family

Holidaying Part One


The Fourth Street Elevator, Dubuque

Holidaying in my hometown has the potential for the makings of a real holiday that it never has realized.  Spring Break was not much of an exception.  There were a few break-out moments when I corralled the husband, kids and extended family and forced vacation on them, but for the most part it was a family style slog through obligation.

We drove. It’s crazy when time is a factor. With only nine days to play with, 26 hours one way means more time is spent on the road than at the destination. However, multiple stops made flying even less practical and more expensive than it usually is. Time is squandered road-tripping but cash is conserved and it meant we could master our own destiny and tailor it to suit.

Red River encroaching the highway near Grand Forks

I don’t mind driving like I do flying. Nearly every aspect of air travel chafes from the anal probing security measures that stem more from paranoia than reality to being trapped in a system that increasingly fails to spit one out at the correct destinations on time.  I prefer time suck trekking on the road to being meat.

The Canadian leg of the journey was typical Great White North. Canadians just don’t get service. Not that this is a bad thing. Nothing wrong with misunderstanding the purpose of catering to a public that increasingly exhibits entitlement characteristics that exceed the bounds of reasonable by a wide margin.  However, taking people’s money demands some sort of quid pro quo and for the most part, Canadians are quick to take payment and pretty reluctant to provide much of a return on exchange.

Minneapolis was comfy consumerism on a scale I don’t experience anymore.  Canadians like to look down their noses at the buyer’s market below the border, dismissing the soullessness of the buy/sell focus, but I think it’s because they realize deep down that what we have up here is bush league in comparison.  Better to take imaginary high ground than to concede inferiority.

Hampton Inn, Panera Bread and a stroll though a sporting goods store to outfit Dee for the upcoming soccer season followed by a relaxing dip in a near empty to pool before heading to Iowa the next day marked the first day back in the States.

And then there was Target.

We have nothing that even approaches Target in Canada.  Aside from the Hy-Vee grocery chain, the only shopping I truly miss is Target.  One of the reasons I seldom shop anymore is that nothing compares to the quality, price and ease of the shopping experience of Target that I can barely be bothered anymore.

The few stores that are of U.S. quality here are invariably so picked over, or simply understocked, that the effort and time involved in driving to where they are and fighting the clusterfuck traffic/parking makes the process itself too tiring to invest in.

That sounds like whining, doesn’t it?

Well, it is. I have my moments too.

Most of the time, I don’t think much about it.  Canada is Canada and the States are down there somewhere with a life I don’t live anymore, but trips back starkly remind me that maintenance aspects of life – like groceries and keeping a growing child properly out-fitted – were easier once. Convenience?
Thy name is not Canada.

I chuckle a little when I hear people waxing poetic about some shopping experience or other that they’ve had in Edmonton because back in my little hometown in Iowa my mother and sister are moaning about a dearth of retail that vastly exceeds it.

We were supposed to drive down to the big regional mall near Iowa City on Wednesday, but a family “issue” prevented it, so the three of us tooled about Dubuque. I was in heaven. It was awesome. Well-stocked stores with clerks about falling over each other pursuing individual missions of helpfulness. Mom and DNOS were bored and disappointed.

Because we got into Des Moines early and Dee declined to visit Will’s grave*, we stopped at the SuperTarget on Civic Mills, which is near our old house, to out-fit Dee. She’s outgrown just about everything from last summer and fall. I know what you are thinking. She’s nearly eight, so of course she’s gotten big. Growing like a weed from one season to the next is a fairly new phenomena for her. She’s never been a child whose age matched her pant size and it’s unlikely that her waistline will ever exceed her age either. It’s only this last year that she’s had growth spurts that have rendered the contents of her closet obsolete overnight.

The children’s clothing section at Target is a smorgasbord. Quality. Durable. And stinking cute stuff. The added plus of Target is that it strives to be a one-stop, so Rob rambled from department to department and would return periodically to dump acquisitions in the cart.

I got skunked. That is typical of trips down south. I focus on replenishing for Dee and Rob and invariably run out of time for myself.

After Target, we found still more time on our hands because my BFF was still finishing up her errands, so we went to wait for her at the park down the block from our old house on 53rd Place.

The weather was on the verge of going early spring freak heat wave. Dee recognized the park after a moment or two and reacquainted herself and Rob and I sunned ourselves on a bench.

There was a young couple there with a wobbly toddler. The man looked familiar and I could tell he thought he recognized me too though we never spoke. I watched them a bit until it occurred to me that they were the newlyweds who bought my house three years ago.

I was pleased when the house sold to a couple starting out in life and it was satisfying to see that life is well and forward moving for them. It’s affirming. I like affirmation. More than I like Target and I like Target a lot.

* I asked her over breakfast that morning if she wanted to go to the cemetery to see her dad’s stone and she shook her head no whispering, “It makes me cry.” I am perfectly okay with us dispensing of the ritual until/if she decides to revisit it. She is seven and she is happy with her life as it stands. In the last month she has taken to calling Rob just “Dad” or “Daddy”. She really doesn’t remember Will at all and his will not be the imprint that influences who she grows up to be. She may someday want to visit Will’s grave and she might never. I am not going to have a cow about it in any event.

Will deeply resented his own mother’s glorification of his late father. He felt obligated to mourn a man he really didn’t know as though her grief should be his as well. He would understand Dee’s feelings and approve.

In Country


Of all the things I don’t especially care for when we venture Stateside, one of the top five is cemeteries.

We haven’t been to Will’s grave since July of ’08. It wasn’t the highlight of that depressingly horrendous trip, but it will do as a touchstone.

Dad, from where I was standing, was clearly dying that summer. Death hangs about people, telegraphs its intentions and smothers soul and reason. The air was so thick with it that I should have known better, watched my words and actions with more care. Hindsight must be an invention of the Catholic church because it’s such an effective guilt inducing tool.

Burying Will is a regret. I knew that I wasn’t staying in Des Moines. Knew it from the moment I was told he was dying that the reason that brought me to Central Iowa in the first place would soon be gone.

There have been many moments in my life where something outside me has guided me on my path. In the spring of 1987, Jerry Wadden, the English Supervisor for the Des Moines Public Schools, interviewed me for a job that he knew didn’t exist – yet. He told me plainly that he had no job for me, but he thought he would by August. Could I wait that long? Not commit to another district before I talked with him again?

’87 was an abysmal year for new teachers. The only jobs were down south and only for those who were graduating in the upper reaches of their class. I turned down two offers waiting on Des Moines. Houston, where I most certainly would have met people my age and probably have been far less lonely than I was during the first ten years I was in Des Moines, and a border straddling town in Arizona.

I waited, not because Jerry was so persuasive or that I was moved by his conviction that I was the teacher he wanted to hire that summer – he actually ended up forcing the district to hire me without having a job for me. I waited because something was telling me I needed to be in Des Moines. There were tasks awaiting me. And this impulse? would not leave me alone.

I don’t pretend to be spiritual. I am uncertain anymore about what directs the universe, but I do know enough to listen – mostly. So I waited and ended up staying in Des Moines – teaching, marrying eventually, having a child, burying a husband – before unseen forces guided me to where I am now.

Burying Will was something I did because he wanted me to do it. There was so little I could do for him, I felt guilty not giving him this one final thing. Even though it cost money I barely had established an anchor to a place I felt in the deepest part of my gut I wasn’t meant to be much longer.

On our last trip down, there wasn’t time enough to make the trek to the little country cemetery where his urn rests. Do urns rest? Really?

This time, Dee needs to be made aware that we will be coming within about 45 minutes of it and given the option to visit. I really want to break her of the notion that Will’s grave is a symbol of him. It’s a big rock in front of a shallow hole that contains a metal box with ash and bone in it. He, according to her, is the guardian angel of a baby born last summer. Before that, again according to her, he dropped in on us often. Now he can only come in when he has time off. It’s an interesting concept for a seven-year old to have come up with on her own, but since we haven’t schooled her much in the afterlife, I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, she thinks everyone goes to heaven.

She and I watched a movie called Oliver and Company. Cheesy bad animations from forever ago that twists the Dickens tale into a bizarre cautionary quasi-friendship themed fare for wee ones. The bad guys die.

“That was a good movie,” she told Rob. “And the bad guys died and went to heaven.”

Of course they died. We haven’t mentioned hell to her. She has no idea it “exists” in the whole death mythology. Everyone goes to heaven. Punishment is death itself and then there is heaven.

I dread the cemetery. My earliest memories of cemeteries are pleasant. Strolling with Dad’s mother as she introduced me to relatives and told wonderful tales that I was too young to know I should have been memorizing.

When cemeteries became somber, I had forty years of wonderful memories to overcome and have found that difficult. Hence the other part of my conflict. I want Dee to think of cemeteries as place where history and family are and not as sad obligations.

I have already told her that she doesn’t have to visit her grandfather’s grave. She knew him so much better than she did Will that her sadness is often more profound over Dad’s death than it is for Will.

It’s not helping me gear up for the journey knowing that life is in flux in the States right now either. No one seems quite as grounded or sane as I remember. Crossing the border, never pleasant, menaces. I fear something awful is about to happen and I would rather be here, in Canada, when it does.

And I am allergic. Oh, I am always allergic, but this week has seen a resurgence of vicious, sudden attacks. Eyes swelling to almost shut. Sinuses burn as if I have inhaled acid. It’s something in industrial strength cleaning solvents that causes it. That’s what happened to me when we took our trip to Victoria last fall and I encountered something at Dee’s dance school the other night which has set me off for most of this week. It tires me and is a little bit scary.

My kindly old Chinese doctor didn’t help when I saw him either. I needed refills on allergy meds, and he cheerfully recounted how two of his patients died trying to inject themselves with their epi pens. Sigh. Socialized medicine does not improve bedside manner.

Must pack and begin girding my loins.

I Am Not an Evil Stepmother


At least, I don’t think I am evil. Or all that bad as a step-mother. And as a result, I take offense when I read stories where step-mothers are villanized or watch movies in which they are reduced to fairy tale stereo-types.

Being a step-parent is not something I ever considered. When I was single, I refused to date men with children from previous relationships because as a teacher I’d never encountered a blended family where the adults made even the slightest effort to be adults and parent cooperatively and it was the horror of that which compelled me to nix daddies as date material.*

Even as a widow, when I had almost nothing but men with children from whom to pick, I still didn’t give much thought to step-motherhood. Or step-fatherhood even. I was determined that Dee have a father who would love her like his own. There would be no “step” because I don’t buy into the notion that love can only blossom biologically where offspring are concerned.**

I don’t claim to have some magically family blending powers or secret recipe. Rob and I have always approached it as a united front and with the attitude that everyone around us will adjust if given time, love and attention, and things go well for us on this front.

Last night Dee and I watched the horrid A Cinderella Story with Hillary Duff and some boy-toy flavor of that particular moment. The story began with a little girl and her widowed father, who was just shy of utter perfection and loved by all. He marries, inexplicably and without much warning, a  woman who made me shudder before she said a single word. Name the stereo-typical affliction and she had it. Plain to homely face. Overweight. Shallow. Materialistic. The mothering skill set of a magpie*** And, of course, two mini-me’s.

Assuming that one can put set aside their disbelief at this point, or swallow the idea that remarriage – for a man anyway – spells certain doom by way of untimely death, then the rest of the movie makes sense.

But I kept coming back to the evil step-mother thing because I am not evil nor do I know any woman who is a real life step-mother who is.

The first blended family I encountered belonged to elementary school friends, Karla and Patty. They’d lost their mother and father respectively and their parents found each other and remarried when they were in the second grade. They were the second youngest with several much older siblings and a younger brother apiece. In all, there were about 10 or 11 children ranging from 6 to late teens. There were ups and downs, but they considered themselves a real family and their step-parents “real” parents.

Sam Baker wrote a post for The Guardian this last week about literary step-mothers which provoked an interesting give/take on DoubleX.

Since I am tired of the only comments I receive being spam, I would like to hear your opinions. I yield the floor.

* I knew many children who regarded their step-parents well and had warm relationships. It was the “grown-ups” and their issue that was my issue.

** People who do think this should be avoided as romantic prospects. jmo, but idiot thinking like that is simply the tip of an iceberg best left to some other intrepid soul.

*** Edie’s downstairs neighbors rescued a baby magpie last fall and are keeping it as a pet. (They are from B.C. – seriously people without sense where animals are concerned). They feed it raw hamburger.  Magpies have been known to carry off small kittens to feast on.