This Thanksgiving began the way most of our Thanksgiving’s end, in a knock-down-drag-out between my dad and brother, and it wasn’t even Thursday yet. So yet again it was my mom and me standing in the kitchen trying to figure out how best to proceed. We watched as my dad huffed through the dining room/den area, past the dinner table and into the narrow hallway, disappearing with a turn into his room. Once he was safely in there, my mom held two middle fingers up to the wall.
“I don’t know what his problem is!” she whispered, angry herself. I grabbed a ladle off of the counter and started drying it. Passed around the island in the middle and moved toward her and the drawers under the stove. “It started with the potatoes,” I said, and put the ladle away. But it had started a while before that. My mom had just accepted a new job in Court Administration at the Oakland County Courthouse and she had asked my brother Eric and me to come at 11 am that morning to see her new office. When we got there facilities was painting her old office for the woman who would replace her – conveniently another woman named Pam. We then all went to Kerby’s Coney Island – a poor excuse, in my opinion, to National Coney Island where we used to go after church every Sunday. Out of habit, I ordered chicken fingers. “So,” my dad said, looking towards Eric. “We’re going to have to leave Friday morning for hunting because mom won’t let us leave Thursday night.” He winked at my mom, laughing a little to himself. “It’s rude,” my mom said. “It is not rude.” “It is too rude,” I piped up. “The whole reason we’re going up there is because Grandpa asked us to be there. “Bill would understand.” “That doesn’t make it any less rude,” I said. He was sick of my attitude and perhaps saddened by how quick I am to affirm my mother’s position instead of trying to understand his own, but he wasn’t surprised. We’ve been struggling through this dynamic for a while now. He pushed back from the table between us, straightened his slouch, and raised his voice ever so slightly, just enough to enter into the realm of condescension. “What you girls don’t realize or care about is that if we don’t leave until Friday morning we won’t get up there until midday on Friday which only gives us a day and a half to hunt.” He leaned back, resting his case and I knew there was no use fighting with him further. He has never been one to back down easily and certainly not to the blatant opposition I was presenting him with. He’s the kind of man who lets an idea marinate long enough until it feels like his own. But this is when it is presented with a calm voice and persistence, and I was irritated that morning. Besides, regardless of his whining we’d all be there until Friday morning anyway. When we’d all finished, we walked to the three cars. Dad jumped into his to go home to pack for hunting and I hopped in mom’s car instead of traveling with Eric like the way I came. It hadn’t even been a day yet, but Eric’s boredom with being home manifests in making fun of me and I’ve never had the biggest sense of humor. When we got to her new office my mom and I spent three minutes rearranging her degrees on the wall directly across from the entry door while Eric complained. I had already decided that I was going to stay with my mom and help her continue to unpack when Eric said that he was going to leave. His best friend Danny was back in town for Thanksgiving. “You should let Dad know that you’re going to see Danny,” my mom said. “We’ll see,” was his reply. “You know he’s waiting on you to help him pack,” my mom said. “And he’s gonna be pissed if you don’t tell him,” I joined. “Well he’s gonna be pissed then,” Eric said. Eric got home at around 5pm, the same time my mom and I did, and it was clear that my dad was already in a funk. My mom started cooking, said she was making pork chops, green beans, and a quinoa brown rice mixture. Not a-typical for my parents nowadays, but certainly not the comfort food that Eric or I were used to. As my mom started to stir the quinoa and brown rice together my dad came up, asked: “What are you making?” Mom: “Quinoa and brown rice.” His face exploded. Dad: “They’re not gonna like that! I thought we were eating red skins – Jamie said she wanted red skins.” Mom: “I thought she was talking about Thanksgiving.” Dad: “We’re doing the other potatoes for Thanksgiving! She said she wanted potatoes and I know that I prefer a potato.” Me: “I don’t need a potato.” Dad: “I thought you wanted potatoes! You said you wanted redskins!” Me: “I thought it was for Thanksgiving.” Dad: “But we’re doing the other potatoes for Thanksgiving!” Me: “I didn’t know that – I was just throwing out my potato preferences. I’m fine without a potato.” Dad: “But did you want a potato?” Me: “I’m fine without one.” Mom to Dad: “I can make you a potato.” Dad: “No, if everyone else is fine with the quinoa then I’ll eat that too.” Mom: “It’s not a problem. I can pop one in the microwave right now.” Dad: “No, its fine,” and he continued about his work. When we all settled down for dinner I watched as both my dad and brother plopped the obligatory spoonful of my mom’s experiment onto their respective plates. I did the same, still not really sure how I felt about quinoa. It was better than I expected, but I still needed gravy in order to get it all down. I didn’t let my dad know. Admitting that the quinoa wasn’t great would be gloat-worthy for him – a reason to justify screaming over the counter at my mom for cooking what she wanted rather than what we always have. I finished out the bowl of green beans. Afterwards we had to take our Christmas picture, which Eric fought every second of the way with comments like: “I’m not dressing up.” “Why can’t we do a candid like we did before?” “Why are we always so boring?” It took us four different tries (shooting ten pictures each) to get one that was workable. When we finally finished, Eric rewarded himself with some episodes of Parks and Rec while the rest of us cleaned up the house. My dad dedicated himself to finishing up packing for hunting stuff, which clogged up the entrance way flowing over into the kitchen, while I stationed myself in the kitchen with my mom, drying the dishes that she’d washed. The counters were littered with boxes of stuffing, cheesecake mix, cranberry sauce, computers, chargers, and coupons. The mix of packing and attempting to clean always feeling like a futile effort. And then there was Eric, watching Parks and Rec. As a member of a family built on inefficient, indirect speech and bottling up resentment, I found myself glancing over at Eric every minute or so and glaring, as if the heat of my disdain could somehow travel through the kitchen, past the bathroom and register as an apology on his face. And when that didn’t work I huffed, muttering to myself disconnected words of “not” and “helping” and “Eric.” So on the way downstairs to get something, I passed by Eric and said – “Hey, why don’t you do something – you’re the only one not helping.” “Well, nobody asked me to help.” This was of course a lie – or at the most empathetic, a misunderstanding. I had listened to my dad tell Eric to pick up his dress clothes and put them away before they got all wrinkled, or dusty, or full of food from the kitchen table – all of which he never heard or completely ignored being so consumed by his television show. It must have been ringing in my dad’s ears Eric’s “Well nobody asked me to help.” My dad’s response: “Do you have a brain?” Which was quite possibly the worst thing he could have said. Throughout high school he and Eric consistently fought over Eric’s general lack of giving-a-shit about school. He got B’s when he could’ve been getting A’s which was a constant source of anxiety for my dad. Now a junior at Michigan State majoring in Chemical Engineering and doing well I had assumed, and I think Eric may have too, that these arguments had effectively vanished. “Fuck. You.” He said, spitting the words out. “You want to do this another Thanksgiving?” Cue them both muttering expletives about each other to themselves. Cue the comment that escalates the situation. This time, Eric’s: “I’ll push you through a goddamn wall.” Cue dad’s response. Cue my screaming, interrupting dad’s response, “STOP IT. BOTH OF YOU!” Cue storming off in opposite directions. Cue my mom flipping off the wall, saying “I don’t know what his problem is.” “It’s both of them,” I say. “It’s both of them.” And later, “It started with the potatoes.” *** The next morning we drive in separate cars up to my grandpa’s. Boys in one, girls in the other, and I can’t help but think how the fight last night is the only thing familiar about the Thanksgiving that we are about to embark upon. In a lot of ways, this trip is one of necessity. We haven’t gone up to the Bay City/Midland area for Thanksgiving since my paternal grandparents moved down to Florida permanently in 2005. But frankly, my maternal grandpa needs the company since Bonnie – his wife since 2002 – has started to lose her memory. I don’t know if Bonnie has been officially diagnosed, but we all know it’s some sort of dementia. On our way up, my mom tells me she had talked to her dad the night before and he said that Bonnie has been particularly bad these last couple of days. “He said to just let her do and say whatever she’s gonna do and say,” my mom says. And my immediate thought is, that’s gonna be hard for me. The last time I saw Bonnie we were playing euchre in their dining room, just my mom, my grandpa, Bonnie, and me. She started to tell a story about how when she was nannying for a Jewish family there was a piece of cheese that had a little mold on it. After the father had thrown it away, Bonnie reached into the trash and rescued the cheese so that she could cut off the mold and serve the rest to the girl. There was an argument about said moldy piece of cheese. Bonnie thinking it was okay to serve, the father disagreeing. Bonnie left it up to the daughter to decide and pronounced victoriously that the girl had said she liked it. “Those Jewish people, think they know everything” she said. And while in retrospect I realize that it’s not the worst thing she could have said, in the moment it felt like a lightning bolt to my heart. “That’s not fair,” I said, “You’re generalizing” before really thinking it through, and when she started arguing back, I shut up and excused myself, escaping into the bathroom. Inside I let my tears fall – thinking about Jamie, my beautiful, Jewish boyfriend and how that comment felt just a little too close to home. I don’t know what they did in the five or so minutes while I tried to compose myself, but when I came back we finished the game, mostly in silence, and left. I didn’t hug her goodbye. But on the drive up my mom and I are focused on our more immediate past. We talk about the fight the night before, about my dad. The conversation quickly changes to anxiety, something we’re both fairly certain that my dad has, undiagnosed. I know it because I have it and I see the symptoms in him. It’s in the way he needs everything to be as efficient as possible, having to very deliberately switch perspective when plans change and the sense of panic he seems to exude when there isn’t a plan at all. It’s in the way he bends over backwards to accommodate each and every whim, every pitfall, and is visibly distressed when even though he planned for everything, someone always ends up disappointed. My mom tells me that sometimes he has trouble sleeping and that he’s told her that he has racing thoughts. I tell her I know what that’s like, and explain how anxiety presses itself on you – for me in my chest – and doesn’t allow you to think about anything else. It’s a disorder that feeds on neuroses, something both my dad and I have plenty of. Quick to be defensive, quick to hurt – taking everything that anyone says to heart. “Will you talk with him about it?” my mom asks. “He’s not gonna want to talk about it.” “I know. But it may be helpful for him to know that someone else in our family has it. And I can’t talk to him about it, since I don’t really know what it’s like.” *** When we arrive in Midland around 9 am, it’s my grandpa who greets us at the garage door, while Bonnie stands quietly in the doorway. Once everything is in, Eric and I plop onto the couch, tired from having woken up at 5am. I fall asleep to the Detroit parade, head on a pillow, my small legs scrunched up in a little ball and wake up to my mom on one side of me, telling me to sit up so my dad can get on the couch too. It’s a couch made for three, not four and I’m irritated that I have to accommodate my dad, who seems to actually want to watch the parade when I had already staked the couch out for my sleeping spot. I try to go back to sleep, scrunched even tighter between my mom and my dad, but everyone is loud and I’m irritable so I give up. Not twenty minutes later, my dad slumps over, falls asleep, and starts snoring. Sometime during my nap my mom had put the turkey in the oven, but the oven keeps mysteriously turning off. The power hasn’t gone out and since Bonnie stayed in the kitchen while the five of us were watching the parade the blame immediately falls on her. It’s my grandpa who notices. Him and my mom exchange knowing looks. My grandpa sighs, but my mom always just turns the oven back on – usually waiting until Bonnie has turned her back. When I join the two women in the kitchen to make cheesecake, my mom is looking for something to cook the green beans in, upset that she forgot her steamer at home, and Bonnie is at the other end of the counter, hacking up a pecan pie. I don’t know what’s wrong with the pie, why she’s mutilating it with such ferocity, but I don’t ask. On the counter are open condensed milk cans, the newspaper, and various utensils that I can’t tell if they’re ours or Bonnie’s. I try to use as little of the counter as possible, unsure how much I’m permitted to touch, to move – worried that if everything is not in the same place as it was she won’t be able to find it again. I move from garage to counter gathering up supplies until I realize I need something we don’t have. “Mom,” I say, “do we have a measuring a cup?” Bonnie hearing this, stops her pecan pie hacking and starts rifling through drawers, muttering to herself that she used to have one…that it’s gone. My mom finds it in the cupboard with the glasses a minute later after Bonnie has resumed her business with the pie. When I go to melt butter for the cheesecake crust I open the microwave to find a full pumpkin pie. “Do you mind if I move this, Bonnie?” I ask. “So I can melt the butter for the crust?” “Oh, I can get it,” she says. Then looks down at me. “You couldn’t get it anyway. It’s too heavy.” I think okay, Bonnie – I think I may be stronger than you. “You know when you grow,” she says, “things get lighter. You should maybe think about doing that.” I watch her evaluating my 4’ 11’’ self and say as kindly as I can, “You know Bonnie, it’s not entirely up to me.” And she giggles to herself singing the praises of being tall. Later, I open up a cupboard and notice that the pecan pie that she was chopping up is now sitting among the clean plates. I make a mental note that that’s where the pie is for when we’ll need it later and check on it every once and a while to make sure it’s still there. *** Here’s what I remember from the actual dinner: sitting at the table and blowing my nose. Bonnie saying, “Oh boy, you better not do that on a date.” It’s immediate, my comment back: “Jamie doesn’t mind.” It’s my anger speaking. I hadn’t realized it until then, but I was still fighting the battle I’d started with Bonnie a month ago; waiting for her to say something that would trigger me, ready to fight back. But it was more than that because it’s sexism, which I had taken as my personal duty to fight against after learning the ins and outs of male privilege in my first women’s studies class three years ago; a passion that was strengthened with my employment as an RA, something my dad was happy about until he saw how it would change me. I was fighting Bonnie, but I was also fighting him, showing him that I’m indiscriminate with calling out sexism – that a woman can be sexist too. But more than that, I was doing it for my mom. After several conversations about the sexism prevalent in our lives she once told me that she was glad that young women were learning these things. How she hadn’t realized it’s pervasiveness until I came back with this new lens; how it made her feel hopeful for the future. In many ways this moment felt like the paramount, and it would have been if I hadn’t remembered that the only two things my grandpa wanted were us to be here for thanksgiving, and not to make waves with Bonnie. I watched my dad’s, my grandpa’s, and even my mom’s eyes widen before realizing what I’d done. Shit, I thought. How could I be so self-important that I forgot the reason why we were here in the first place? We finished the meal mostly in silence. After dinner my mom takes a much deserved nap and I help do the dishes with Bonnie. It’s quiet because I’m not sure what to say, and she’s not starting up conversation like she usually does. So mostly, I just wash dishes. Every once in a while she butts into the sink taking over the water and soap to wash and rinse the dish or utensil that she is most immediately working with. I continue to tell her that I can do them, and she’s welcome to sit down and enjoy the game, but she either forgets that I’ve said this or is ignoring me, which I come to accept. It’s just me and Bonnie for a while as my grandpa, my dad, and Eric finish watching the game. And while I’d rather be watching too, leaving Bonnie to finish up everything herself feels incredibly cruel. I think about Eric not helping Wednesday night and not helping now and how it’s likely a gender thing – women cooking and cleaning. It makes me uneasy, and I’m angry that Eric doesn’t ever feel the need to contribute. But there’s also a sort of pride that I’m building up, constantly telling myself: you’re the better child. You’re the better grandchild. And I can’t figure out what’s worse, not helping, or helping because it gives me a sense of superiority. When I run out of dishes, I ask Bonnie what else I can do to help. “Just go sit with your family” she says. I ask her if she’s sure, and tell her to let me know if she needs any help, but even though she says she will, I know she won’t. I walk out of the kitchen, enter the living room and plop on the couch, the entire time feeling a gut sadness. She said "your family". And I know I’ll never say, “It’s our family.” I wonder, not for the first time, where her wonderful family, the one she constantly makes clear is better than us, is this holiday and why they didn’t drop all of their plans to be with her – especially considering the year she’s had. I realize for the first time that us being here instead of them must be much harder for her than I previously thought. *** When we go to eat dessert, I walk confidently to the cupboard and open the door, but the pecan pie isn’t there. I close it, open it again. Nothing. On a third opening I realize that the dried plates that I had washed earlier were in the spot where the pie used to be. I run over to my dad. “Did you put the plates away?” “Yeah,” he nods. “Was the pecan pie in there when you went to put them away?” His face contorts in the kind of confusion that’s reserved for hearing a sentence you weren’t expecting to hear. “No…..” “It was in there up until then,” I say. A search party is formed for this pie, and eventually my grandpa finds it in the china cabinet. When my grandpa goes downstairs to get some ice cream I place a piece of the hacked up pecan pie on my plate to accompany a piece of my cheesecake in order to show some gratitude for Bonnie’s efforts. My parents do the same with the pumpkin pie (of which there are two) – or try to, but on the first bite spit it out. Apparently key ingredients were missing – no condensed milk, no sugar. During all this Bonnie takes a seat in the living room by herself. She cooked three pies for us, and doesn’t eat a single slice. We don’t join Bonnie in the living room when we’re done. We just sit at the dining room table and talk. I’m the only one who sees her get up off the couch and walk out the door. I sit there, staring at the door wondering why I’m not saying anything, why I’m not telling anyone. “Did I hear a door close?” my grandpa asks. “Bonnie just went outside,” I say. Casually, like I hadn’t been thinking about it for the past two minutes. “Did she have her coat on?” “No, I don’t think so. She just got up and went out.” “God damn it,” he said. “It’s hard enough to find her in the daytime.” While my grandpa goes outside and looks, my family plays like we’re watching TV. Before he left, my dad asked my grandpa if he wanted help looking for her, but he brushed it off, saying she wouldn’t want everyone there when he finds her. Says she’d be embarrassed. So we just sit there. “I think us being here has been really hard for her,” I finally say. “Why do you say that?” my dad asks, “Did she say something to you?” “When I was finished with the dishes and I asked her what else I could do to help she said, ‘go ahead and sit down with your family.’ And then we were all eating dessert together, and she’s just sitting out here alone.” Everyone’s eyes independently flit from TV to coffee table to floor as if looking for something in this house that could help quell the grief. The guilt. But I’m looking at my dad. He’s got his right fist around his left index finger, unconsciously rubbing it back and forth and his eyes are furrowed the way they get when he’s presented with a problem he can’t solve. I wonder if his heart is beating as quickly as mine is. If a knot is forming in his upper chest and think maybe I should talk to him about this anxiety I’m certain we both share. But then I remember how two years before when he was helping me move into my new dorm room sophomore year, he somehow let go of all his planning neuroses – letting me pack the way I needed to pack, not telling me how to position my room when I got there, certain that he had figured out the way to maximize space. My heart was overwhelmed with gratitude and I kept telling my mom how thankful I was for his surprising behavior and she kept telling me I should tell him. I remember walking back up to Alice Lloyd with just my dad after we’d finished everything up, working up the courage and saying “I really appreciate that this time we didn’t have to scream at each other. Thanks for being able to go with the flow” and feeling his heart drop to the concrete. I realized too late that by thanking him for his contrary behavior I was very openly acknowledging his every day faults. And watching him rubbing finger against fist I know I can’t do that to him again – even if one day it brings us closer. After my grandpa and Bonnie return and everything settles, my dad declares it’s time for him to go to sleep and me, my mom and Bonnie watch HGTV in the living room, while my brother and grandpa go downstairs to watch the game. We’re watching rehab addict – a show about this tiny kick-ass blonde woman who loves to remodel old houses and bring them back to their original glory. The show is ultimately about details as she hunts through antique stores for which sconces look most like the original. I look around the room we’re in and for the first time really begin to focus on the details. Immediately in front of me, as I’m sitting on the couch, is a coffee table with a fall quilt runner that Bonnie made herself. On top is a ceramic pumpkin, a jar of cashews, and issues of Better Homes and Gardens. The wall with the fireplace to the left of me is painted a burnt orange, giving a warm feeling to the room and matching perfectly with the picture over the mantle – a grid of nine squares each featuring a collection of colorful circles. This larger picture is bookended by pictures of flowers. And on the wall behind me, the clock is surrounded by pictures of flowers too. When I excuse myself to wander, I search the entire first floor and all I can see is Bonnie’s influence. All of the picture frames featuring photographs are of her family, not ours. Each room I go into, the kitchen, the guest room, even the bathroom, everything I can see is distinctly feminine. She even has a sewing room that is explicitly hers. As I leave the kitchen however, and start descending downstairs there’s a gut feeling of familiarity as my foot hits the cold tile. It’s dark down here, so I wander towards the light and find my grandpa and Eric sitting in La-Z-Boy’s on a shag carpet that seems to have been simply placed over the tile – more of a rug than anything. I sit down between them on the carpet. My grandpa offers me a chair, goes to get up to get one, but I tell him it’s fine, that I like it on the floor. After a minute or so he takes my word for it and refocuses on the TV in front of him. Something just left of the TV catches my attention. On top of an artificial fireplace is a 2 foot by 3 foot map of Saginaw bay and an old rusted lamp I can tell hasn’t been functional in a while. At a commercial I turn to my grandpa and ask “how long have you had that map?” His voice feels light like he’s glad I asked when he says he used to have a larger one in his office in the Haberland house, but there was nowhere to put it when he and Bonnie moved the first time. He said it was made of Saginaw Bay after the civil war and you could tell because cities like Kawkawlin were simply labeled: Indian Village. He sold it to RE/MAX because he didn’t trust the Bay City historical society to keep it nice and protected. Apparently it’s still in that RE/MAX’s front lobby. The game resumed and as my grandpa focused back on the TV, I took out my notebook and scrawled some notes. I couldn’t help looking around. Behind us was a makeshift bar like he used to have in the Haberland house – a space that was off-limits to us as children, but now, being of drinking age, I could theoretically enjoy. I wandered into the laundry room, which felt like his too – the walls made of panels of wood with holes – the sort of walling in workshops to conveniently hang up tools. He didn’t store his tools here, but the ethos of work that so defined my grandpa was there in a blue titan coverall and shelving that had yet to find a home. *** The next morning after Grandpa and Bonnie helped me put the fold-out bed that my mom and I slept on away, he calls me back into the room and shows me a picture of Bonnie’s kindergarten class. I notice that none of the children are smiling. “How many of these people do you think are alive today?” Grandpa asks Bonnie. “Not many.” We take that in for a while. “Who’s that?” my grandpa finally asks, pointing at the teacher. “Mrs. Wertz.” She says, and then: “It’s crazy what you can remember. Can’t remember what day it is, but I can remember crap like that.” *** Not twenty minutes later, my mom, dad, Eric, and me begin the process of repacking the six coolers that we brought into two cars. The cheesecake and the extra turkey that my grandpa insists they won’t eat will go up to the hunting camp with the boys; my mom and I make sure to bring home the wine. We leave the pies though, the ones that haven’t already been thrown out. After we wave our goodbyes to the boys my mom and I settle back in on the couch in the living room with Bonnie and grandpa in their respective Lay-Z-boys and I can’t shake how silent it feels. My mom tells Bonnie about her new job, which sends Bonnie on a story about her oldest son and how 3,000 people applied for one park ranger position and they picked him. And even though grandpa keeps asking us if we want some summer sausage and cheese, or anything to drink, after about a half an hour we put on our coats to go. Again, I don’t hug Bonnie, but this time part of me wants to. *** We take the long way back because I want to see the Haberland house again and when we turn onto the street my mom says, “Okay, this is it.” I think I said, “No it’s not.” or, “What? I don’t remember this!” but the street sign clearly says Haberland. When my mom points out the house to me I’m surprised to see that it’s smaller than I remembered and I stare at it trying to place the memories. The big S for Stender is gone, but I can vaguely see into the foyer and remember how when I was around five years old, one of the neighbor ladies was babysitting me and Eric and teaching us how to make those paper cutouts of people who are holding hands when you unfold them. It was a memory I had forgotten. “Is that all that you wanted to see?” she asks. But in my mind I’m six years old in the basement of this small, small, house jumping from couch to chair to coffee table with Eric and my second cousins Savannah and TJ. I remember Eric slipping off the coffee table and banging his five-year-old head into the cold, hard, marble. I remember his face contorting into a scream, blood turning his beautiful blonde hair a deep, dark, red. In my mind, I’m four years old, using the bathroom upstairs only to accidentally get myself locked in. My four-year-old self saw this not as an immediate emergency, but as an opportunity to explore the contents of the bathroom. On the sink was a razor, which I picked up and gently grazed over my thumb, bright, red, blood beginning to leak out of me. Only then did I scream to be let out. I think back to the bathroom in grandpa’s new house and how all I could think of while I was in there this trip was how a month ago I escaped in there to cry. And I think, why do the most vivid memories often have to do with pain? “Yeah,” I tell my mom “I’m good,” and we start driving away, but we’re both taking inventory of what’s no longer there. The S is gone, the swing he made – gone. “Where’s the swimming pool?” I ask. “He got rid of that when he was still living there.” “WHAT!” “Yeah – one summer he took all of the lining out and filled it right back up.” “What? Why?” “He can be really impulsive sometimes. Maybe he just didn’t want to clean it anymore, or maybe the lining ripped and he didn’t want to buy a new one, I don’t know. But the pool was never his thing anyway. My mom was the one who wanted it. He said, ‘If I make this pool we better have three swimmers…’” “And he did,” I said laughing. “Yeah, my mom made sure of that – had me in lessons before my first birthday.” And we drove away like that, filling the car with memories of the past; navigating our way back home. |