Apple to Apple

My dad has maple syrup running in his veins. Not really, of course. But maple syrup might work better than his blood that keeps clotting.

He grew up with a sugar camp in his back yard. He could tell winter was wearing down when his dad started tinkering around in the sugar camp, gathering the spiles that pierced the trees, washing the 900-some keelers that caught the sap, and firing up the evaporator.

In his teens, he guided horses under the maple trees on the wooded, steep, sometimes snowy slope to the Casselman River collecting the sap. He tended the fires to boil the sap into syrup—forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.

Even when he moved 500 miles from the sugar camp, from the country to the city, he had a nose for sugaring weather, night time temperatures dropping below freezing and day temperatures in the forties. And he still had a taste for the real stuff. Mrs. Butterworth’s sweet, buttery syrup not making the grade.

Now he’s ninety-four, in assisted living, and taking each step at great cost. His body is failing him, but his mind is still razor-sharp. At the retirement center, people are curious about my dad and that mind of his. So they ask him questions. And someone found out about my dad and his love for maple syrup.

If you walk into that retirement center, across the dining hall, through the kitchen, and into the pantry, you will find a can of pure maple syrup purchased by the kitchen. On that can is a label. On that label, the dietician has written my dad’s name. Whether it’s on pancakes, in oatmeal, or over cornbread, my dad gets what’s been running in his veins—pure maple syrup.

I was maybe twenty-three. And my life was so huge to me I couldn’t see anyone else’s. Who else was putting two people through college with two babies? Who else had a grocery budget of $15 a week and a clothes budget of $0? Who else had left all her friends two states away and was living near her husband’s family and not her own?

My life, it seemed, was separate from all others, my pain and heartbreak unprecedented in the history of the world, at least in my part of the world, at least at this time, at least among the people I knew.

No longer thirteen, I had the sense not to say any of this aloud. But not the maturity to stop feeling it, deep down in my gut, where no one else could see.

I’d been taught better. Since I’d been knee-high to a grasshopper I’d been tutored in looking, not to my own interests, but to the interests of others.

But I was a new adult, overwhelmed, and sure I had a corner on suffering. It was at this sorry juncture that I enrolled in my first astronomy class ever.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, I walked into class, carrying my load of grievances. But a sky full of stars did something, making me feel both small and part of something infinitely bigger than myself. And older, much older than myself.

The light we saw from the stars had left them thousands of years before, had traveled trillions of miles to reach earth and to shine on me.

Me, one person out of more than four billion people in the world, and holding the troubles of only one life, a good one, at that.  Above all us earthlings moved the stars and planets and galaxies, the ones we could see and those we couldn’t.

Ninety minutes later, I’d walk out of class, ready to cuddle my babies, to stretch my grocery budget, to make new friends.

And I’d walk out relieved.

I was, after all, just a speck in the universe.

Last summer, my parents still lived on Elm Street, where their house won the prize for the prettiest porch. Not by my dad’s doing. It was my mom’s flowers that cascaded from hanging baskets and from pots on the porch railings and that reached up from the beds below.

On a midsummer evening much like today, I walked into that house. My dad had written his history for the day, and he was relaxing in his recliner, reading.

“Longfellow,” he said, waving his book at me.

It was an old book, clothbound, its cover embossed and its title gilded, probably from his college years.

“This is about your mom and her flowers,” he said, and read me some lines: “… gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, tremulous leaves with soft silver lining. ..”

He hands me the book. On the yellowed pages,  Longfellow calls flowers the stars of the earth. And he writes that some flowers with their blue eyes cry.

If it had been my dad’s druthers, he’d have planted foundation shrubs around the house and been done with it. He’d never have won the prettiest porch prize. Neither would people stop by his porch to enjoy the flowers and stay to talk. But his eyes hold admiration for Longfellow’s words.

He points to the poem and says it again: “This is your mom.”

***

Today I walk into my dad’s room at the retirement center. He’s revising a sixty-page document on the schism that formed the Old Order Amish church. Most days, he wants to read to me, to talk about what he’s writing, and to get my suggestions.

But on this day, he leans back in his chair.

“What is it about your mom?” he asks. “It’s been happening all her life. And now it’s happening again in this new place.”

I know exactly what he’ll say next. And he does.

People are coming to talk to her—in the dining room, in the hallways, after exercise classes, and in the common living area.

“Why do they talk to her? And not to me?”

He’s not complaining. He’d rather write history. But he’s fascinated.

And his eyes hold admiration.

After seventy-two years of marriage, he’s still got reason to marvel.

One misstep and our summer changes. No more two-mile walks together through town as the stars come out and the lights blink on. No more working together in what we planned would be our best garden ever. No more biking or swimming or disc golf.

Instead, my husband straps an iWalk to his leg or props it on a knee scooter to go everywhere his two feet used to take him. Life changed so quickly. So easily. Without warning.

“It’s a Jones fracture,” his doctor said. “Absolutely no weight on that foot. Not once.”

Doors open to a perfect June evening, but we sit morose.  The breezes and the bird calls tantalize us. Just one walk. That’s all we want. Just one walk down the street and through the park and over the creek. Just a chance to wander through streets where children play hopscotch and zip by on bikes, where we can stop for ice cream and meander back home past the courthouse and down the sidewalk to our front door.

“We’ve got to get hold of this,” my husband says. “Find a way to redeem the summer.”

But we’re stuck. Until we think of a recent vacation to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where we took a GPS-guided audio tour through copper country. It was as if an expert sat in the back seat of our car interpreting what we saw.

“You think they’ve got something for the middle of Ohio?” my husband asks.

We’ve got no mines here, no mountains, and no water to speak of. But does Ohio have stories?

We do!

So we install an audio tour app. And off we go, Steve hobbling to the car on his iWalk. Our first tour takes us to the Grimes Flying Laboratory, where we learn that Warren Grimes is known as the father of aircraft lighting.

“Think of the lights you see on aircraft wing tips,” our guide says. “Grimes invented those to make flying at night safer.”

The laboratory is accessible with an iWalk. Inside, we see a 1940s airplane being restored. And we read about Warren Grimes, a runaway orphan, who ended up working for Ford Motor Company and taught himself engineering. And whose red, green, and white navigation lights are found on the wingtips and tails of almost every plane in the world.

Well, this will change the way I look out at my next airplane wing, the way I’ll watch the next plane fly at night in the sky above our deck.

And to think, a runaway orphan boy, someone given a bad deal in life, did all that!

On the trip home, we’re pleasantly drowsy.

“Let’s take a small nap,” Steve says.

Just ahead is a shaded graveyard. Steve pulls in. We open our windows and recline our seats. The birds sing, the breeze wafts, and we sleep with the rest of them.

People trust me for lots of things—to keep a secret and read a MyChart, to plan a cousin week and apply for long-term health care benefits, and to lead workshops and speak to groups. But there’s something no one trusts me to do. Not my parents or my husband or my grandkids. And not my friends.

All of them know this one thing about me—that I can’t find my way, almost anywhere.

Back in the pre-GPS days, I drove twice a week to graduate school. And each time, a card with directions is what got me there: Take I-70 East. Keep left to continue on I-670 E. Follow signs for airport. Take Exit 2B to merge onto OH-315 N. Take Exit 3 to Cannon Drive. Turn left into the Ohio Union North Garage. By the time I earned my masters diploma, the card was tattered.

One by one, my grandchildren learned to mistrust me, usually around the age of five.

When I was in the driver’s seat, they’d sit up straight, their eyes alert.

“Not that way, Grandma,” one would say. “This other way.”

Even at the zoo and in parking lots and on walks around town, they watched and corrected my path.

And my dad. He just can’t understand this lack in my brain.

“For how organized you are …,” he mutters when I turn the wrong way once again.

Usually this is not on the road, where the GPS now maps my way. It’s me pushing his wheelchair out of Coumadin clinics and doctors’ offices and through hospital hallways.

But he’s known since I was three that the spatial orientation part of my brain is missing. And he’s found a way to get himself where he needs to be. He sticks out his left hand or right, as the need may be, and points.

So I’m set with my dad.

And with my grandkids, who now take the wheel and the lead, no matter where we go.

Besides having my nose in a book too long, too often, and at the wrong times, the main reason I got in trouble as a child was forgetting. In sixth grade I forgot my books. That evening I had to write 500 times: I will not forget my books. The next day I left my boots at school, the rubber kind we pulled over shoes back then. That evening, I was writing sentences again—I will not forget my boots.

In junior high I sat in detention one long afternoon with other rule breakers—those who cheated and fought and smoked and skipped school. Why? I’d forgotten my clarinet on a band day, left it at home, under a stack of library books.

I just couldn’t stop forgetting. Back when I carried purses, I left them on shelves in mall dressing rooms and under chairs in restaurants and on top of my car after buckling babies in car seats. I missed appointments and didn’t renew my license on time. I dreamed that I forgot about a college class until three weeks into the term. Finally, I had enough. And decided to do something about it.

So I set up systems. I slipped notes in the bottom of my shoe and carried my credit card and license in a pocket. I kept scrap paper by my bed so I could write reminders in the night. Then I’d crumple up those notes and throw them into the middle of the floor so I’d trip over them in the morning.

And then came the age of technology with even better ways to keep track of my life and the lives of those in my care. Of all the new tools, my favorite is the snooze feature of Gmail.

Just yesterday, I sent myself an email about my father’s next Coumadin clinic check and then snoozed the email to the day before the appointment. I snooze when I want to remember the week a grandchild goes to camp, the anniversary of a friend’s death, and the month I can renew my passport.

Two emails I keep snoozing over and over. They’re not about what I need to do. They’re about who I want to be.

One email that helps me with my parents reads: As slow as possible, as soft as possible, as sustainable as possible, as sincere as possible, as steady as possible. Allow space and pause.

Another email reminds me of the lyrics of a song, one about peace on earth.

Each month when this email pops up out of its snooze, I plead for peace—that it will come to earth. I make an offer—to have it begin with me, and a vow (which I sometimes manage to  keep) to take each step and live each moment in peace. 

A snoozed email is better than stuffing a paper in the bottom of a shoe, especially when you’re over seventy.  By snoozing and by wearing a crossbody wallet case for my iPhone, I’ve managed to avoid writing 500 sentences or sitting in detention.

It’s not that I’m forgetting less. Not at seventy-one. It’s that I’ve got some fancy tools to help me remember.

The porch swing creaks and pages turn. The air’s gentle and fresh, not hot, not cold, not humid. It’s a perfect late-May afternoon. On Main Street in front of my house, a school bus screeches to a stop. But the door doesn’t open. And no students emerge. Instead, young faces press to the window. A hearse passes by in the other lane. And funeral flags flutter on somber-looking cars driven by sober-looking people.

I close my book.

In a few minutes, I’ll turn my car north on Main toward the Bluebird Retirement Center, where my parents live with eighty-some people who once ran the world: teaching, doctoring, farming,  running businesses, building houses, and conducting scientific experiments. Most, but not all, can look back at their lives and recall what they’ve done. Some continue to work in their interests—writing history, cultivating flowers, encouraging others. Many host grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the retro ice cream shop, trading stories over cones.

In a few days, we’ll point our car south on Main to a grandson’s high school graduation in Kentucky. He’ll cross the stage and turn his tassel with more than 300 people who aim to run the world. Most, but not all, have a next step in mind—college, apprenticeships or entry-level jobs. Some know exactly what they hope to accomplish by the time they retire and enter care in a retirement home. But none know what the ensuing years will hold.

I give the swing a few more pushes. And think about the generations. About our youngest grandchild just finishing grade school, the ones in high school, and those already in college. About our children in the throes of their careers. About my parents, closing up a long-loved home and making a new one at Bluebird.

School buses, graduation stages, hearses and all that happens in between—this makes a life. Not all days are gentle and fresh and spent on porch swings. But some are. And the other days, those that are hard and hot, help us through the next transition and on to the next stage.

I slow the swing. I’ve got to visit my parents. And then I’ve got to pack for a grandson’s graduation.

They’re merging us down to one lane on a Friday afternoon in Michigan, where everyone’s going the same way—Up North to the cabins and lakes and wooded lots with firepits. It’s good to be back in the Wolverine state, where we met and married and welcomed our two children.

Old music comes through our fancy, new Bluetooth speaker. Steve’s got his playlist going. Peter, Paul, and Mary still want a hammer.  Simon and Garfunkel bridge the troubled water. The wind’s still blowin’. And after more than six decades of the song being out in the world, everything keeps on turn, turn, turning. All the sounds of long ago.

Steve rolls down his window and smiles at me.

There are all sorts of good reasons to keep windows shut on the road: to reduce wind noise and air resistance, to increase fuel efficiency, to keep debris from flying in. But at this moment the open window takes us back to the pre-AC days when folks had tans on their driving arms and wind in their hair, when they breathed in the sharp, heady scents of  asphalt and combustion exhaust.

That’s how we rolled down Saginaw Street after a date.

But for me, open windows go even further back—to my childhood. To nine-hour family trips from our city home in Flint to grandparents and cousins in Western Maryland with five or six of us packed into the back seat of a sedan. The baby was lucky, riding in spacious luxury between our parents in one of those small dangle chairs that hooked over the front seat.  

My parents were lucky too. With the roar of the road through the open windows, they missed most of the tattling. Who stepped on whose foot and who was spreading halfway across the seat and who said something that was not at all nice.

But luck ran out for all of us when the baby soiled a diaper. The odor didn’t mix well with asphalt and exhaust. One time the baby wet once too often. Extra diapers were packed deep in the trunk. So my mom closed her window over the end of the damp diaper, where it flapped outside in the wind.

The flapping worked well for my mom, muffling protests of embarrassment from the back seat.

At sixteen I ran into luck—finding something more calming and way more fun than being a big sister in a back seat—open windows and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” on dates with Steve.

But even better is old music through the Bluetooth and a smile that calls back the decades.

A call for the squad, a night in the emergency room, and an admission to the hospital—all this, and my parents’ lives change. They now live in a small apartment in assisted living, only two minutes and two seconds from my house. (Mom asked me to time.)

After only one week in, let me just say that I’m proud of my parents.

“This is like Pennsylvania Dutch cooking,” my dad says during one of his first meals in the dining room. “And with no Mennonites in the kitchen.”

One of their aides seems like a Bender. Another like a Hershberger. Familiar names from their home community.

My nonagenarian parents are handling all the intimate ways they need care with great dignity and humor and gratefulness. And celebrating that now with no grocery pick-ups, bed making, and laundry, they’ve got more time to write.

Mom, who copies the Bible by pencil into notebooks, is moving through the Psalms. My dad’s living back in 1895, researching and writing about the split of the Old Order Amish and the Amish Mennonites.

At the retirement center, my mom’s got lots of new friends. So she keeps giving away Erma’s Story, a collection of childhood memories my dad compiled for her. Her book has become her calling card.

I’m eating lunch with my parents one day when the CEO of the retirement center stops by our table.

“Erma,” he says. “I had the most frightful weekend!”

Concern flies across her face.

“What happened?” she asks.

“I was there when the house burned down,” he says. “And when Raymond fell to the tongue of the runaway wagon and when Papa almost lost the farm in the Depression.”

Awareness dawns for my mom.

“You read my book!” she says.

He nods.

“I felt so sad when your Papa didn’t hear you call and you missed your ride to town.”

You should have seen my mom’s face.

She leans toward me.

“He reminds me of my brother Oren,” she says. “He tells a good story.”

It’s not easy, this transition. You don’t leave an established, loved home without pain. And we’ve still got adjustments to make. But so far, it’s a promising match—my parents leaning into their new lives, finding themselves in the eyes of the new people they meet. And the community around them celebrating who they are.