Michigan Is For Lovers

Every time I do this, I think, “Why put yourself through this again?” These things usually end in tears. Our past three vacations have followed a very particular pattern. The family piles into the car and we travel north. Each of us holds onto the promise that this vacation will be better than the previous year’s failure. No matter what happens, one thing is for sure: we will kill someone on this trip. The only question is who it will be. 

Our summer sojourns always lead to someone’s death. Three years ago, it was a neighbor; not so bad, we rarely spoke and he had a knack for mowing too far over the property line. After delivering a hot dish and some flowers my wife selected from Kroger, we watched as he was laid to rest under a lovely tree in the local churchyard. His headstone was adorned with a pithy memorial reading, “Husband, Father, Forever Fishing.” Struck me as odd, but even so, Hank was now wetting hooks in heavenly waters hoping to land a big one. 

Two years ago, my father passed away while we were gone. My dad was a quiet man. He left this earth that way, in a coma which he slipped into post-surgery to remove fluid from his heart. I wasn’t there to speak with him. I wasn’t there to hold his hand as he faced what must be man’s greatest fear. I found enough strength to muster the words down a telephone line to turn off the machine and let him slip away to eternity. 

I don’t have many memories of my father. Most are of that period when he was in the hospital before he passed away. Even those are grainy. I remember telling him that I thought he did a good job. He didn’t, but telling a dying man a white lie seemed to be a better choice than listing a litany of issues I pile into mental Rubbermaid tubs where the things that bother us go to hibernate until we are alone on a deer stand, or mowing the yard, or staring in the mirror and thinking, “My God, I look just like him now.” 

Last year, my wife had the unfortunate experience of eating a french dip sandwich at an Arby’s in Kankakee, Illinois. It revisited her again and again throughout the week. She works in the courts and spends most of her year hearing everyone else’s problems. She only asks to have her face in the sun and toes in the sand for seventy-two hours each year to recharge. Last year was not the year. She spent the majority of it covered in a blanket, shivering in her beach chair and suffering the pangs of food poisoning. She refused to return to the hotel because the kids deserved a vacation. I knew she didn’t mean it. But she is selfless and drives a hard bargain. On the bright side, no one died. 

This year would be different. I was taking every precaution. My grandparents, both in their eighties, were in great health. They were heading to a watermelon festival, quaint, but an activity, I felt, that did not seem lethal. My in-laws were staying in town and looking after my wife’s grandmother. She is a ninety-year-old marvel whose only chance of dying was at the hands of my father-in-law in the aftermath of some petty spat. Not likely, but also, not out of the question. My mother was going to see a Bob Seger tribute band called The System. She still loves that old-time rock and roll. With everyone checked for health and vitality, we set out on our journey. 

Most people travel south to warmer climes each summer with dreams of emerald green waters and dolphins frolicking in the Gulf of Mexico, the coast of Florida or South Carolina. Not my family. Years ago, I sold them on traveling north to enjoy America’s inland ocean, Lake Michigan, a saltless, sharkless, jellyfish-free body of water where the air is less humid and the temps are rarely ever over ninety degrees. It is a respite from the southern heat. 

Our beach town is Holland, Michigan. It is a charming place settled by Dutch immigrants. Each spring the town has a tulip festival to showcase the gorgeous blankets of colorful bulbs that line the city streets. There are beautiful churches from all the major Calvinist denominations: The Reformed Church in America, The Presbyterian Church, The Reformed Church USA, and my personal favorite, a Reformed-Baptist church. How curious? Once saved, always saved, unless the Lord did not select you to be saved when he chose His elect. That could be disastrous. How could you ever be sure? Having grown up in a Baptist church, there is enough fear and doubt already with salvation that coupling it with predestination might have congregations so afraid to die they have a hard time living. 

The town is Rockwellian. Small boutiques and shops line its downtown. There are clothing stores, chocolate shops, restaurants, and even a store focusing on all things cherry. It is a quaint piece of Americana; its only fault is that after leaving it, you will remember that it exists. It haunts you with beautiful memories while you try to live a normal life in your droll town. On your worst day it can also lift you from the rubble of monotonous daily blather and remind you that in a small town in western Michigan, things are still pretty ok. 

Our son, Sam, is twelve and is outgrowing everything he owns. He stays in a shoe size about a month and eats at a Kobayashian rate. The boy barely breathes while punishing a plate of food. He inhales the provisions laid before him and then turns to eye your share. He’s grown nine inches this year alone. His current obsessions are the weather and NASCAR. A behemoth of a child, wait staff routinely smirk when he orders from the children’s menu. 

Sam loves the beach. He begins each session by plowing straight in no matter how cold the water. He then spends half an hour assuring you it is fine. Then, when you work up enough courage to enter, you find he was a liar, and a good one. You bought it, now you are freezing! Seventy degrees on land is lovely. Seventy-degree water is quite different. 

At first, it is jarring, but becomes more comfortable the longer you can stand it. It dawned on me that his next year of school would be quite the same. He would dip his toes into the waters of junior high. Oh Lord, junior high, the thought of it again makes me shudder. No matter where you attended junior high it was the same: squeaky voices, changing fashions, cliques forming and then falling apart, and the smell of green onions. Now, it was his turn to experience it all and I realized this moment, this dip in the less than comfortable waters of Lake Michigan might be the last time he cared about what I thought or had to say. This occasion of jumping waves and riding to shore might be the last time we ever communicate on a level where one of us does not sigh in disdain about the other's opinion. He doesn’t know that yet. His mother and I do. Sometimes you don’t realize these things while they are happening around you. Sometimes it is only after you have failed at being a parent does something like that even occur to you and by then it is too late. 

We had done that once. Our oldest son is now a hirsute lover of all things redneck couture. He swills Coors Banquet beers as if they are the newest trend in boutiquey craft beer. He was so smart, but college was not for him. The upper echelons of his hopes and dreams were draped in camouflage, his views of the world tainted by modern country music. I only jumped waves with him once. We had already forgotten how to communicate by that point. He still holds a grudge. I have never forgiven myself. I am determined to not repeat such an error. 

“Isn’t this great?,” Sam yells across the water.

“Yes,” I yell back. It is.

  One thing I find rejuvenating every year is strolling the main street and taking in what most people imagine when they picture America. Holland echoes with the sounds of a bygone era. It smells like fudge. Sure, some tacky t-shirt shops offer the usual vacation garb, but the soul of the town is pure. I breathe it in and it takes me to a place where I cannot go at home. 

If I am being honest, it has been a pretty rough year in our home. There have been more downs than ups and my wife and I have failed to see eye-to-eye on many occasions. It seemed when something would happen, rather than talk we yelled. We would forget the love we promised one another and seek to destroy one another with barb after barb of scything insults and profanity-laden missiles aimed at the other’s heart. We needed a reset. I did not expect to find it on this trip. Vacations tend to turn the most docile parent into a raving lunatic. When you add in the drive, well, you have a father who is likely to explode at any given second. I knew I was on edge. What I didn’t know was what I needed was right around the corner. 

Bumph, Bumph. Click. Pow. Pow. Pow. At first, I thought it came from street drummers. The more I listened, the more I could discern a more choreographed pattern. The sound wasn’t a group of people playing music, it was people playing along to music and it was a lot of them. I followed the banging down the street and around the corner. I had left my family staring at a human statue who was staring back at them. It was... uncomfortable. When I discovered the source of the sound, I stood equally as transfixed, dumbstruck with awe, and then... I melted. I became rooted in place as I gazed in wonder at the sweetest thing I’d ever seen. 

I had never seen the Resthaven Community Drummers before. I did not know they played every Thursday night from 6:00 to 7:30 pm. And I had no idea they would have such an impact. Before me sat thirty elderly people, each with their own exercise ball and a pair of drumsticks. Each one stared eagle-eyed at a conductor, a much younger man, who directed them through choreographed drumming to a popular song. They danced, they shook their sticks, they laughed and smiled big, precocious smiles. They did the Beatles, the Stones, and the Temptations. It was amazing. Not because it was precious, but because they were so full of life and joy. I wasn’t and I should have been. I stared at their faces and saw them having the time of their lives. Then I thought about how those lives were nearly over. How could they face that? How could they be so happy knowing their time on this Earth was almost up? Then it hit me, they didn’t care. They’d lived it. They’d seen it all, some of it even twice! They had returned to a near child-like innocence and appreciation of life that I had lost. 

I watched two of them, obviously husband and wife, and thought about my relationship. Here were two people who had made it. Here were two people who had weathered so many storms and now sat smiling at one another and drumming away without a care in the world. They had raised their kids and seen them off to college. They had held grandchildren and great-grandchildren and grown to appreciate life’s gifts. They had swum the stormy waters of life that I was sure were now drowning me. They were the picture of true love. And at that moment I realized something. All those disagreements this past year weren’t anything important. Who cares if that bill was late? It would get paid. Sam made a C, so, do better on the next test and work harder. The things I’d been putting so much pressure on had taken me over and made me forget the things that mattered. 

Then I saw her. My wife had tracked me down. She had followed the sounds of the drumming to the enclave and saw me standing there glued to my place. I smiled at her and she smiled back. She came over and stood beside me. 

“Are they any good?” she asked.

“Amazing,” I said.

“Have they played Wipeout?” she whispered.

“No, but they could,” I answered.

“Do you love me as much as when we met?” I asked. “Sure, you know I do,” she answered without hesitation. 

“Will you love me when I am that old?”

“Of course, just make sure you keep good time and don’t ruin the show,” she smiled. “I can’t promise anything,” I said, “Bladder control might be a higher priority.”

She grabbed my arm and gave a me peck on the cheek.

“You pee on the lid now,” she whispered, “I’m used to it.”

I needed that. We needed that. I don’t think we knew how much.

  After a week away, it was time to pack up and return home. Before, I dreaded the packing up of everything you bought on vacation and trying to find a place for it in a car that was already loaded to the hilt. Then there were the floaties. Tubes and floaties are my least favorite things to pack away. There is no way to get the sand off those things and no way to completely deflate them. You end up contorting them in a variety of way to squeeze out the last puff of air so they will  fit in your vehicle. Many times, I am sure someone looking out their hotel room window has seen me manhandling a unicorn, or dry humping a giant donut. Hopefully, they understand. Maybe they giggle to themselves and think, “Been there, buddy.” 

The trip home is always a slog and never as eventful as the beginning of a vacation adventure. This one, though, had a different feel. I felt that this trip had changed me. It had made me someone better than the man who had begun this journey five days earlier. I looked at Sam in the rearview mirror. He was staring out the window and mumbling to himself about cumulonimbus clouds and thunderheads building in the distance. 

“Might rain on us in a bit, I am sure of it. Look at it in the distance,” he predicted.

“Yep, looks dark,” I said.

My wife was asleep. Her mouth was open and she was making that death rattle sound that people who don’t snore make when they are snoring. It was cute. She was cute. I loved her more now than when we left. We were both forty. Statistically, our lives were half over. We had wasted the first half, not all of it, we had a family and each built a career, but lost each other a bit. As I drove on, I knew that those days were past us and that the second half of our lives would be better. That I was going to be better. 

You see, sometimes you get so focused on the things that you can’t control that you have to step outside yourself to see the bigger picture. If you are lucky enough to do that, then you can make changes to make your life better. If you never do, if you stay in that same place, do the same things without ever looking to change, then you will wither. We could have gone to Florida to the beach. We could have gone to the Carolinas. Both are wonderful destinations. But the Happy Slappers of Resthaven Community Home would not have been drumming on those boardwalks. They were in Holland. They were there drumming away, happy to be bringing joy to those who came to their little town to enjoy it. They were doing that and so much more. As I drove, I smiled and thought about future vacations and could not wait to return. My phone buzzed. It was my mom. She was texting to tell me that the pastor of the local Lutheran church had passed away last night. Darn, we had killed someone else.

D.A. Russell is graduate of Arkansas State University and currently serves as an administrator for Wynne Virtual Academy. He lives in Arkansas where he and his wife are probably traveling and searching for their next favorite microbrewery.