A Blythe Spirit

There is something extremely comforting about doing dishes three times a day in a sink you took a bath in as a baby.  Sleeping in a bed in a room where you once slept in a suitcase.  Walking by a creek you used to dam up for a swimming hole.  Feeding chipmunks you used to swear you could communicate with by squeaking and moving your forefinger like a tail.  I needed this week, to remind me of the constants in life, myself, my personality, my spirit.

Lately I've seen my grandfather around the holidays, when we all come into town for a week.  It's busy,  it's confusing for a man already struggling with his memory.

Being at the cabin with him has been a nice, quiet, calm, refreshing time.  There are still lots of details he struggles with on an hourly basis.  Where did that jam on the table come from?  Where did all of his children get married?

My oldest cousin on the Goodman side, Gwen, started the tradition of creating scavenger hunts for the younger cousins whenever we got together.  One summer, my cousin Jessica and her immediate family were at the cabin at the beginning of the summer.  Jessica left a scavenger hunt for my sister and I, who were coming several weeks later.

It was exciting to do a scavenger hunt when the creator wasn't around, but it did provide some challenges.  There had been a few tenants at the cabin between Jessica's stay and ours, and a few of the clues had been moved or had gone missing by the time we started trying to follow the path of clues.  If the trail ran dry, we'd have to skip ahead a clue or two to find it again.  We ultimately did find the prize,  our names carved on a downed tree on the way to the meadow!

Talking with my grandfather at the cabin reminded me of that scavenger hunt.  I tell him it's a fun game to try to answer  the questions he asks, and use whatever puzzle pieces we have to figure out the answers, or make up our own stories.  (As my grandmother always said, "Never let the truth interfere with a good story.")  He laughs at my perspective on our story creating.  We decide the jam looks homemade, and is a berry neither of us know, so it was probably a gift from Christine who's from California, and it's probably a California berry.  We also figure out where all of his children have been married so far (Winfield, Ottawa, and Madison) by thinking of when they got married and where everyone was at the time.

I am impressed with how well he recalls the stories directly related to him.  How he broke his arm two weeks before marrying my grandmother.  How he parked his car ten miles north of her house, so Uncle Bob couldn't find it during the ceremony or reception, although he looked all over Superior.  How he was horrible at picking strawberries, and learned when he went to college that he was red/green color blind, which still did not impress his dad.  All the different churches he worked at, where he was associate pastor, where he was senior pastor, where all his children were born.

As we drove in the first day and passed the first car on the old country road, we wave hello.  At the same time, we both remember the same moment.  I used to sit in the middle of the front seat of the Great Grey.  One summer I learned about the country wave (you leave your wrist on the wheel but lift your hand in greeting) and the farmer wave (you just lift your forefinger).  I was so amused by that idea I used the dashboard of the Great Grey as my wheel and lifted one finger to each car we passed, which made my grandparents sitting on either side of me chuckle.

Remembering these stories, hearing new ones about my grandfather's life, is reviving me.  My grandfather hikes with me all the way to the meadow.  We go slowly and notice the flowers together.  The main thing he notices, of course, is how much good firewood there is up here.  I tell him my mom and I will walk up and get it when she comes, which makes him laugh.

We get to the meadow, and he decides it might be the last time he walks that far up the trail.  I remember one more story.  About 8 years ago, when my family, my friend Steph, and my grandparents were at the cabin together, my grandfather told us a story about a hike to the meadow he took by himself.  It started with some rustling in the bushes behind him as he walked back.  He finally broke out into a run, which is when a mountain lion jumped out of the bushes at him.  Without thinking, my grandfather stuck his walking stick up in the air, and pole-vaulted the mountain lion across the creek into a bush.  He went back the next day to check out the scene, and saw there were some berries on the bush.  My grandfather ate some of those berries, and they gave him just about the worst stomachache he'd ever had, but he never did find out what happened to that mountain lion.

My mother's reaction to this story: "Dad!  I can't believe you ate those berries!"