite the fact that it is preferred by many, I would rather drive. Driving aligns more comfortably with my control freaky nature and I tend to get where I am going. Air travel is for gamblers. People who haven’t any issues with turning their lives over to the fates and are happy as long as the outcome approximates their expectations.

Because I am often the downer on air trips to the States, I resolved to be the Dalai Lama of the skies this time. I would not overheat or flap. I would be zen’s cremey vanilla center.

And I was.

When our first flight was grounded for an hour with a computer glich, I napped. The American across the aisle was on his cell phone franctically trying to make sure his connecting flight could still be made and grumbling to anyone who would listen that when a pilot said “We’ll be leaving momentarily” then perhaps that’s what should happen. I have been in Canada long enough to know that “moment” is a completely relative term. The Canadians occupy the same temporal space as the Mexicans when it comes to time, space and the idea that work should intersect these spheres.

“He just doesn’t understand the whole time thing here,” I said to Rob.

“You have assimilated well,” he replied.

“Seven of Nine,” I added.

When the plane circled Minneapolis for an hour, I was serene. When a tiny woman tried to guilt Rob into stepping aside for her when we finally landed and could disembark because “I have a conecting flight!” and his reply was strained through his teeth, “We all have connecting flights.” I just concentrated on my breathing and scurrying Dee along.

The cancellation of our connecting flight, after we’d run Dee’s tiny legs to nubs to get to the gate on time, did not faze me. Nor did the fact that we couldn’t get on another flight until the next morning.

Even the fact that our lugguage was caught in the unspeakable vortex of the unknown that claims all luggage whose owners are victims of “acts of God” and “irregular conditions” wasn’t enough to keep me from chirping all sorts of silver lining mantras.

But when the shuttle bus to the hotel arrived late and the pouring rain and rush hour traffic pushed a 20 minute drive to the hotel past an hour, I was done with my Pollyanna of the Skies persona. It was ill-fitting and, frankly, stupid.

Flying sucks. From the moment a person walks into an airport terminal to be herded and suspected and stripped of any real power over their well-being, loved ones and belongings until it deposits him/her like spit on summer’s sidewalk – maybe at their destination and maybe not – everything about it peels and grates and burns. It’s like being Gollum on the end of a tether.

The Memoir


I am rewriting the beginning of the memoir. I think I mentioned that a while ago. The drafting went like a field afire after a summer drought, but despite the length (10,000 plus words) it was bones only. After letting Rob read it, I am fleshing it out. Slowly. Not that the words come slowly but the memories are far clearer than they have ever been and they compete viciously with the emotions that saturate them. The word count will easily have doubled by the time I am finished – next week sometime with luck – and then I have to meld it to the original.

I am excited about it. Really. Because it finally looks and sounds the way I have envisioned it all along. But, the scope sometimes pulls me up short. Feelings are going to be a bit raw when people read about incidents that went on that I never shared or when they discover my true feelings concerning events that involved them. I have wrestled with this from the moment I decided I would write about my experience and me and Rob. I still haven’t worked it out completely.

Memoir is a subjective form of storytelling. And it is the telling of a story. The story happens to be true, but it’s a limited viewpoint and one that is faulty unless the author happens to be omniscient and even the bible lacks the all knowing third person.

One thing I noticed as I have gone about the business of living these last six years is that nearly everyone I had contact with had no problem foisting their interpretation of circumstances on me and expecting me to agree with them regardless of the veracity, so I have decided to proceed and write it the way I recall it and show how I felt. It might not match up with others’ recollections. So be it. The beauty about memoir is that everyone has a life and they are welcome to write about it from their own point of view. As long as one isn’t trying to settle scores or be cruel, and recognizes that it may result in some “splaining”, memoir is a good way to maintain the tradition of personal/family oral histories that help us to know and understand one another.

Six years. It was six years this past summer. Even digging up the events that led to Will’s being diagnosed weren’t enough to bridge that span for me entirely. He is so long gone, and the person I was disappeared along with him. The interesting thing? I don’t miss her.