On my calendar, it still says "Memorial Day at Little Rhode Vasa Park." Each year, members of the RI District of the the Vasa Order of America, a Swedish-American fraternal organization to which my family belongs gather on Memorial Day for a religious service in which we recall the ames of all our members who died in the previous year. It also reminds us of the unnamed many who still reside in our hearts after two or three or three dozen years. It is a simple event, sometimes a little boring, sometimes a little depressing, but real, real.
This year I find myself in a transition--preparing to leave Michigan to become a resident of Maryland at the end of the summer. I needed time this weekend to move furniture to prepare for the arrival of the Morales family in a few weeks. (They will be living in my house, tenants with an option to buy, beginning very soon.)
But my friend Jack stopped by yesterday morning for a cup of coffee while I had breakfast. After a few minutes, he asked if I might want to go with him to a family cabin "Up North."
And so our trek began.
I won't share many of the details. We laughed longer and harder than I have fore the longest time. Somehow, I have developed a reputation as one who delights in killing animals crossing the road. (This comes of an unfortunate incident with a reluctant raccoon who hesitated and zigged and zagged as we drove alone Dixie Highway on the way to Pontiac a few weeks ago. Sadly, I zagged where I should have zigged, with terrible consequences for the raccoon.) Yesterday's total was only one butterdly--and we think that was a case of suicide by windshield.
But we drove through Estey to a little tributary of Wixom Lake where a tiny cabin sadly seeks attention. The stairs down to the river are sturdy, and the dock strong, covered with a composite decking that, I think, will least forever. We say in grimy lawn chairs rescued from the shed's tumble of fishing poles, paddles and a lawn mower.
I noticed in the shed a charcoal grill, and suggested that we grill a few hot dogs. We went to the butcher on Estey Road and got some Koegel's viennas and a couple of freshly handmade brats--regular and jalapeño and cheese--and stated cooking.
Jack started a modest pile of briquets (of the lighter-fluid-free variety) and complained that he needed some help--maybe some paper. Rather than using the old Detroit News in the kitchen, I found the remnant of last year's briquets in the shed, rolled up the bag around the old briquets, and threw that into the attempted fire. When it caught, it smoked and spiuttered, but then gave us enough of a bed to cook a few dozen dogs and brats, and enough smoke for a couple of full racks of ribs.
Still, we shared but four dogs and two brats, and were happy.
Then Jack suggested a trip to another family cabin, a quite nice one on South Dease Lake. So we drove some more (deer beware) and passed through West Branch and Rose City on the way toward Hale. The house there is quite nice, although entirely shuttered, and Jack did not have a key to this place. We sat at the picnic table and saw about the prettiest lakeview I've seen, of a clear and broad lake surrounded by pines, of well-appointed cottages and very little water traffic, a swampy end of the lake out of which came a loon paddling and submerging and a gorgeous blue heron in flight. No "noise pollution" save a kid on a dirtbike out on the road. And serenity as the sun lowered in the sky.
We couldn't stay. We needed to get back to the Estey cabin to bury the fire and put away the grill. We needed to get home for me to look after moving tasks. But the day was full of silliness and accident, misdirection and frivolity, much freedom. We talked about boys (!), or, even better, about the ways we are attached to one another; the good attachments that bring us to our better selves, and the troublesome attachments where we wonder, ":why do I put up with this? why don't I respect myself more?" My first Memorial Day "Up North" was a journey to me and us, to memory and hope.
