Lorrie Moore, a short story specialist, packs a lot into her 148-page novella, Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? Sils and Berie, 15-year-olds in the upstate New York town of Horsehearts, start the summer of 1972 working in the local amusement park, Storyland. Berie, a physical late-bloomer, handles the cash register at the main entrance, while Sils, who already has a motor-cycle riding 19 year old boyfriend, spends her days as Cinderella. Dressed in a sateen strapless evening gown, she entrances little girls on a park tour in her papier-maché pumpkin coach.
Best friends since grade school, they have advanced to sneaking cigarette breaks in the hidden interstices of the park and teasing young men in local bars in the evening. Sils, the heartthrob at their high school, lives with her single mom who manages a run-down motel in town. Her older brothers flit back and forth between home and Canada, trying to make it as a rock band. Berie’s family is outwardly more structured – Mom and Dad and brother Claude providing a classic nuclear background for her – but are continually welcoming visitors from other countries and cultures to crash on the sofa or share a room with the kids. One of the visitors, foster daughter LaRoue, has become a permanent sibling.
Moore’s main story centers on that summer when Sils and Berie find themselves leaving childhood and falling into serious adult problems of their own making. She provides a soundtrack, calling up popular music of the era to highlight the action. Berie narrates for us, and this first-person perspective allows time shifts to fill out key details of her life. She reminisces about childhood, flashes forward to a Paris vacation in her 40’s with her husband and concludes with a coda at the girls’ 10th reunion.
Their time at Storyland spins them apart, and Moore reveals in two poignant passages how difficult it can be, as John Mellencamp sang, to “Hold onto 16 as long as you can, changes come around real soon, make us women and men.” As Berie leaves that 10th reunion, not realizing she’s seeing Sils and LaRoue for the last time, she
“cried for everyone and for all the scrabbly, funny love one sent out into the world like some hit song that enters space and bounds off to another galaxy, a tune so pretty you think the words are true, you do!”
And in Paris, reflecting on the start of her crumbling marriage, she
“longed for a feeling again, a particular one: the one of approaching a room but of not yet having entered it. Being engaged to marry, it should have been what I felt. But instead I associated the feeling with another part of my life: that anteroom of girlhood, with its laughter as yet only affianced to the world, anticipation playing in the heart like an orchestra tuning and warming, the notes unwed and fabulous and crazed – I wanted it back! – those beginning sounds, so much more interesting than the piece itself.”
On the Mayo Clinic Prostate Cancer Chat, someone wrote:
“My prostatectomy was 3 months ago. My incontinence has been complicated by an unrelenting urgency to pee. Oddly, it’s most acute right after emptying my bladder. Throughout the day I can’t help feeling the need to rush to the toilet, so I think about it all the time. I fall asleep only with a sleep medication. It seems to be getting worse. It’s debilitating. I never had this problem prior to surgery. I’ve been told this kind of urgency is not normal. My urologist performed a cystoscopy but found no physical cause and had no explanation. He recommended I double my dosage of Mirabegron for an overactive bladder. I’ll do that, but frankly I’ve noticed little, if any, relief from this med. He also suggested seeing a pelvic floor therapist (I’ve already been doing kegels) and considering botox injections for the bladder. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Did you find a way to get some relief? Should I seek a second opinion from another urologist?”
I responded:
A few thoughts on what might be going on and what to do about it. As background, I’m ten years retired as an Ob-Gyn doc, and had my own RALP for Gleason 7 (4+3) a year ago April.
1. During the surgery, the bladder is cut into and repaired. The healing process causes increased sensitivity in the repaired areas. This sensitivity after the surgery, when urine is splashing around in there, is the source of the increased sensation of needing to void. We give in to that, and over time, the bladder loses some of its elasticity as it becomes accustomed to smaller volumes of urine. 2. IMO, the immediate increased sense of need to urinate after voiding (for me, that happens about 5 minutes after I go) is caused by, as others have said, bladder spasms, not unlike a cramp after a muscle is used to it’s extreme. Those spasms, I think, are the result of the first spurts of “new” urine coming into the bladder from the kidneys. Of course, there is no real need to void, as the bladder is pretty empty at that point. So ignoring the sensation is my “treatment” of choice. 3. The ongoing sense of urgency can be treated by “bladder training”. As some have said, Kegel’s are a necessary component of that But alone, they are not sufficient. 4. Key Point: THE BLADDER IS A MUSCLE, partially under voluntary control, and as such can be trained, just as we would train other muscles in a gym. The goal is to train the bladder to accept increasingly larger volumes of urine without setting off signals of need to void. Don’t forget, all of us trained our bladders to do this when we were 2-3 years old. So, even a child can do it! 5. So how do we train this muscle? It takes discipline and persistence. Not be using weights or reps, though. My preferred method involves following a regimented plan to urinate by the clock, not by sensation, and record both the frequency and the amount of urine produced. 6. First, though, you need to be sure that you are sufficiently emptying your bladder. Your Urologist can do an in-office ultrasound the document your residual urine volume after voiding. If it’s less than 50-70 milliliters, you’re good to go to start training. If you are not emptying completely, you need to discuss Plan B with your Urologist. 7. Plan A: Identify how long you can “hold it” before the urge to void becomes demanding, This may be 30-90 minutes, I hope. Subtract 5-10 minutes from that time, and start going to the bathroom after, say, 25 minutes no matter whether you need to or not. Every couple of days, add a few minutes (2-4) to the frequency. 8. Engineers and scientists will tell us we only can improve what we can measure. So keep track of when you void in a little diary. And, for extra credit, pee in a container which can measure the urine volume and record that. Watching both those numbers improve over time can be very re-assuring.
But how to deal with that irritating sense of needing to go? To go back to the weight training analogy, when we go to the gym and lift weights, or when we go out for a run, we ignore the sensation that “this is uncomfortable”, and persist through the negative sensations because we know that some good will come of it. “No pain, no gain”. As long as you are not actually losing urine – urge incontinence – it’s better to persist with the training plan than giving in to the sensation.
In summary, trying to “hold it” is counter productive. Your bladder needs to “work out” in order to increase its elasticity. That takes time, just as it takes time to go from bench pressing, say, 70 pounds to 150.
A final note. I don’t like to take drugs that affect my whole body for a localized problem. I found the bladder drugs’ side effects to be not worth the supposed benefit they gave.
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The fully loaded touring bike leaned against the windows of an Arby’s appended to the Pilot truck stop in Mountain Home, Idaho. Forty miles east of Boise, it offered the perfect dinner stop as I ended the penultimate day of my trip to Utah. The utilitarian machine, a practical two-wheeler, featured panniers front and back, with various appendages along the handlebars, including a folding map case and a small bike computer. Someone is on a long-distance trip, I thought.
Inside, a skeleton crew of three vainly tried to keep up with taking and dispensing orders in the drive-thru, tending the front counter, and preparing the sandwiches, fries and shakes. An LED screen, visible behind the register, revealed half a dozen orders in process, customer names in bold across the top of each. I looked behind me and spotted the cyclist. His table was filled with oranges, bananas and a tray of fast-food. He wore a thin jacket, probably for the air-conditioned interior, and not the 90F cloudless air he’d been riding through. He wore a faded pale blue cycling jersey, with “CAF” inside a circle printed below the shoulder. Lean to the point of cachectic, he’d obviously been on the road a while. His helmet rested on the table among the oranges. He ran his gloved hand through a wild thatch of grey hair, then stroked a beard showing no signs of attention for months.
I had to speak with him, find out about his travels. As I waited for attention from the over-matched Arby’s crew, I pondered how to approach him. I have been on many multi-day bike tours, down the Pacific coast, across the country, through the mountains and islands of the Pacific Northwest, on both sides of the border. My curiosity grew as the Arby’s team worked its way through the backlog.
Finally, my chance to order. “I’d like a Turkey, Ranch and Bacon. And a two-piece potato cake.”
“Any drinks or fries with that?”
“No, that’s it.” I paid and walked around the condiment stand to the dining area.
I gingerly approached the cyclist, and tried, “Excuse me for interrupting…That’s your bike out there, right?”
A monosyllabic affirmation, more a nod than a word.
“So what’s your journey?”
He gave the question some consideration. I worried he might be thinking I’m asking for an explanation of his life story, rather than trying to find out where he was riding to and from. I said, “I’ve done a cross country bike trip with my family. I found that one of my favorite parts was getting to tell people about our trip. So I’m wondering where you’re going?”
His reluctance to converse was palpable. I thought, This man has gotten tired of telling people where he’s going, why he’s riding. Where he sleeps at night. What he does when…all the questions those who have not done any bike touring would ask ad nauseum.
Finally, “I’m headed back to San Diego,” he offered.
“Where did you start?”
“I’m riding around the country,” he continued.
“No particular itinerary?”
“No, I started in San Diego. Rode to Florida. Then up to Maine, over to Walla Walla, Washington. And back to San Diego.” My eyebrows raised, and I was about to say, “Wow!” when he said, “And then did it again. I’m on my third loop.”
“Three times around the country,” I marveled. “And then?”
“I’ll do it again. A total of twelve times.”
“That’s…ambitious,” I said. “Why? What’s your motivation.” He pointed at the CAF emblazoned on his jersey. “Challenged Athletes Foundation. CAF. I’m raising money for them.” He added without a hint of pride or self-congratulation, “$150,000 so far.”
“I know Challenged Athletes Foundation! I’m a triathlete, done a number of races with people sponsored by them. They’re in San Diego, right? My sister lives in Cardiff, so I’ve known about them for years, ten or fifteen years. Good for you.”
“Order for Al!” the harried Arby’s worker shouted. I left to grab my bag, got my supply of sauces for the sandwich I intended to eat once I got to Boise. As I folded the bag, I realised I needed to learn more about the quiet cyclist.
I returned to his table, and asked, “I’d like to contribute. You have a website or something where I can donate in your name?”
He fished into a small wallet he pulled from his jersey pocket, and produced a calling card, which I stuffed into my pocket without looking at it. “Thanks. I’m curious, how did you get started on this?”
“I used to work for the PSIA – the Professional Ski Instructors of America.”
“Sure, I’ve heard of them. They’d have a demonstration team, the best of the best. I’ve been skiing over 50 years…so you’re a skier, too?”
“I was a ski racer. I did well in the Rocky Mountain Region. But I could never earn enough points to make it to the national development team. Were you a ski racer?
“Well, I never did it myself, but sure, the FIS, the US ski team…” “Eventually, I started teaching other people to be ski instructors. One of my students, Jason, he had only one arm. He was a mountain climber, going up the highest peaks on seven continents. An amazing guy, an inspiration. He inspired me to do an ‘Everest’.”
In cycling circles, ‘Everesting’ has become a thing. Find a hill, ride up and down it continuously until you’ve climbed the equivalent of Mt. Everest. Do that in less than 24 hours and put your name on a list on the Web.
The cyclist went on, “He challenged my to ride a bike, or hike, the height of the mountain, Everest, in a month. So I did it, and started to fall into biking.”
“You mean you haven’t always been a biker?”
“No, when I was young, I was a swimmer.”
“A swimmer…that was my sport, too.” Swimming, skiing, biking, CAF…I’m starting to resonate with this guy.
“When my high school had its 50th reunion, in New Jersey, I though it would be fun to show up on a bicycle. So I went from San Diego back to New Jersey, 2899 miles. Through the middle of the country, Kansas…”
2899 miles? Not 2900, not 3000?
“After that, Jason challenged me again, to raise money for CAF, riding my bike. I sold everything, and took off.”
“And you’re on your third loop now?”
A smile underneath his wiry mustache. “Yeah, I’m going to do it a total of twelve times.”
I was astounded, just as I had been the day before as I watched Scott compete in the Starvation triathlon in Park City. “Wow. I have a lot of friends who do demanding things. Nothing as long as what you’re doing, but they do ultra-runs. They run 2, 300 miles, 4 or 5 days. Or this thing I’m coming back from, an extreme triathlon. I was supporting a guy, 60 years old, who’d done Ironman races, done the one in Hawaii, the World Championship. He thought that wasn’t hard enough, so he did this race yesterday. First, jump in a lake over an hour before sunrise, swim 2.4 miles in the dark. Ride to Park City 100 miles over two mountain passes, over 10,000 feet of climbing. Hot, maybe 90 degrees on Guardsman pass.”
“Guardsman pass? That’s not Park City.”
The guy knew his Wasatch geography. ”No, yeah, down into Solitude, in Big Cottonwood canyon. From there, they run down the road a bit, and head up onto the ridge between there and Park City. 3 miles up, 3000 feet of climbing. Come out again on the road after 17 miles. That took over 4 and a half hours. It started raining, thunder, and the temperature dropped to 50.” I paused and looked through his reading glasses into his pale blue, tired eyes. “I tell guys like that – like you – ‘I’m glad you’re doing this so I don’t have to’.”
The cyclist half-smiled and extended his right hand. “Paul,” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“Al. My name is Al. I’m going to put you in my blog, tell people what you’re doing. You deserve all the support you’re getting, and more.”
Tom Rourke and Polly Gillespie meet in a photography studio in Butte, Mt during its early mining boom at the end of the 19th century, a raucous town filled with bars and other distractions. Tom’s are drink, dope, and writing letters for the lovelorn. A lank, loquacious Irishman, he is smitten by Polly as she poses for her wedding photos with Anthony Harrington, a self-flagellating mine captain who had requisitioned Polly from Chicago. A dreamer with wanderlust, she realizes her mistake, and escapes with Tom through the mountains of western Montana, aiming for the San Francisco Bay. Their picaresque journey begins with several benign encounters with other furtive travelers, but soon devolves when the Captain begins a search for his missing bride.
Barry’s Irish sensibility shimmers on every page. His language is at times baroque, at timers gutteral, but always apposite to the situation. It took me a few pages to become accustomed to the lilt, to the sometimes fractured phrasing, but that quickly faded as the style became the characters, their thoughts, their actions. An example, as Polly reflects on her life: “she tries not to fall into the drag of the past like the drag of a river because it is so powerful it can take you down. Anyhow the past it shifts around all the time. The past is not fixed and it is not certain and this much she has learned if nothin else. The past it changes all the while every minute you’re still breathing and how in fuck are you supposed to make sense of it all.”
Barry does make sense of these lovers’ lives, the time and places they came from and lived in. At 245 pages, a very quick read despite the unique prose.
The Bloomberg charity has given a billion dollars to Johns Hopkins to make medical school free for its students.
This gift is misguided. Has no one noticed we don’t have enough doctors in this country??? What we need is not the same number of doctors graduating with no debt. These soon-to-be highly paid professionals (of which I am one) will do just fine without this largesse. What gifts like this should go towards is educating MORE doctors – we don’t have enough in this country, and have to import them to fill our still unmet needs. There are MANY US college grads who are smart, capable, and eager to become physicians who can’t get one of the medical school slots which our country has been restricting for decades. It’s a failing of multiple institutions: the federal government, which partially funds health education directly and indirectly; state governments, which don’t have enough medical schools for their needs except in the northeast; private universities with large endowments and gifts; the AMA and similar organizations, which wanted to maintain a high and rising income for their members. This has been a problem since the 1980s. For the past four decades, I have watched doctor’s salaries rise faster than other health care costs, to say nothing of the overall CPI, at the same time patients’ wait times lengthened.
The next morning after breakfast, Grace took Ida and Gretchen upstairs. After making sure their faces and hands were washed, she told them to put on their church dresses and come out into the hall.
“Girls, Weeda wants to see you.”
Ida followed Gretchen in, eyes down, not knowing where to stand. Across the bed from her, Dr. Krumholz stood folding his stethoscope into the side pocket of his suit coat. His own medical bag lay open on the bedside table. Seeing the girls, he beckoned them forward. Mama had told her he was the first man who’d ever seen her, had even spanked her just after she came out. Then visits to his parlor office, always chuckling, he’d earned her trust with the lollipops she got after he’d stuck that stick on her tongue, looking down her throat.
“Your Grandpa says he’s fine. He is a tough old coot, but I want him to rest some more. You two just stay here a minute with him while I go out and talk to your mama and SB.”
Looking back at Weeda, Ida saw his eyes flutter, then his hand raise up towards her, index finger beckoning them over. Gretchen reached over and took his hand in hers.
“Ah, my good little girl. You’re always the quiet one, aren’t you? Take care of your mother for me. She’s needing you.” He pulled his hand out, patted hers twice, then crooked his fingers at her sister.
A new feeling rose up in Ida. She’d always felt safe with her Grandpa Weeda. He was the one who told her family stories, the one whose word was final. He knew everything, knew everybody, Ida thought. But his power had fallen away, overnight it seemed. He struggled to bring his eyes up to hers, the lids tiring with effort. Even the wild eyebrows sagged, grey hairs drooping toward the lashes.
“Ida…” He wheezed, weakly coughed, then went on. “Your mother. Follow her. She’s smart, that one, she knows what you need.” He closed his eyes, reaching feebly to pat her head. “Your father…That man, he doesn’t know what you’ve got inside. Listen to your mother…”
The next day, the quiet parlor was filled with more people than Ida had ever seen in the house before. Grace dressed Ida in in a special dark dress a neighbor loaned, one with black lace around the neck. She drew Ida’s thick black hair up into a top knot, kept in place by a black velvet ribbon. No one noticed her as she scampered among the adults filling the room, their legs surrounding her like a sycamore forest.
She weaved her way up to where they said Weeda was resting. She felt the long, strong hands of her father, lifting her up above a varnished walnut box. Inside lay Weeda, his beard neatly groomed, his eyes closed, his hands clutching a single rose.
“Papa, why’s he sleeping in the parlor? Is he OK?”
“Child, he’s died. You know what that means, to die, don’t you?”
“Die?” Ida repeated.
“Yes, it’s forever. His soul has gone to heaven, to be with Grandma. He still loves you, but he won’t be here anymore.”
“Won’t be here? Be where?” she asked.
SB abruptly put her back down. Ida wished that he would cuddle her like Weeda did, Sometimes, he would swoop her up in his arms, put her on his shoulders, and leap up the stairs two at a time. That was fun, but never lasted long. He always had some task that seemed more important than her. He would be off reading, how to cultivate dry land for grapes, or how taxes would ruin the country. Things she never understood when she asked about the books laying all over his desk.Each time the door bell rang, Grace took Gretchen and Ida by the hand, while she led them to the door, admitting yet another group of strangers. Guests would talk to Gretchen, so Ida tried to figure out what was going on by listening, too confused to ask anyone herself. Everything sounded like the fairytales or the bible verses Grace would read whenever Gretchen asked for a story ay night. Ida found them silly, not real. She was puzzled by things like prayer or death. Her father had cautioned her such stories were not real, couldn’t teach us how to live. What had Weeda meant about her father and her mother? Who was right?
George Stephanopolous is interviewing the President on Friday. Here’s what I want to see on ABC tomorrow:
George S.: Mr. President, what do you say to the millions of loyal Democrats who are asking you – begging you – to end your campaign for a second term?
Pres. Biden: George, here’s the way I see it. Nothing is more important right now for America – for the world – than ensuring our country’s proud democracy and leadership remains at the high level we’ve enjoyed for over two hundred years. I’ve devoted my life, my entire life, to serve that goal.
George S.: So you’re saying…
Biden – Look, here’s the deal. I know I can do the job for America. But I have to stay here to do that. And I know I can’t, I can’t be the President I want to be. So I’m going to ask the Committee, the DNC, the [slurring his words] Democratic Nashul Committee, to make a promise…make a process, to find a new candidate, a strong candidate, to carry our banner, the torch of democracy, in the election. [Pauses, stares grimacing at the interviewer]George S.: So who should pick up that torch?Biden: We’ve got a bench, a good bench. Many men…and women, women, too, who can do that, do that job. I’m want the Democrats to see them, to hear them, and nominate a strong one at the convention in August, this August…
[FIRST DRAFT – corrections and further edits probable]
Ida swung gently in the double swing suspended at the bend of the porch. The sweet scent of lavender soap her mother Grace had washed with that morning drifted with in from the south. Looking up, Ida waved as Grace walked up the steps to the screen door. A small spring creaked as it opened, then pulled it shut with a bang.
“Ida-bye, where’s your sister?” Grace looked down the slope she had just come up, bluegrass shimmering in the May sun. “I don’t see her out here.”
Ida pointed to the newly plowed field out back. “Said she found an arrowhead. Wanted more.”
Grace’s father, Robert McKenzie, had come to Iowa and built a simple wooden farmhouse on the fertile bluff lands above the Missouri in western Iowa. His McKenzie Farm Company grew prosperous from pear, apple and cherry orchards, and from vegetables grown in the front field, summer and winter, under a massive glass roof. The invention of refrigerated rail cars in the 1880’s brought an end to his winter season, and the front yard, even after the blue grass had grown in, still hid small fragments of glass the girls had to watch out for if they ran barefoot outside.
“And your father?” Grace asked.
Ida pointed inside. Above the porch, the massive Victorian house featured four bedrooms, each with a fireplace, and ten-foot tall ceilings. Once his farm business had taken off, Robert erected a mansion for his family and furnished it with sturdy oak and walnut furniture direct from Boston. His wife gone now, he still lived in the northeast corner room, while Ida’s father, Shirley Brooks Prouty, lived in the northwest room. Downstairs, a large parlor had been converted to his office, where the light oak sofa and chairs competed with his roll top desk and two long tables, where sat his typewriter and Grace’s sewing machine.
“And where is Weeda?” Grace wondered.
Ida’s older sister Gretchen had answered a similar question from Grace several years earlier. Just learning to talk, “Weeda” came out instead of the “Way down there” she intended, pointing down the front hill to where her grandfather was resting.
Ida knew this story, and was old enough to answer, “Way down there,” as she pointed towards the cindered road heading up from the turkey farm next door.
Grace froze, muttering, “That old fool.” Then, louder, “Stay here. No, get your father, tell him to bring his bag.”
Shirley – SB to most – had retired from his medical practice after a sojourn in Casa Grande Arizona had failed to cure his tuberculosis. The slower pace of a gentleman farmer had calmed the disease, and allowed him the leisure time to not only open a photography studio, but also dabble in pamphleteering, protesting the recent imposition of the income tax.
Ida waddled into the house, thinking of the evening before. She and Gretchen had sat giggling with Weeda on the sofa by the downstairs fireplace. He cuddled with them for a while, then said, “Girls. What’s the holiday we have next week?”
Gretchen, already in school, said, “Memorial Day.”
“And why do we celebrate Memorial Day?”
“Teacher said it’s for the soldiers who died.”
“Well, yes, that’s why it’s called ‘Memorial Day’. But I want you to remember the mothers and fathers who came here, the ones who crossed an ocean and half a continent, braved the new land. Made this place for us, so we could be – so you could be – Americans.”
Ida watched Weeda’s long white beard bobbing and swaying as he said this. When he put them down on the rug, he smelled of smoke and brandy.
Weeda filled her world with smells and and sights and words unlike anyone else in the big house. Her mother Grace felt soft and warm, her voice more song than speech. Her father sometimes growled, but mostly stayed silent when she was around. Unlike Weeda, he had no beard, and the hair on his head was slick and flat. He always wore a suit coat, even when going outside to supervise the farmhands, a scratchy suit of woolen armor to keep the world away. Weeda’s clothes, soft and wrinkled, welcomed her in to his arms.
Though the door to the parlor was always open, she knew enough at age three to knock quietly on the stub of sliding door protruding from the frame. Standing just outside SB’s sanctum, she waited.
He coughed, sighed, and put down his quill. He took off his reading glasses, wiping each lens before putting them carefully to one side before he turned around.
“Ida,” he announced. “I’m working.”
“Mama says…”
With a slight narrowing of his eyebrows, he grunted, “Mama says?”
“She’s going after Weeda down the road. She said bring your bag.”
Rolling his chair back as he stood up, he said almost so softly she couldn’t hear, “Whats that old man…” Then louder, “All right. Grab my bag, out we go”
Without waiting for her to catch up, SB strode out and down the porch steps. Ida followed, lugging the black pebbled bag with its two straps. The mysterious clanking of instruments inside shot a tremor through her. Poppa never took his bag unless someone was sick or hurt.
Grace and Weeda had paused by the elm tree shading the spot where the path to the house started up the hill from the road. He was holding his chest, his shoulders risng and falling with the effort of breathing.
“All right what is it?” SB demanded.
Grace looked from her father to her husband, eyes pleading for security. Weeda’s right hand touched his chest, then stroked down his left arm three times.
“It hurts there, Robert?”Weeda nodded, took three breaths, short and uneven, then crumpled to the ground.
Merry glanced up at the TV, which had been on continuously since nine AM. “We’ve got time,” Merry said. “They said the Eclipse starts at 3:04”
“Uh, no. The moon begins to cross the sun at 1:49.” I worried our hosts didn’t grasp the nature of the phenomenon. “You don’t want to miss that. It moves slowly, takes over an hour to get full, when the sun goes completely dark.”
Merry blinked twice, absorbing that concept. She and her husband Joe live in Joe’s mother’s house, moving back to Seymour, Indiana when Nancy, nearly 92, showed signs of more rapid aging. Joe wanted to make sure he’d be there if his mother needed anything, and to lay his claim to the farmhouse at the edge of town. His sister Julie lived next door with one of her daughters and her other, Amy, just a short walk away.
“Well, what time should we be getting Nancy then?” Merry rasped, mixing her laugh with a classic smoker’s cough.
Julie put in, “Where should we take her? Amy’s having an Eclipse party with her friends. She said they’d already started on the beer.”
I said, “Don’t you think it would be cool if Nancy could see it right in front of her own house?” Nancy had been in a nursing home for several months ever since she’d fallen and broken her second bone in a month. We’d come out to the Midwest to see Cheryl’s aunt, our “last remaining elder”, and I didn’t want that visit to be blurred by loud, slurring youngsters, stepping all over an awesome event like this Eclipse. I’d seen one seven years earlier in Oregon with thousands of others camped out on a farmer’s field and knew that, while it seemed like an excuse for a party, it was probably better viewed in relaxation and peace.
I went on. “I checked out the driveway. We could set up there, it’s shady with the trees on the left, and an open view to where the sun will be this afternoon.”
Joe piped up, “Well, let’s go get some chairs, then.” Joe rolled his stout form out the door, leading up to a covered concrete patio at the back of the house. He walked by a webbed folding beach chair and began to untangle some sturdier ones with metal armrests. “Those are perfect,” I said, noting the rounded back rests, high enough to support our heads as they tilted back during the final climax.
Joe’s hands and arms carry the stiffness and scars of a life lived first as a Marine, then in factory jobs. His fists are permanently balled, the fingers lumpy stubs. Still, he was able to grab one chair in each hand, while I stacked two together. Along with Merry and Cheryl we quickly created a little gallery under the elm tree out front, its distant branches flecked with tiny leaves about to unfurl in the rapidly warming Midwest spring.
“See? Perfect spot here. Just enough shade from the side, clear view to the southwest there.” I pointed towards Highway 31, where occasional semis blasted past, interspersed with cars headed to the airport, where a Louisville TV station had set up its Eclipse headquarters. Seymour had been discovered as the closest viewing locale with sufficient infrastructure for a major event. Motels had doubled their prices, the Chevy dealer offered free hot dogs, and the local tractor store provided seats on its machines to visitors, all seeking to capitalize on the happy accident of geography which put them underneath the curving route of totality.
********
We had come to Seymour primarily for nostalgia. Cheryl needed to revisit an idealized locale of her youth and visit Aunt Nancy `for possibly the last time. First stop was North Vernon, where Cheryl’s father’s forebears lived. We pulled off the two-lane state highway bringing us from Cincinnati and found ourselves on a bustling block where a diner sported a lively crowd this Friday night. The only seats available were at the bar, where Cheryl and I sat side-by-side when a curly-haired slender bottle-blond bartender wiped down the space in front of us and asked, “What’re you drinking tonight, then?” We’d spent the past two nights eating out in more sophisticated restaurants in downtown Cincinnati, having a Mezcal margarita at a Spanish tapas place, and a beer each at a Mexican establishment.
I scanned the two-sided vinyl-enclosed menu, zeroing in on the non-alcoholic drinks at the bottom. “Barq’s Root Beer!” I almost shouted. “That’s what I drank when I was a kid.” Smiling, I said, “Wow, I’ve gotta have one of those.” The middle- aged barkeep smiled as Cheryl hesitated while deciding between mint and green tea. The drinks came quickly, followed by the “Brewtine” I’d requested for my dinner. To the uninitiated, poutine is a Canadian concoction of French fries slathered with melted cheese and pork belly. This place used “beer cheese” as a nod to its clientele, who would rather eat their alcohol than been seen with anything as effete as a dish from our neigbors to the north.
Arriving in Seymour, we easily found Nancy’s house, a familiar half-mile north from the first traffic light coming into town. Merry and Joe greeted us warmly, giving us a quick tour. First stop, the refrigerator. “We got milk, some juice, there’s bacon,” Merry said, opening the door to reveal sparsely filled shelves.
Joe gave a half-smile while pointing out a small cardboard container. “And blueberry pie. Don’t forget the blueberry pie.”
Trying to be an appreciative guest, one who truly loves blueberries, I effused, “Oh, I love blueberries! Better watch out, I’ll probably eat the whole thing.”
Next stop, Nancy’s room, where we would be staying.
“I haven’t changed a thing in here”, Merry said. “We didn’t know when she’ll be coming home, so excuse the mess.” The room was filled with sixty-year-old furniture: a small desk, dressers, and a double bed. Coat racks groaned under the weight of silken and woolen scarves. I did not see a single chair, though. A thin, frazzled cat peeked timidly through the open door. Merry shooed the cat out with her foot, closing the door.
“We try to keep them out of here, at least. We’ve got two who live upstairs, and one down.” She pointed at a closed door, which led downstairs. “Don’t go down there. Ever. It’s a mess – I just haven’t had time to clean it up yet. Joe goes down there in the evenings, to watch TV. One of the cats stays there, hardly ever leaves except to eat. Not very sociable, that one.”
She pointed down the hall at the stairs leading up to the second floor. “And that’s where we sleep – I’m usually up there, if I’m not out back in my library, where I do my research, fill my books.”
Merry has spent much of her retirement filling several dozen oversized three-ring notebooks with documentation of her and Joe’s family histories. Each page is enclosed in a clear plastic sleeve. Birth, Marriage, Death certificates. Yellowing newspaper clippings documenting significant events in the lives of myriad ancestors. Photographs, original, scanned, and printed off the web. Lists at the start of who is covered in each volume.
“This here is my side”, she said with a sweep of her right arm. Pivoting, she pointed, “And over here, Joe’s” She grabbed one off the second shelf. “OK, here’s the Myrons” – the maternal side of Jane and Nancy, and thus Cheryl – “see what I’ve got?” Cheryl leaned over her shoulder as Merry spread the notebook on a table. Outside, the temperature had dropped under fifty, and the faux fireplace had not been turned on. I was glad for my four layers of clothing on top.
Next morning, Merry insisted she lead us in a two-car caravan to Nancy’s rest home. We loaded her and her wheel chair into Merry’s car, and followed in our rental Malibu to the cemetery in Vallonia, where the Myrons have their plot. She regaled us with stories of about each of the permanent residents there, then took us to the site of on old family home.
Cheryl reminisced, “Mom told me she used to ride the train from Hayden here to her grandma’s house. She must have been, what, in middle school then? Things were more free-range for kids back then. Is that house still here?”
Merry answered, “Well, the house is gone, but I can show you where it was. They took it down a while back and put up a trailer there. But the old foundation – we can still see it, I think. I’ve got a picture of that old house and you can see the foundation is just the same.”
We bundled back into the cars as Merry said, “Stay close now, I’m going the back way to Mom’s house, so she can see we haven’t done anything to it while she’s been gone.” She seemed very concerned that we might get lost without her local knowledge. I tried to explain about GPS and map apps. Despite her expert internet sleuthing skills into Anecestry.com and public records, that aspect of the 21st century seemed to have eluded her.
We drove back through the south side of town on Merry’s “back streets”, aiming for the house where Cheryl remembered visiting her Grammie Myron. It sat on a street with a central median. Unlike more upscaled neighborhoods, this street was bisected by the main north-south rail line from Indianapolis to Louisville and points beyond both north and south – Chicago, Nashville, New Orleans. Freight trains rolled through several times a day, reminding Cheryl that her grandfather worked for the railroad, in a station at the center of town.
We parked on the opposite side of the median from Grammie’s house, and stood slack-jawed as bells started clanging, a white and red arm lowered across the road, and a deeply sonorous horn blared as the train slowly approached each cross street on its lumbering trip through town.
Cheryl was ecstatic. “THIS IS SO PERFECT!” she shouted over the rumbling clackety-clack of the six-minute-long passage. She filmed the whole thing, exactly the experience she was hoping for on this return to the “Crossroads of America”.
While Merry and Joe took Nancy back to the Covered Bridge Nursing Home, Cheryl and I meandered through the countryside east of town to visit with Shelly Whitcomb. Cheryl had connected with her prior to our trip, and Shelly effusively offered us a place to stay while we visited Seymour. She is the daughter of former Indiana governor Edgar Whitcomb and inherited the politician’s instinctive gregariousness. Over the years, this seemed to have turned into a buzzy nervousness along with a need to keep the conversation going at all costs.
Shelly offered us non-alcoholic beers and sat us in the sunny corner of the house, inherited from her father.
Twenty-seven years earlier, while on a cross-country bike trip with our kids, we’d stopped in Seymour while Cheryl’s parents flew in from LA. I vividly remembered our time in Hayden, when her father invited us into his house, offering us drinks and stories. I wrote a daily post to the internet on that trip. I found the entry, still up on the internet, and read it to Shelly. She listened raptly, nodding and murmuring, “Yes, yes, oh thanks, that brings back such memories of my dad.”
Conversation turned to Cheryl’s parents, and her desire to find her mom’s old house. In that same journal post, I’d quoted Jane describing the creek out back, “where we’d throw our trash sometimes.”
“Oh yes!” Shelly said. I know exactly where that is, down the street from Dad’s old place.” I pulled up a mapping program on my iPhone (Shelly, unlike Merry, understood immediately), and we pinpointed the location.
Cheryl’s mother Jane and aunt Nancy grew up in the small town of Hayden, a few miles east of Seymour. It remains to this day unaffected by the advance of strip malls, having lost all commercial activity to the larger town. We drove to the hamlet’s crossroads, where a small museum sits next to an abandoned gas station, dated by the preserved bubble top pumps, Next to that sits the hundred year-old childhood home of Edgar Whitcomb, governor of Indiana from 1969-1973. On our cross-country bike trip in 1997, we visited with Gov. Whitcomb in that very house, which he had bought at age 80 after completing a years-long round-the-world sailing trip. After his death, a memorial to him was erected at the crossroads, celebrating three grand achievements in his life: his “Escape from Corregidor” during World War II (about which he wrote an eponymously titled book); his governorship; and that sailing trip. A remarkable man from a small town to which he returned at the end of his days, like former President Jimmy Carter.
Jane was six years behind Edgar in school, but he greeted her as an old friend. We took photos of us all smiling on his porch, which not changed in the intervening 27 years. We went looking my Jane’s childhood home. We came to a small blue house with an overarching shade tree, tiny green leaves beginning to sprout.
“I don’t know; I remember her house as white…” Cheryl mused as we walked up a slight hill from crossing a dry creek a block from Edgar’s.
“No, they must have painted it, but it’s the same house,” I answered. “See, the ditch out back Shelly told us about. And the portico, the woodwork over the door – it’s just the same as in the picture.” I pulled out my phone and enlarged the photo from the 1 mega-pixel first-generation digital camera we’d used in 1997. It was clearly was the same porch. “Satisfied?” I asked.
Cheryl walked back and forth, eying the best angle for another shot. The warming afternoon sun reminded me of the lazy summer day we’d spent there in ’97. I could sense the start of summer’s humidity, still hiding behind the crisp April afternoon. I imagined a ten-year old Janie Myron, scuffling along beneath the shading chestnuts, elms, and oaks in a pair of Ked’s sneakers, inexpertly tied and showing holes where her still-growing toes were poking poke out. In a thin cotton dress, she arrives at the train station, where a local still ran in the ‘30s, and pays her quarter to travel the 25 miles west through Seymour and Brownstown to her grandma’s house in Vallonia.
There, she’d explore the hills and woods, so different from the flat prairie of Hayden. She might pick up a frog or discover fallen seed clusters from the sugar gum maples. Her grandma had a pitcher of lemonade waiting for her and shared her wonder over the treasures she’d collected. Then back home again, another quarter taking her to that tiny house on Center Street.
Cheryl kept her reveries to herself as we hopped back in the car and took the long way out of town – an extra block or two north, then west, to the site of Jane and Nancy’s grade school, where their mother taught for so many years. A new building stands there now, still the place where local kids learn their ABC’s. The playground has no metal jungle gym or wooden teeter-totter now, the children protected by a soft rubber surface and plastic climbing “fort”. The two-story general store where Edgar Whitcomb wanted to take us for $1.00 turkey sandwiches – “the best you’ll find anywhere, can’t beat the price” – is now boarded up, a victim of Covid and WalMart. Across the street is what appears to be a “tiny house”. Closer inspection reveals the 10 foot by 10 foot structure to be a still-functioning post office. Hayden may be going, but the life ain’t gone.
********
I checked my watch: 1:47. I put the eclipse glasses on and stared up at the sun. The dull orange disc still appeared perfectly round, no defect yet appearing at its margin.
“Where does it start?” I asked. I turned around, and found myself all alone, the chairs haphazardly lined up at the edge between light and shadow along the one-lane drive leading to the two houses in the Wolter compound. Above, black dot appeared at about 4 o’clock, a little knick which did nothing to quell the rising afternoon heat.
“It’s started!” I yelled. I felt more excited than I had in August of 2017, where we spent twqo days waiting in a makeshift campground on recently mowed ranch land. Thousands of tents and RVs filled the space, extending down the hill to an Air Force base where NASA had set up telescopes and a research station, with Portland TV showing up, hoping for a clear day. We had the same here, a brief cloudless window in a week of stormy weather.
Six days earlier, we’d touched down in Cincinnati, one day after tornadoes and thunderstorms ravaged the Midwest. The following three days were bitterly cold for early April, in the low 40s at best, with on-and-off drizzle and graupel snow. My heart was warm, though, as I toured my childhood home, where I’d lived from ages 1 to 17, and the four following summers. Where I grew up and became most of who I am. I’d come back to search for that child’s life, and try and find what made him the man I’ve become.
********
I’d made a list of what to see, a plan for the two days we’d spend in Cincinnati. This would the way stations on the pilgrimage to my past.
We spent our nights at the Netherland Plaza hotel, full of bygone elegance. Built in 1931, a last gasp of the Roaring 20s before depression and war suppressed Cincinnati’s exuberance and wealth for the next quarter century. This 29-story hotel retains its original elegant art-deco interior. A lively “Palm Court” still hosts a central bar in its huge ballroom space. Heroic murals depict industry and optimism.
The Plaza is dwarfed by the 49 story Carew Tower office building, erected at the same time. Both are clad in light tan brick and share a common wall. The tower is still the highest point in Cincinnati, level with the Seven Hills which rise above the downtown Ohio River flood plain. For me, the Carew Tower was the nerve center of the city, kitty-corner from the Tyler-Davidson fountain, ground zero for any visit to our commercial center.
The once open plaza of Fountain Square is now filled with upscale restaurants, pop-up gazebos, and the Brutalist Fifth-Third Bank tower, blocking the view to the east. The marble floors of the Netherland Plaza indoor mall no longer echo with clacking steps of shoppers; only a store hawking the MLB Reds and NFL Bengals paraphernalia remains. Outside, the department stores I remembered as the height of haute couture had disappeared: Shillito’s, Pogue’s, McAlpin’s, Alms & Doepke, the Bond, Mabley & Carew, Rollman’s. Seeing that, and the absence of the downtown RKO theaters (The Albee, Palace, and Grand), brought the first realization that “my city was gone.” My job for the next two days was to find the ghost sites where it had been, or see how the places which remained had changed.
I stared at Google Maps with trepidation. Everywhere held foundational memories. Where to start? I decided: scariest one first.
Heading north on Vine Street past Central Parkway, I began to narrate my past to Cheryl. Pointing to the right, at the ornate red brick structure occupying two city blocks, I said, “That’s the Music Hall. From the late 1800s, when there was a LOT of money here. I’d go to the symphony or a show there. Grand staircase, the whole thing. But on the other side of the street, that was a mess. Rickety wooden slums, ugly public housing. Scary.”
The area, while not gentrified, was clean, inviting, as I pointed left to the half-dome of Union Terminal. “That’s where I went a couple of times to take train rides. Huge open ceiling, long concourse bridging over the tracks. It only lasted 30 years, before Interstates and airports took over. Now, it’s full of museums.”
Vine became McMicken, then we angled into McMillan and up the hill. Cold rain splattered the Chevy’s windshield. I turned left at Clifton, passing the turreted façade of Hughes High School.
“That’s Hughes. It was one of the scary schools, like Central, or Taft.” The reader board outside read “Hughes STEM High School.” It had a new life, as the city shrank and schools became magnets. On the right, UC – the University of Cincinnati, where my mother earned her Ph.D. in psychology. Next, Burnet Woods, hiding the Zoo, whose summer Opera divas competed with screeching monkey and laughing hyenas.
“Cincinnti General Hospital, where I was an intern on the psych ward,” I said. “I came back during December 1973 for an elective in the urgent care clinic,” I said.
“Why?”, Cheryl asked.
“Oh, I was confused. I thought I could reconnect with a girl, but…”
Passing Ludlow Avenue, I looked left, then right, for the Skyline Chili and the Esquire Theatre – both still in business – I took a Susie for our first date. At least that’s what I remember, although I’m pretty sure it didn’t really happen that way.
Susie Wise lived a mile up Clifton under a deciduous canopy, across the street from Calvary Episcopal Church. We turned onto Warren, one street south of hers, and I pointed out Bobby Reckman’s house.
“He was my debate partner.” We slowed to a crawl and then stopped. I peered to the left of his house. “See that one just behind? The white one with brown trim? Upstairs, that was her window.” I tried to imagine myself up there again, chatting with Susie, sharing our time, becoming friends.
Back out on Clifton, I mused, “It’s just the way I imagined. Or remembered. Walking up that sidewalk, under the trees. Cars going by, just a few.” I didn’t share with Cheryl, the feeling I remembered, being so close to someone who felt so right.” We turned left onto Belsaw, which is a funny lollipop one-way loop. Turning right, I point left, “That’s her house there, the one we saw from the other side?” Coming back around the loop, we stopped in front of 7 Belsaw Place.
The same curving front walk. The same dark wooden door. I imagined the den on the left, the living room with the grand piano to the left, dining room in between. The door we stood in front of for our first hug, our first kiss. You only get one of those, and I could only remember, not relive, those few minutes.
Cheryl dutifully took photos of all the old familiar places. We stopped outside the Ransohoff compound, where cousins Jon and Paul shared a common lawn, a massive private park overlooking the Mill Creek Valley below. “That’s where we had our meetings of the Philosophy club. A bunch of high school seniors who thought themselves the cream of the intellectual crop in our college-prep high school. It was a way for nerds to find prom dates.”
Down the hill, after a pit stop at Kroger’s (they’re everywhere in Cincinnati, the origin and headquarters of the grocery giant), we wended out way northeast to Pleasant Ridge. My world was bounded by Swifton Center, where we marveled at the wonder of a “shopping center”, scores of stores surrounded by acres of parking, and the Cincinnati Garden, where we ice skated, watched Oscar Robertson and the Royals of the NBA, and annually attended the Shrine Circus. Both were gone, replaced respectively by chock-a-block houses and a gravel field.
We drove down Langdon Farm Road, where the Disable American Veterans had a baseball field in which my Knothole team practiced. Coming to a T intersection, I saw the familiar graveyard. Excited, I said, “There, that’s the Presbyterian Church my father took us to. And here, that’s the fire station. Next to it – yes, that’s my elementary school.”
It had been torn down, the asphalt playground in front replaced by tasteful landscaping, and the two-story red brick building where I spent my first six years of structured learning was now a modern one-story Montessori school, still public. Boatright’s store, where I would buy my baseball cards, and you were allowed to go during lunch if you were in the sixth grade, was now a gravel lot. The next block of Montgomery, the street I’d walk and later ride my bike along to get to school, held no familiar sites, until we got to the corner of Losantiville. A pocket triangular park still filled the space as Losantiville curved around to meet Ridge Road. The nameless memorial, a squat pillar of tan brick, brought back the times I’d wait there for the number 4 bus each morning to take me to Walnut Hills High School, and where I’d hang out in the afternoon before walking home, trying to fit in with the other kids, all older than me, who got off at the same stop.
We parked in a convenience store lot, the United Dairy Farmers.
“I’ve got to stop here. This wasn’t here then, but we went to one on the other side of my neighborhood.”
UDF sold gas now, and inside appeared to carry the same junk food snacks and drinks as thousands of other shops which have sprung up on our roads over the past half-century. But scanning to the right, I saw…a familiar three stem mixer, the kind with stainless steel stems and blades protrudin downwards. A shake machine!
Two hefty, smiling African-American ladies stood behind the counter. One eased over to me as I said, “Do you make malts”
“Yes we do!”
As she scooped out the vanilla ice cream from a tub behind the glass windowed case, and poured in milk and chocolate syrup, then scooped in the malt, she asked, “How’s your day going?”
It all came out. “We’re back here visiting where I grew up, in Pleasant Ridge. It’s been a while. I left in 1966.”
She gave an encouraging laugh.
“Yeah, my father used to take us to United Dairy Farmers. Not this one, ours was over the other side of Golf Manor.”
“That’s not there anymore. They tore it down a couple years ago, replaced it here. More traffic, I guess.”
“He’d buy butter pecan ice cream for my mother, and I’d get a chocolate malt for my treat.”
The pang of memory reached its crescendo when she twisted in a metal sleeve at the top of the paper cup and jammed it up into the mixer. She pulled it down and out before the blade stopped, and I heard a familiar clang as it hit the metal at the top.
She handed it over, saying “I hope it tastes the same.”
I beamed with my first sip. “Just the same. Thank you.”
“You all have a good time,” she said as we walked out into the cold drizzle.
Cheryl and I walked around the triangular block, up Losantiville, right onto Montgomery, and back down Ridge.
“This was where we went to shop in the 50’s,” I explained. “Here was Mullaney’s drugs. We never went there, we went to Feuer’s Rexall, across the street. Here was a small grocery store, the kind you went to before supermarkets. I think it was an A&P. And next to it, the five-and-dime. It had a creaky wood floor, with sawdust underfoot. Over there, the Fifth-Third Bank, where I had my first savings account. And this little store” – I pointed to a small house – “my father took me there once to take back a wallet. He had to make up a story to get them to take it back. I mentioned to hi as we went out, ‘That’s not right, you didn’t tell him you thought it was scratched inside!’ I was confused, because I thought you weren’t supposed to fib. He said, ‘It’s OK. Sometimes time you have to tell a little white lie.’ I asked, ‘What’s a white lie?’ He said, ‘It’s a lie that doesn’t really matter.’ I guess that was the beginning of my downfall.”
Cheryl laughed as we approached the car. Opening her door, she said, “No. You’ve always been a Boy Scout. ‘Always Be Honest’, isn’t that your motto?”
We cruised the mile north on Ridge Road, the houses becoming bigger and farther apart. “There, on the corner…that’s where a family with seven kids lived. And here, on the right, that’s Amberly Village. The rich kids lived there.”
I turned left onto Ridgewood Avenue. The community of Ridgewood is still a tidy little neighborhood. Even 60 years later, the houses remain clean, none of them torn down or remodeled, simply well-maintained The lawns are all green, free of dandelions. Some time warp had stalled all the changes affecting most American communities in the last half-century. I was transported back to 1962, and began remembering all the kids I’d played with. I pointed left then right as we drove by Brackenridge. “Jackie Schlagel, he had polio and walked with a brace on his leg. Scott Heath, he went on to become a doctor. They both lived down this street.” “Down this street” – we turned onto Ridge Circle, a cul-de-sac which served my childhood playground – “that’s the Altmier house. Bobby had a poker game every Friday night. And here were the Hubers, next door to us.”
We stopped, and Cheryl took more pictures, trying to capture the “woods behind the house” and the massive oak tree still present in the far corner of our yard. Two stories down were the Hortons, where Peter, my sister’s first boyfriend, taught me how to whistle with two fingers.
Turning in the circle, I pointed to an unassuming white house. “There, the Prusiners. Paul was in my class. He was a big, clumsy guy, smart, but not as smart as his brother, Stan. HE’s the guy who discoverd prions.”
“Prions?” Cheryl asked.
“Yeah, they’re the infectious proteins that cause mad cow disease. He won the Nobel Prize.”
We turned back onto Ridgewood, driving past my old house. Cheryl made me stop the car. I examined the front yard, a gentle slope I mowed with a push mower, and down which we’d sled in the winter. The pine tree and sycamore which had graced it were both gone, ragged stumps barely noticeable in the lawn.
Driving around the other streets – Cliff Ridge (oddly named, as it is in a valley), Losantaridge, Blue Ridge circle – I catalogued more names o. The Hunts, with another boyfriend of my sister, Buddy. Chuckie Hedrick, whom my mother thought would make a good friend for me, as he was very smart and self-contained. But his lack of physical coordination kept me from wanting to spend time with him. I envied the more athletic boys, Tommy Bingham and Larry Landfried, both a year older, who live on Ridgewood. Not quite as smart as Chuckie, but at least I could play ball with them.
“My father built a swimming pool in the back yard and put up a basketball hoop there. Not for us, but for himself. I had this mixture of my mother wanting me to use my quick brain, and my father throwing every kind of ball imaginable to me. It was finally swimming that stuck, when he offered me a transistor radio if I joined the Indian Hill swim team the summer I was 11.”
By now, Cheryl’s eyes had begun to glaze over from all the stories of my childhood, which she had not been a part of. I posed outside of the red door of All Saints’ Episcopal Church, where I had been in the choir and an acolyte, lighting and extinguishing the candles before and after Sunday services. She tolerated my excursions to the homes of Lizzie S. and Carol D. girlfriends before and after Susie. She listened as I rhapsodized about sledding down the hills in French Park, a mile from my house. She enjoyed our excursion to Eden Park, to the Krohn Conservatory where my family went on Christmas Day to see the massive decorated tree reaching to the skylights of the steamy greenhouse. And she relished the massive Cincinnati Art Museum, set on a hilltop looking down on the city to one side and the Ohio River to the other.
********
The tip of the moon reached nearly halfway across the sun’s yellow face, which appeared to be a fiery Pac-Man bent on devouring our comforting satellite.
“It’s eating it up,” Merry chuckled.
I thought of the journeys we’d just made to our pasts, the signposts held in memory slowly disappearing. House still remained yet seemed smaller. Forested gullies had been flattened into strip malls, economic energy devouring the prairies and the woods of our imagination. I leaned back, and said to the sun, “Don’t leave us! We need you! I love your warmth, how it feels on my face, my skin! Without you, we have nothing, nothing here at all.”
Nancy, freed for the afternoon from her incarceration at the Covered Bridge nursing home, wore her eclipse glasses askew. “Don’t you think it’s remarkable that the best spot for seeing this is right here, in front of your own house, with your children around you?” I asked.
“Oh, yes.” The words came slowly, deliberately. “It’s special. I never would have thought…”
Above, the moon’s darkness had taken over, leaving only a sliver of brightness, the paired orbs almost overlapping.
“Look, a crescent sun!” said Merry. Joe chuckled, amused at the transformation taking place.
Cheryl reached over and squeezed my arms. “Thank you for setting this up,” she whispered.
“Well, it was your idea to come out here. You made it happen.”
A small dot remained at 10 o’clock. Then it winked out. The air turned cool, no radiation beaming at us anymore. A breeze picked up, and the sky went to twilight.
Whipping off my glasses, I pulled out my phone, and shot a 360-degree video the sunset surrounding us. Then I sat down and spent the next two minutes transfixed by absence of light above, the complete and utter blackness of the moon I knew was there but couldn’t see. A shiver passed from my arms through my chest then down my legs, one of awe more than actual cold. My mind a blank, I accepted the wonder, and waited for the light to return.
Posted inMemoir|Comments Off on Eclipsed [Long Version]
Merry glanced up at the TV, which had been on continuously since nine AM. “We’ve got time,” Merry said. “They said the Eclipse starts at 3:04”
“Uh, no. The moon begins to cross the sun at 1:49.” I worried our hosts didn’t grasp the nature of the phenomenon. “You don’t want to miss that. It moves slowly, takes over an hour to get full, when the sun goes completely dark.”
Merry blinked twice, absorbing that concept. She lives with her husband Joe in his mother’s house, moving back to Seymour, Indiana when Nancy, nearly 92, showed signs of more rapid aging. Joe wanted to make sure he’d be there if his mother needed anything, and to lay his claim to the farmhouse at the edge of town. His sister Julie lived next door with one of her daughters and her other, Amy, just a short walk away.
“Well, what time should we be getting Nancy then?” Merry rasped, mixing her laugh with a classic smoker’s cough.
Julie put in, “Where should we take her? Amy’s having an Eclipse party with her friends. She said they’d already started on the beer.”
I said, “Don’t you think it would be cool if Nancy could see it right in front of her own home?” Nancy had been in a nursing home for several months ever since she’d fallen and broken her right arm and left scapula in two separate falls a month apart. We’d come out to the Midwest to see Cheryl’s aunt, our “last remaining elder”, and I didn’t want that visit to be blurred by loud, slurring youngsters, stepping all over an awesome event like this Eclipse. I’d seen one seven years earlier in Oregon with thousands of others camped out on a farmer’s field and knew that, while it seemed like an excuse for a party, it was probably better viewed in relaxation and peace.
I went on. “I checked out the driveway. We could set up there, it’s shady with the trees on the left, and an open view to where the sun will be this afternoon.”
Joe piped up, “Well, let’s go get some chairs, then.” Joe rolled his stout form out the door, leading up to a covered concrete patio at the back of the house. He walked by a webbed folding beach chair and began to untangle some sturdier ones with metal armrests. “Those are perfect,” I said, noting the rounded back rests, high enough to support our heads as they tilted back during the final climax.
Joe’s hands and arms carry the stiffness and scars of a life lived first as a Marine, then in factory jobs. His fists are permanently balled, the fingers lumpy stubs. Still, he was able to grab one chair in each hand, while I stacked two together. Along with Merry and Cheryl we quickly created a little gallery under the elm tree out front, its distant branches flecked with tiny leaves about to unfurl in the rapidly warming Midwest spring.
“See? Perfect spot here. Just enough shade from the side, clear view to the southwest there.” I pointed towards Highway 31, the occasional semi blasting past, interspersed with cars headed to the airport, where a Louisville TV station had set up its Eclipse headquarters. Seymour had been discovered as the closest viewing locale with sufficient infrastructure for a major event. Motels had doubled their prices, the Chevy dealer offered free hot dogs, and the local tractor store provided seats on its machines to visitors, all seeking to capitalize on the happy accident of geography which put them underneath the curving route of totality.
I checked my watch: 1:47. I put the eclipse glasses on and stared up at the sun the dull orange disc still perfectly round, no defect yet appearing at its margin.
“Where does it start?” I asked. I turned around, and found myself all alone, the chairs haphazardly lined up at the edge between light and shadow along the one-lane drive leading to the two houses in the Wolter compound. I looked back at the sun and noticed a black dot appearing at about 4 o’clock, a little knick which did nothing to quell the rising afternoon heat.
“It’s started!” I yelled. I felt more excited than I had in August of 2017, when the wonder began two days after we’d arrived at a makeshift campground on recently mowed ranch land. Thousands of tents and RVs filled the space, extending down the hill to an Air Force base where NASA had set up telescopes and a research station, with Portland TV showing up, hoping for a clear day. We had the same here, a brief cloudless window in a week of stormy weather.
Six days earlier, we’d touched down in Cincinnati, one day after tornadoes and thunderstorms ravaged the Midwest. The following three days were bitterly cold for early April, in the low 40s at best, with on-and-off drizzle and even some snow at night. My heart was warm, though, as I toured my childhood home, where I’d lived from ages 1 to 17, and the four following summers. Where I grew up and became most of who I am. I’d come back to search for that child’s life, and try and find what made him the man I’ve become.
The tip of the moon reached nearly halfway across the sun’s yellow face, a fiery Pac-Man bent on devouring our comforting satellite.
“That ol’ moon is just eating the sun right up,” Merry chuckled.
I thought of the journeys we’d just made to our pasts, the signposts held in memory slowly disappearing. In Cincinnati, houses still remained yet seemed smaller. Forested gullies had been flattened into strip malls, economic energy devouring the prairies and the woods of our imagination. I looked back up, and said to the sun, “Don’t leave us! We need you! I love your warmth, how it feels on my face, my skin! Without you, we have nothing, nothing here at all.”
I looked over at Nancy, freed for the afternoon from her incarceration in the Covered Bridge nursing home. “Don’t you think it’s remarkable that the best spot for seeing this is right here, in front of your own house, with your children around you?” I asked.
“Oh, yes.” The words came slowly, deliberately. “It’s special. I never would have thought…”
I looked back at the paired orbs above. The moon’s darkness now took over, leaving only a sliver of brightness.
“Look, a crescent sun!” said Merry. Joe chuckled, amused at the transformation taking place.
Cheryl reached over and squeezed my arms. “Thank you for setting this up,” she whispered.
“Well, it was your idea to come out here. You made it happen.”
A small dot remained at 10 o’clock. Then it winked out. The air turned cool, no radiation beaming at us anymore. A breeze picked up, and the sky went to twilight.
Whipping off my glasses, I pulled out my phone, and shot a 360-degree video. The flat horizon surrounding us glowed yellow to pink to purple, a sunset everywhere I looked. I sat down and spent the next two minutes transfixed by absence of light above, the complete and utter blackness of the moon I knew was there but couldn’t see. A shiver passed from my arms through my chest then down my legs, a feeling of awe more than actual cold. My mind a blank, I accepted the wonder, and waited for the light to return.
