I’m happy to be back home in the free state of Florida, after my trip up to Illinois for the family reunion. I just saw CO’s post celebrating over 33,500 followers on this site, and after everybody’s generous responses to my column about the struggles of my friend’s wife, my mom, and Cassie the Wonder Dog, this growing group feels like a huge family right now.
As it happens, this is my 700th Cautious Optimism column, and I’m grateful to have had the chance to write every one of them. Especially since number 700 will be less somber than number 699 was.
Starting with the best news from the trip, mom had a really good time, and everybody was glad to see her. My sister arrived with her around 2:00 on Saturday, which gave us a chance to drive her around town for a couple of hours before the reunion dinner started.
The weather was great, sunny and in the 70s, and we first drove past the house mom grew up in on Post Street. The current owners have let some over-grown bushes and trees obscure part of the building, but mom recognized it right away, pointing out the porch before we drove around to an angle that let us see it.
At this point her Alzheimer’s is like a fog that descends on her and then lifts for a while, following no particular pattern. We never know when the mists will dissipate or for how long, but seeing her face light up when she recognized the house made the trip worthwhile all by itself.
From there we drove down Ottawa’s main street, through a quintessential Midwestern downtown, past the leafy town square featuring a fountain and a statue of Lincoln and Douglas, commemorating their debate there. Mom recognized the square and the courthouse, but enough of the old buildings have received face lifts over the years that she didn’t recognize a lot more.
We drove to the cemetery beside the Illinois River where her parents are buried, and while she didn’t recognize the cemetery, she recognized their headstone. We wondered how she might react, because for the last several months she has gone back and forth between remembering that they are dead, and thinking that she just talked to Grandma on the phone, and is supposed to meet her at the Post Street house.
But the fog seemed to have lifted for most of the weekend, and she seemed undisturbed, and contented to visit their graves. From there we drove by grandpa and grandma’s last house, a tiny place on the other side of the river that she didn’t recognize. We drove her over to Marseilles, the town where she and dad had started their married lives, and where I spent the first 10 years of my life.
As we crossed the river and drove up Main Street, she recognized the downtown, and a few familiar sights. One of the two houses we lived in has been extensively remodeled, and all of us had a hard time figuring out which one it was. But she recognized their first marital home, on Fillebrowne Street.
I don’t think mom remembers the story of how they bought that house anymore, but she and dad told us so many times that Rhonda and I will never forget it. Mom was going to a baby shower for a friend of hers, and dad wanted to go to a garage sale on Fillebrowne. But because they were broke and he was impulsive, she made him promise not to buy a mower, or tools, or anything.
And he didn’t. He bought the house! For $4500. Then they had to go to see her dad, to ask him to borrow the $450 down payment.
Over the years, every time that house has come up in conversation, or whenever we’ve been back in town and seen it, mom and dad would tell us that story. On Saturday, for the first time, mom didn’t repeat it. But she recognized the house, and that was good enough for us.
We all met for dinner at a local restaurant. Dad had been one of nine kids – five boys and four girls – and eight of them survived past childhood, which was not something to take for granted in their generation. (Dad’s brother Donnie got sick and died before he turned two, and nobody is even sure what he died from.) Three of the nine siblings in dad’s generation are still alive, and two of them were able to make it, along with their spouses. We had 27 people there, including 8 of my cousins and their assorted kids, and the food and the conversations were great.
Afterwards we went to my Uncle Bob’s homestead north of town, for more visiting and stories. Bob’s got about 60 acres, some of it cornfield, but a lot of timber and a huge, shady yard with old oak trees. He’s got a big, old barn and several smaller and newer ones, and he built a nice shelter between his house and the treeline years ago. It has a fireplace, and enough tables to hold 35 to 40 people, and several of the attendees brought possessions that had belonged to their parents or our grandparents.
Everybody did a show-and-tell, and there was a lot of laughter, and some tears. A lot of people brought pictures that most of us haven’t seen in years, if ever. My cousin had an old trunk full of grandpa and grandma’s stuff. There was a wooden high-chair that all 9 kids had used at one time or another, and an old, red onesie and a metal toy car of Donnie’s, which choked everybody up. There was also a pair of his baby shoes, though there was some joking that, as poor as the Simpsons were, every boy and a few of the girls probably wore those shoes before they were handed down to Donnie.
Mom recognized everybody from her generation and most of the cousins, and she had a great time. There were a lot of stories about dad and Uncle Bob, who were “Irish cousins,” and very close. (Dad was born in January of 1938, and Bob in December of that same year.) Mom soaked it all in, and was happy but tired by the time Rhonda and Jimmy took her back to their hotel.
The fog descended on her again the next day. A little while after they got back on the road for Tennessee, she became worried that they’d left dad behind in Ottawa. Rhonda reminded her that he passed away ten years ago, but mom was certain that she’d seen him the night before, apparently thinking that dad had been there with the rest of the family at Uncle Bob’s. To be fair to her, a lot of us felt that way.
When they got home that evening, mom went to bed early, and by the next day she didn’t remember the trip at all. But for that one night, she was in her old hometown and surrounded by family. And when she wakes up from this life and the fog has lifted for good, she’ll remember it all.
One more story from the weekend. I got up to Illinois on Thursday night, planning to pitch in with some preparations, including cleaning up and stocking the shelter for the reunion. But as I was driving up on Thursday, Uncle Bob couldn’t wait for the kids to get there and help. So that morning he took one of his two tractors out and mowed the ginormous yard, before returning the tractor to the newer barn, and going back in the house.
A little while later he smelled smoke, and ran out to the barn to find that the tractor that he’d put away hot was on fire. He ran back to the house and told his wife to call the fire department, and then ran back to the barn. The burning tractor was parked between his bigger tractor and their Miata; the Miata had a full tank of gas, and it was on fire, and the other tractor’s front tires were on fire. And Bob is going to turn 87 in a few months.
So naturally, he ran into the barn and jumped onto the big tractor to try to drive it out of the barn and save it. The metal he grabbed to get up into the seat was hot, and the seat was hot, and the gear shift was hot. But it started up, and he drove it out of the barn – both front tires fully engulfed – and drove it into the closest grass that was still damp from dew, and drove in a serpentine pattern to put the tires out.
His daughter and her husband had gotten there that morning from Minnesota, and she came out of the house to see her octogenarian dad come barreling out of a burning barn on a smoking tractor, twisting the steering wheel from side to side as he tried to extinguish the flaming front tires.
THAT is an Ameri-CAN, people!
Afterwards, he felt a little shaky about what he had done, and his wife and daughter were mad at him for doing it. But he got a lot of furtive fist-bumps from the Simpson men and cousins at the reunion. And Saturday night, when all but six of us had gone home, and we were sitting around a fire under a clear night sky, my cousin Darryll told Uncle Bob that he was his hero, and that he hoped he’d be able to pull stupid stunts like that when he’s 86.
Because: toxic (or at least reckless) masculinity.
I just wish that my uncle had a ring camera on the door of his house, because that video – possibly with a little Indiana Jones theme music as the soundtrack – would be great for a show-and-tell 20 years from now, with our kids and grandkids.
Next week I’ll be back on the politics beat – there is so much great stuff going on!
But tonight I’m just appreciating the afterglow from the trip. Cassie is asleep beside my desk, where she’s been while I’ve written all 700 columns, except for the small number I’ve written when I was traveling. And we’ve made some new memories with mom, and the rest of the family.
Thank you all for being part of CO Nation, and have a great weekend!
Martin Simpson 