A day of bookmarks. I'm sandwiched in there, comfortably ensconced in the wrap of family love. But, too, there are lingering emotions in some of us, and I'm aware of those as well. Family milestones often are like that, no? Lots to sift through, lots to still understand.
The day starts like this: with the younger family, in Wauwatosa -- a town that flows out of northwestern Milwaukee. We're at the Homewood Suites and I've been forewarned by Primrose that their morning breakfast is awesome! Sausage, eggs, Fruit Loops, you name it -- there for the taking! Just awesome! So I meet the kids for a light breakfast.
And from there we all drive over to the real treat for me and probably for the parents (and the kids, though honestly, they were pretty tickled by the pieces of melon and their handful of yummy Fruit Loops! Totally awesome! ) -- we go to a bakery called Rocket Baby. It's an immensely popular place, but we got an order in when they opened -- monkey bread for me (which as far as I can figure out is a twisted mix of danish and croissant dough, with loads of cinnamon. Like Denmark, getting married to France!).
A beautiful way to start the day!
But we get serious, too. The conventional wisdom is that funerals and memorial services provide closure. I can see that. For the great grandkids, it provides a "the end" to a chapter in their lives -- the ever strange and exciting tale of GGH, as my mother liked to be called once she had great-grandkids (Great Grandma Helen). For the rest of us? We just carry on and continue to try to understand where we are, and how it came to pass that we are who we are.
(hide and seek, Juniper style)
Eventually it is time to go.
(last hugs)
I drive back to the farmette. It's not too far -- less than an hour and a half. Time for music and thoughts that always flow in the smoothest way when the drive is easy and the music is good. I think about how the memorial and scattering were especially meaningful to my daughters -- more so than to anyone else I suppose, because my mom had been, on and off, part of their childhood, without, at the time, imposing on them the baggage of her strong feelings toward the rest of the family. Talk about innocence! My mom ended it abruptly by disappearing first in mild annoyance, and for the second time in true anger, but it's not as if she was the one who burst their bubble of childhood innocence. Yes, she could be a handful, but by the time they recognized that, my girls were focused on their own friends, so it hardly mattered. And then of course, my ex and I split up and my mom's anger became completely irrelevant to them. They were losing something much more important. And so their sharpest memories of her were... good ones.
As were mine from early on. I remember the joy I felt when, in the years I lived with my grandparents in the village, I would know that she was coming by train for a brief visit. I would stare hard at the direction from which she would walk from the train station -- by the river, then turning across the meadow and finally to our small gate. The quietness of the house would disappear and there was a burst of energy as she unpacked foods from the city and my grandma would double up on her cooking, because her daughter had arrived. I begged for this magic person -- my mother -- to take us back to the city with her (a city I did not know at all) and eventually, when I was three and a half and my sister turned five, she relented and we moved to Warsaw, switching to an all day nursery school rather than remaining in the care of my grandparents. Summers were still in the village, but during the school year we became city girls. And, like for my daughters, for me those early years with her were good! I was in awe of this tall woman with the very, very dark hair (she died it black) and bright lipstick. Finally mine, to love, forever. I felt damn lucky.
So, too, did my daughters in the times she baby sat for them. All the grandkids felt loved by her, even though she ceased to participate in their lives directly as they grew older. It didn't matter. Once in a blue moon they talked on the phone. Listen to her not very helpful advice. Yes grandma, sure grandma. Happy Thanksgiving/Christmas/birthday! Good bye!
At home now. With Ed. We need to walk, together, in our favorite local park.
(you hear them often in the fields at this time of the year)
(is it only Ed and me who love the colors of a drying prairie?)
(a walk in the woods calms a racing mind)
At the farmhouse, I have to start in on dinner, because yes, at the other end of the day, I have the young family over for their regular Sunday farmhouse meal.
(first one to arrive...)
(showing off his love for Fromage d'Affinois)
And still we need time to talk things through, to plug up holes. Closure my foot! It's a process!
It is also surely our last dinner on the porch. Just barely warm enough!
After dinner, a big exhale. Snowdrop returns to the computer to make progress on her school-assigned game. She needs help. Her brothers are fascinated. (All kids appear to love math. Well, maybe Sandpiper just loves looking at any computer for any reason at this point!)
They leave. I'm thinking -- what an intense set of days! But for me at least, they were deeply good days. A little bit raw, a little bit demanding, but on balance -- really good. I need only look at the photos from today -- morning and evening, and to look at the guy next to me on the couch right now, to understand why. We read about Ashville, we read about the Middle East, we read about the country to the east of Poland... Yeah, we've all been insanely lucky here, in south-central Wisconsin. Insanely lucky. Sigh...
with so much love...
