les goes to ohio 9/04

9/10/04.

I awoke at 4:00 a.m. and drove to Ohio. I left my house at 4:25 a.m., stopped and mailed some bills, bought some coffee and a muffin, and drove straight through. I stopped to pee the dog and to pee myself. I drank beverages with caffeine in them and got gas. I drove and I drove. I sang my lungs out, most of the songs I know. I listened to right-wing AM radio. I sang along to well-worn oldies, skimmed through some C&W, rocked out. I yelled curses at other drivers for sharing the road.

For the first time ever, I was greeted in my homecoming with a sign and kids jumping up and down. The homecoming this time included WELCOME HOME LESLIE spray painted on a carpet remnant and propped against Bay and Cam’s bikes in the driveway. They ran out jumping up and down with mom in the driveway. As I parked the truck, I could hear mom whisper to them “Go give her your hugs.”

So they ran and hugged me. Then Camden said, “Aunt Les. I know what you had to do.” I said, “What?” He said, “You had to put Stanley and Homer to sleep.” I said, “Yes, I did. And it makes me very sad.” Then mom asked how it went and I almost started crying talking about it so we did the only thing we know how to do as a family—we avoided it.

I had a great time playing in the yard with Blake, Cam, and Bay. Mom’s neighbor boy, Jonathan (not “Jon”) came over to play. He is a rough kid with a record in the neighborhood already for having been held back from school a year or two before even getting started—the sort of academic probation that strikes pre-schoolers and then haunts them for the rest of their days, branding them dopes.

Then we went off to the football game. Actually, Bill, Lisa, Blake, Cody, and Bailey and I went off to the game. Jennifer and Erin and Cam did not. Cam because he would have been bored. Jennifer and Erin because they could not withstand the gossip. I felt bad that they have to live in this environment, rather than the one I live in where half the families seated around me at the game would have been gay. Okay, maybe not at a football game, but you know what I mean.

Anyhoo, Upper was playing the Wynford Royals. It was pretty much a blowout from the get-go (Upper won something like 49-12). But the game was interesting to me as a social event. When I come back, I find myself perpetually surprised that the people I graduated with have grown older. I don’t think of myself as looking older (though, of course, I do). I see them as real adults and it never fails to surprise me—the gray in their hair, the lines on their faces, the extra rolls around the middle or the hips. I’m sure I look old, too, probably tired, my boobs sagging, bags under my eyes. But that’s normal.

Here’s the other thing I noticed: the names of the football players are all names I grew up with: Neiderkohr, Micheli, Thiel, England—the kids of people I went to high school with. Bill kept telling me things like, “That kid there? He’s such and so’s boy.” I would nod, notice the resemblance (the cute little cheerleader with the exotic cheekbones and heart-shaped ass is the exact blend of Frank Zamora and Bev McLaughlin), and wish he were pointing out their parents in the crowd. Somehow, seeing them aged helped put me in perspective and gave me more of a sense of belonging, like aging was something I could do along with everyone else, something that wouldn’t make me feel like an outsider—the thing we all finally had in common.

I was surprised to see the kids currently in high school looking contemporary and fashionable (boys with pierced ears and cool haircuts, girls with hiphugging jeans). I always think of the high school as containing the kids I know, somehow stuck in the ‘80s, when the only boys who dared to wear a tiny stud in their ear were sort of skuzzy heavy metal boys.

And I saw a boy a couple of times who was the spitting image of Brian Mundy—towheaded, outgoing, hyperactive. To me, he was Brian Mundy. In fact, Brian Mundy is about 35 years old. This kid could be his kid, but certainly isn’t him. But that’s not how I saw it at first. At first, I legitimately believed that this could very well be Brian Mundy. That didn’t seem unreasonable.

Bill pointed out a kid who used to ride our school bus. I don’t think I’ve seen the kid since the last days of high school. He is a big man, now (was a big boy, but not a fat one), with wrinkles under his eyes, a couple of kids, a nice wife. He was always a joker, a trouble-maker, getting in Dutch with bus drivers, acting out because he lost his mother at a very young age. Now he is a husband, father, adult. What leap of faith in love and women must it have taken him to marry? To share his life with a woman who is a mother and who could—heaven forfend—die and leave her children behind?

Which brings me, really, to Mike and Beth’s daughter Kelsey. Kelsey is in the flag line in the high school band (who can believe she is that old). But seeing her there, doing her thing in the halftime show, reminded me that life goes on, despite great loss.

9/11/04:

Today is a day much like the day in 2001 when the planes crashed into the towers. 80 degrees, sunny, horribly blue sky.

We went to Bailey and Camden’s soccer games today. Cammie plays in the 5-6 year old league on the blue team. Bay is on the yellow team for 7-8 year olds. It was fun to watch them. Bailey doesn’t seem terribly captivated by the game—lacking aggression, afflicted with an apparently overwhelming ennui, even when the ball is kicked right at him. He can barely be bothered to move after it. He seems entirely self-conscious, almost to the point of paralysis (shoulders bowed, head down, hands almost together in front as if he’d like to wring them). He looks like he knows people are watching him and it would be better if he just didn’t do anything rather than do something wrong. He also looks exactly like I would have felt at his age standing in the hot sun on a soccer field—bored and hot and wishing I were lounging in the shade (me, with a good book, him, I’m sure, with a gameboy).

After, I went to Pamida to buy Josh’s birthday present. I was struck again by the white hot sun, the blue sky, the evenly clipped grass around homes, the flatness of the landscape, those farms where the lawn looks like a golf course and all the buildings are painted white until the whole place just glows with reflected sunlight. Houses built in the middle of or right next to fields (soybean fields). Nothing on the porch, no toys in the yard, just crisp lawns and sharp white angles.

I took Josh to the Village restaurant for lunch today. It’s the first time the 2 of us have really gone anywhere together, my not realizing how easy it would be to throw his pushable wheelchair in the back of my truck. He is able to get himself turned around and lowered down into the chair pretty much on his own. When I first told him we were going to the Village, he said he didn’t want to go. I think Josh says he doesn’t want to do things that he knows nothing about (his having only ever made one trip to the Village—for a birthday lunch with Mom some years back) for much the same reason that I say I don’t want to do things—because I’m afraid of the unknown, of the potential for embarrassment, upset, etc.


9/12/04:

Today we all went canoeing (all, that is, but Mom and Josh). Bill, Lisa, and Blake in one canoe; Jennifer, Erin, and Cammie in the other, and Cody, me and Bailey in the last.

At different points, we swapped kids: Cody and me taking on Cammie. Then unloading Bailey and swapping him out for Blake. They liked our canoe because we were the splashers.

The trip was 7 miles in about 2 hours down the Mohican River. There were a good many people out on the river in kayaks, canoes, rafts, and just life jackets. The river is lined with campgrounds, cottage parks, and canoe liveries. Coming up, I had always heard people talking about camping or staying or doing something at Mohican. I had never gone there before. It was a nice place but far too crowded.

After the canoe ride, Jennifer, Erin, Bailey, and I went off in one car while the rest went to the go-karts. Our car went into the state park, first to a gorge overlook (who knew there was such a steep gorge in Ohio? The work of glaciers, apparently). Then we took a hike up to Lyons Falls. Now the physically fit Jennifer and Erin were dragging ass the 1/2 mile up the trail. They were actually holding Bailey back. I just wanted to run, I felt so pent-up from riding in the car, eating, and not getting much exercise. I managed to restrain myself all the way to the falls. There was only a trickle of water coming down (it having been such a dry summer), but the falls geology was magnificent. A great mossy granite overhang, perhaps 3 stories high, with water coming off it and splashing into a log-laden pool below (not much of a pool, given the trickle of water). I imagine that when the water is cascading off the rock, that the sheet of the falls in front of the great hollow behind it will hide hikers. It is possible to walk on a sandy arc behind the falls, against the mossy rock, and out the other side to a trail that leads to the top of the falls (and, ultimately, in a loop back to the beginning). Disappointing, though, was how trampled the whole thing was. We passed dozens of people on the trail, most obviously not actual hikers, just smoking bikers, soccer moms, and granddads with fat lap dogs. The cave under the falls was marred with graffiti and smelled of ass. In fact, much of the trail smelled like it was being used as an impromptu latrine by the masses (and we weren’t far from actual toilets). There was a plastic water bottle jammed in among the logs in the falls pool, there was scattered toilet tissue (!) in the cave, and a flattened Hostess ding dong on the trail.

Upon arriving back at Mom’s we all sat down to the first Susie’s Pizza feast of my trip home. Then Jennifer and Erin left with the boys (school night). Bill invited me out to Dlubak’s to get some free glassware that was about to be destroyed in the recycling process.

I had never been to Dlubak’s before, having only heard of it in tales from Bill and Dad. It was something: mountains of glass slag (the largest easily 500 feet high and probably the highest spot in the county). The glass we were there to scavenge had been blocked off with large containers. I guess word had spread through town that the stuff was there and looters had begun to arrive en masse.

Bill led Blake and me around the containers (with impunity, of course, his being a member of the Dlubak inner circle). The glassware was amazing! Stacks upon stacks of beautiful drinking glasses, casserole dishes, salad bowls, highball glasses, cheese covers, baking dishes, sundae servers, and measuring cups. No wonder people were looting it! There were things there that I know cost 40 or more bucks a pop at stores. It was an embarrassment of riches. It should have been given to people in need, not tossed on the slagheap for recycling (I guess at least it wasn’t being land filled). I was fighting the urge to take it all, some of it being so lovely. I wanted to take enough for my friends. I wanted to fill my cupboards (and, truth be told the only thing I took that I really sort of needed was a measuring cup). I replaced my home drinking glasses with a set of beautiful little frosted/flowered glasses that sell at Crate and Barrel for an arm and a leg. I took off with some blue glass bread pans and a few blue glass pie plates. Some chicken butt glasses. Some glass ramekins for the shelter. Then Bill took us on a tour of the works, explaining where the glass comes from (primarily commercial dumps of things like the glassware where Anchor Hocking gets bought out and has to dump scads of nice things from their inventory).

I climbed up in a great escavator. I had fantasies of being a big machine operator.

9/13/04:

Today I drove to Oxford to see old Miami again. I took the long way there—state highways through little towns like Kenton, Sidney, etc. I think I even managed it in a way I hadn’t done before (30 to 68 to 47 to some small road, to 127 to 73 to Oxford. On the way back I took 73 to 127 to 725 to Germantown/Miamisburg to 75 North to 47 to 68 to 67 to Upper). I’ve certainly had my share of looking at Ohio farmland in the summertime.

I haven’t been back to visit Miami in about 10 years. I don’t really remember the last time I was there, but the Shriver Center’s renovations had just been completed and work was beginning on Hall Auditorium. Hall is finished now (the auditorium itself was locked, but they did a nice job refurbishing the lobby). Hattie Brown and I parked in front of MacGuffey Hall (being renovated now) and then hoofed it around campus (Hall Auditorium—where we used the bathroom; Irvin Hall—where we checked out the tasteful renovations and saw Peter Carel—now silver-haired—unlocking his bicycle; Shriver Center—where we checked out the bookstore and the food court that has replaced the old grill where I used to work; Bachelor Hall—to see which English faculty are left—of those I had, only Rosenberg, Erlich, Tomarken, Schloss; to Western Campus where we walked over the vine-covered stone bridges, gandered at Mary Lyon and McKee Halls, entertained some students who wanted to pet Hattie Brown, and generally missed being there; on then back up to central quad and the sundial, in front of Bishop Hall, down next to it and back to the truck. I drove uptown and bought two salt bagels with Swiss cheese from the Bagel & Deli. Oh man, whenever I think of Oxford, I think of those crazy steamed bagels. They are just as good as they always were. Much seems lost from downtown—the water tower was gone the last time I visited and the central common is lined with new benches but lacks shade. The bookstores appear to be the same, but there seem to be fewer restaurants that aren’t chains. Bruno’s is still there, and DiPaolo’s. I couldn’t see the bars like Mac n Joes that are in the alley, but there seemed to be plenty of places to party. The movie theater near my old apartment was still there, but the mom-n-pop grocery next door to it (not to mention the drug store across the street) is gone. The Morgue is still there and is still student housing, though Mrs. Paulin has apparently left her brick house (now painted blue and rented out to students—what a shame because her home was beautiful). Oxford College appears to be vacated—for renovations, if I recall correctly. I drove up and down the streets, out to the shopping area where we all walked to do our “Krogering.” There is a Wal-Mart there, now. The grounds were as lovely as ever and the renovations largely well done (as usual). The fraternities still appeared to rule the streets.

That is a physical description of what we did and how things look. But the bigger issue was nostalgia—always something I face whenever I visit Ohio. I see my old high school or Harpster Elementary and think about how things were then. I see houses where people I knew lived and remember what it was like to visit. Nostalgia is a type of grief—a mourning not just for the loss of time and experience, but for lost potential and dreams of the future. I was profoundly unhappy much of the time I was at Miami, yet I remember it now as a wonderful experience—a freedom that I didn’t appreciate at the time. I felt so trapped then—overworked, under pressure to do all the right things and be good—all the time terrified that all the people heaping praise on me would discover what an idiot and a poser I really was, how I wasn’t really smart or special or deserving of any of the honors I received. I wanted to be an English professor but lost all confidence in my ability to get it done. And each time, even today, that I consider going back to graduate school and working toward that career, I am frightened by not just the daunting application process, the consuming schoolwork, and the lack of jobs in the field, but also from the fear that I won’t be good enough. The little part of me that knows I’m smarter than the average bear never wins this battle.

9/15/04:

This morning I woke up and went to the fair all by myself. I wanted to catch the horse show in the morning. There weren’t many people about and most things were closed. I watched some of the halter classes. The quality of horses was a little higher overall (in that I don’t remember separate classes for registered AQHA, registered western type, and unregistered stock horses). But there were still plenty of “unregistered stock horses” (what we used to refer to as “grade” horses). Many of the names were the same—Swartz, Pahl, etc. and the Leightey’s were there in force with their Leightey family compound (a tent off a camping trailer). They built a new saddle horse barn down beside the arena (no more box stalls) to replace the barn that burned down years ago (killing a few boarded horses).

I watched the show for a little bit before realizing that I really disagreed with the judge in how she placed the AQHA gelding class (unless I just couldn’t see the legs/movement of the winning horses).

I wandered up to the Jr. Fair Arena and watched the beginner Swine showmanship class. What a hoot! All these little kids (probably about 9-10 years old) guiding these frolicking porkers around the pen. The judge, a skinny young man with a seed cap and roper boots, stood in the center. All the kids caned their hogs in circles around the judge—or tried to anyway. The hogs were happy to carouse with their buddies and careen off into corners in clumps.

From what I could discern (and remember from my limited greased pig experience), the technique was to keep your hog moving in circles around the judge, with the hog remaining between you and the judge. You were to keep your eye on the judge, all the while bending over and creeping along behind your hog, touching him lightly on either side of his head to keep him in a straight line. This is harder than it sounds. Few of the hogs were willing to go where their handlers intended, being stubborn souls. The hogs stopped, rooted, rammed into one another, flew into the knees of the 3 volunteers holding the red plastic hog shields (used to guide hogs into their holding pens). As the class progresses, the judge sends kids and hogs into the holding pens one by one. At the end, he is left with only his winners. Then he grabs the microphone and, in a completely unintelligible manner, describes what he liked about the kids, asking us to give each of them a round of applause.

I put Hattie Brown in her snack pack and rode Mom’s bike up to see Ilse & Merle. Then I rode home, put Hattie in her crate, and went and ran around the new reservoir. It is about a 5 mile run, all told. The pavement from these runs is painful on my poor old legs. It was a hot and humid day with little shade. This place is flat. Have I mentioned that?

When I got back to Mom’s Jennifer and her kids were there and ready to go to the fair. I called Josh and made plans to hook up with him. By the time I got a shower and got him loaded up in my truck, we were late meeting Jinx down by the 4-H horse barn. But we wandered through the fair, playing games and eating food. Jennifer knows everyone. She was impatient with me for some reason and didn’t want to be hanging out with us. Maybe she was just frazzled from work and overwhelmed with having to do the fair thing in a short time before the kids hit the sack.

After Jinx and the boys left, Josh and I wandered around some more. We played games (he paid for them, lost at them, and then got prizes from the carnies, anyway). We ate more fair food (elephant ears!), watched the barrel racing at the horse show, and checked out the harness racing. Josh had a great time. On the way home, we cranked up the music and rocked out. He told me, “Aunt Les, I had a really good time!” Me too.