The Mitten

There are an infinite number of places that one could explore. The world is vast. It is amazing how one year in Montana has taken a significant sized state and made it feel navigable and familiar. On the other hand, it is incredible how a year away from Michigan has shown me that even after twenty-seven years lived in mostly one state, there is still ground to be covered and stones still left unturned in my home state.

I am reminded of this in the late September eruption of blaze red leaves igniting in the maples around my hometown. The scattering of small lakes and canals slipping past sided homes in cattail avenues surprises me, even after having spent most of my life here. Growing up in the great lake state with the familiar shimmer of the big-toothed aspen leaves and the untroubled willow tree branches, the lake mirroring every sunset and star, bass breeching and whitetail deer lifting their heads to watch you walk by has been, well, a blessing. To venture away and spend time in the mountains for the past year has instilled a curiosity and courage I may not have known otherwise, but returning home for a bit has a way of reminding you what prompted your journey in the first place.

It’s a funny thing, coming home. I ran off west into a valley tucked between mountain ranges to go searching for dawn elk bugles and big river trout just to return home and find all these new feeling things I seemed to have missed in my twenty some years in one place.

Suddenly, the morning lake horizon, jay-walking Canada geese, and finnicky groundhogs trained in backyard garden heists have become more interesting in my time away from them. I didn’t quite notice before how resplendent the coral and pink impatiens were that my mother planted or how amusing it was that the green beans had grown through the living room window because her garden was just that capable. The flash of red as cardinals swoop from the evergreens to my stepdad’s bird houses in my parent’s backyard was more entertaining than it once was and the chickadees that fluttered weightlessly on the rosebush just outside the window were somehow sweeter and more comforting than they once were. I quietly listened for a while longer than I used to, to the buzz of the cicadas like the bubbling of a coke poured in a glass. The mallards under the willow tree branches on the path my dad and I would walk were still there when we went strolling by, as if they hadn’t moved since I was last home. For a moment I even considered that they may be abandoned decoys, but they chatted and swam under the branches and I was quickly reminded, that was simply their home.

Home. My stepdad’s shuffling feet on the wooden floor and the splatter of bacon grease as he cooks before the football game, my mother tossing peanuts to the squirrels and watching morning pass by from the porch, my father’s cigarette smoke fumigating the car as he tells me a story he already has, my sisters echoing and contagious laugh from the other room, my brother’s dance moves and chokehold hugs, my grandma and her cheeky remarks, my nephew; grown and all his own, what wonderful things to return to. Time has passed and yet stood still on this two-acre lot in the middle of an old boat town at the bottom of the thumb in this lovely mitten state. The grass is as verdant as I remember and autumn has only just begun to dust the leaves with a hint of yellow and red. The deer slip through the timber behind my parent’s home and graze at the still empty lot down the road in the evening. I used to drive by them more quickly than I do now. The lake water seems to have cleared a bit, even though we live on the leeward shore, and I am already dreaming up the zip of the catfish or spirited bass on the other end of my fishing line as I pass by. In my parent’s home, there is always a little bit of dog hair or crumbs to be wiped from the bottom of your bare feet; my mom will hate that I wrote this but I find it absolutely charming. It is a house filled with large family dinners and card games and a German Shepherd that likes to sleep under the table. You’d have to sweep every day to avoid that and there just isn’t enough time in life for such silly matters; though I will admit they do sweep as much as possible. When I walk over to my father’s home down the road, there is the lake and the spot where my whole family used to sit and fish for whole days.

We’d bring chips and eat them with crawler guts under our fingernails and drink lukewarm beers from a bucket and cheer for every single fish caught. We made time to get out there and do just that again while I was home. The best part about that lake is that you could catch anything; sometimes an alligator gar, sometimes a channel cat, sometimes a bowfin, mostly a silver bass and occasionally a treasure dropped from a pontoon the summer before that washed into the shallows. Even better than that, the look on everyone’s faces when the catch surfaces. What a pleasure it is to live bait fish in a sea of possibilities.

I returned home for a bit to spend time with family, friends, and fish in a place that I am nostalgic over. I love my home. I love how midwestern driveways can become canvases for chalk and courts for basketball and the best place to pile everyone on to surprise your grandma on her 80th birthday. While home, I watched my grandma be surprised by our whole family in the front yard on her birthday and felt her hands, familiar and delicate, grab mine while tears filled her eyes. I love how longtime friends blend back into your life with one beer and no time seems to have passed while you dance around laughing and singing some song that reminds you of more invincible days. I got to watch great friends from way back when get married and be in love and some of them even hug me with a baby belly in between us.

We are all growing up in ways we never thought we would when we were younger and running around town with too many of us all packed in to one car heading anywhere but where our parents thought we were. My youngest nephew, Henry, is two years old and running now and a kid who knows how to run seems to love nothing more, bouncing from one spot to the next, waving at every neighbor with his electric smile; life is so new to him. My oldest nephew, Joshua, is seventeen, he passes time with his high school friends and sweet girlfriend now. I remember dancing with him when we were kids and him looking up at me; I now look up at him. My grandma is now eighty years old, with three daughters, seven grandchildren, and two great grandchildren; my two nephews. She has witnessed life begin, end, and start all over again. She sat in her chair at her party looking around with a smile, a venerable woman who could lead in prayer or tell a dirty joke, smoke a cigarette then reapply her classy matte lipstick; one who has lived a long while. I tend to write about nature a lot, it’s what I love most right up next to my loved ones and God. That evening, I couldn’t help but notice that those three things all came together. With stars over our heads, my love Willy pulling my mom onto the dance floor, my grandma looking around and smiling at all the family under her belt, my siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles, friends and dogs, and the trees and the wind all mingling and happy. All of life, in one perfect place.

My feet are planted in two places now, and while the west is my now and tomorrow, home isn’t a bad place to stop by in between. Growing up in Michigan helped me to develop an affinity for largemouth bass, swimming holes, and whitetail deer. It made me most comfortable hanging out and telling stories in rather hot or extremely cold garages with some friends and their parents and a favorite song on the radio. Those older radios, that is, hooked up to the bottom of the kitchen cabinets with knobs that clicked when you turned them and digital clocks. Home made me love Michigan lottery scratch offs and party store pizza and enjoying each of things in the parked car with one or more of the people that raised me up. Michigan is potholes and critter-filled, it is all the water you could dream up, it is humid and brilliantly colored from late September to Thanksgiving. It smells of bonfire smoke and cherries. It is hanging out in the backyard with someone or anyone you love, because that is the best place you could ever be. It is more personally, my mother’s garden, my adventure mentor, and a permission slip to be childlike again. I am madly in love with the west now, but the grass is just as green on the other side of the Rockies and that won’t soon be forgotten.