Photo: Max Youngquist, 2024 Instagram@maxyoungquist
My nephew took this picture. He said that at first he wasn’t very impressed with the photo, but after looking at it for a while, he started to think it wasn’t bad.
I fell in love with his photo from the moment I saw it. “This photo,” I told him, “is full of stories.”
Some photos capture the beauty of a bird on the wing, or a sunset over an ocean, or a flower in the breeze, or a Japanese tea set at rest on an oak table. Those photos can be works of art, and we love them for their composition, study of light, and subject matter, but they are not a story in themselves, though they may evoke one.
My nephew’s photo is a story — even more than that — it’s a collection of stories. “This” I said, “is the kind of a picture a photojournalist takes because he or she is telling a story about a place or event or people.” Then I told him about all the stories I saw in the photo.
My nephew is a wonderful photographer. I love his work. I love to listen to him talk about his digital and film cameras. He develops both black-and-white and color film. He speaks of camera settings, film speeds, and film brands. Focus, depth of field, and lighting. And I understand enough of it because I took art photography and photojournalism classes in college, enough of them to minor in photography, if I’d only been willing to take an art history class. I loved photography, but not enough to make it a passion or career. Today my camera phone is all I need. But my nephew’s eyes are lens, always framing a shot. He has developing fluid coursing through his veins. And like a true artist, he experiments.
And with this photo, he has inspired me. I’m composing a story set inside of this moment he captured.
Photograph as a collection of stories. Tales about inside and outside, darkness and light, illumination and shadow. Stories of three cars pointed toward different journeys, a bus releasing and corralling commuters. Glassed reflections recounting illusions, faded signs whispering of past triumphs and failures. Photo by Max Youngquist
[Max asked me to write a blurb about his photo to post on Instagram. What I wrote is in the photo’s caption. You can see Max’s work on Instagram @maxyoungquist]
The John C. Gale Boardwalk, part of the Taiga Boardwalk built in autumn 2023
Last week I took my four grandkids to the Sax-Zim Bog in Toivola, Minnesota, appropriately located on Owl Avenue. (It’s a good place to see northern owls.) The drive from my house was one hour and four minutes. (Thank you, GPS.) The grandkids brought library books and their adventure bags, which are filled with postcards, maps, compasses, binoculars, auto bingo, bird books, and other adventuresome stuff. We weren’t one minute from my house when the three youngest grandkids took up an intense game of auto bingo, searching for cows, horses, ambulances, no parking signs, and billboards. However, by the time we were far enough out of the city to see cows and horses, the bingo game had blown over.
Of course, there is always one grandkid who wants to know: How far? How many more miles? Are we halfway there yet? Have you ever been here before?
We arrived at the bog’s parking lot about eleven o’clock. It was 52 degrees and sunny, with a slight breeze — perfect weather for walking through an old bog. But we were glad we’d worn sweatshirts over our T-shirts.
The Sax-Zim Welcome Center was closed, but we met a volunteer coming out of the building who looked like part of an illustration from a Jan Brett book. He kindly answered my questions about the trails because we wanted to walk on the new Taiga Boardwalk built last autumn.
Grandkids on the Taiga Boardwalk
Shortly after we started down the trail, a loud clattering commenced. I wondered, “What kind of bird is that?” Then I discovered two chattering squirrels chasing each other up and down tree trunks and across fallen logs at breakneck speeds like a pair of NASCAR racers. “Those are fox squirrels,” Michael, 10, said. “My grandma has them at her house.” His other grandparents live in rural central Minnesota. But, according to a post on the Friends of Sax-Zim Bog Facebook page, we most likely saw Red Squirrels. They are highly territorial, and one of them probably invaded the other’s space, which would explain their loud scolding sounds and serious chasing behavior. Whether fox squirrels or red squirrels, they were fun to watch.
As we walked through the bog’s forest, I thought about The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, a book I recently finished reading. I learned a lot about trees and forests. True forests are diverse and interconnected in an amazing cycle of life and death, filled with competitiveness and cooperation, and home to a large variety of insects, animals, and other plants. Forests grown for harvesting are nothing of the sort.
A tree near the end of its standing lifeClose up of same tree: the fungi have arrived
Walking along the trails of the bog, we saw different species of trees. New trees, only inches tall, grew under the branches of old trees. Unless the old tree dies, most, or perhaps all, of the baby trees we saw won’t make it to adulthood. Some standing trees looked nearly dead, waiting for their turn to fall to the forest floor. Tree trunks that had already fallen lay on the ground in different stages of decay, providing habitat for other creatures.
Steeped in tranquility, the breathless silence of the bog held no traffic or city noise. No planes droned overhead. Occasionally, the peaceful quiet was accompanied by the chirps and calls of birds and squirrels, which like the silence, belonged to the forest.
The Taiga Boardwalk loop is short, but it’s not meant for serious hiking. It’s a trail where visitors take their time, stopping to look for birds and animals who are masters at blending into the forest. When we finished the Taiga trail, we weren’t ready to leave the bog, so we walked a different, smaller loop. We still didn’t wanted to leave, so we walked the Taiga again.
On our second trip around the Taiga trail, Evan, 7, got down on his hands and knees, peered through the slats on the boardwalk, and said, “I see why they built this. There is water down there.” I’d told them the boardwalk was built to help keep people’s feet dry.
Charlie points at the common redpoll on the cover of his trail map. He said he just saw one, and he might have. Before we left the bog, another volunteer told us a redpoll had been spotted that morning.
We didn’t see any owls, but in addition to the red (or fox) squirrels, we saw chickadees, and Clara,12, spotted a black-back woodpecker.
After we finished walking the trails, my youngest grandson Charlie, 5, gave me a hug. “Do you know why I gave you a hug?” he asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I gave you a hug because you brought me to this bog.” I think Charlie felt what I felt: a pervasive peacefulness. As I walked through the bog, I felt a sense of increasing serenity. In The Hidden Life of Trees, the author mentions studies that show people have reduced stress levels after walking through old-growth forests. I have no data to prove that is what happened to me, but I certainly felt calmer than when I’d arrived.
Holding our trail maps, Sax-Zim Bog calendars, and warm memories, we got in the van and buckled up. I was about to start the engine when Clara pointed out her window and said, “There’s a butterfly in the parking lot.”
The butterfly, a Compton Tortoiseshell, sunning itself before the pickup entered the lot.
Having recently finished reading Bicycling with Butterflies by Sara Dykman, I had to get out of the van and have a look. As I was snapping pictures of the butterfly, which wasn’t moving much, a red pickup truck pulled into the lot. The only open space for the truck to park happened to be where the butterfly was resting, and the driver wouldn’t have been able to see it. Squashed butterfly, I thought. I walked toward it, and it fluttered a few feet, but in the wrong direction. Coming from another angle, I walked toward it again, and it flew another few feet, but this time it landed out of harm’s way.
The red truck parked without crushing the butterfly. Perhaps it wouldn’t have needed me to save it. Maybe it wouldn’t have been run over, and it would have flown away from the truck instead of into it. But I’m glad I didn’t leave the butterfly’s destiny to fate.
The grandkids and I left the bog and headed back to the city. As I drove down the county roads, they flipped through their calendars, enjoying pictures of the beautiful wildlife who make their homes, for at least part of the year, at the Sax-Zim Bog.
The entrance to Drury Lane: to the left is Lake Superior, to the right is a donut shop
On the shore of Lake Superior, there is a small independent bookstore in Grand Marais, Minnesota, called Drury Lane Books. It’s my happy place. When I feel tired, sad, angry, or bored, I conjure up an image of the charming store, then I walk inside and sit in the window seat lined with a bright-blue cushion. In my hands I hold the perfect book, pulled from a glossy-white shelf. And I fall hopelessly in love with the characters and their stories. It’s Zen.
A cozy nook inside of Drury Lane
Last October my sister and I actually visited Drury Lane three times in one weekend. (I bought a collection of short stories and two novels.) During our first visit, the churning waves on Lake Superior roared so loudly that conversation outside the bookstore was difficult, unless we wanted to shout. And while we could have sat in the wooden chairs on the beach and read our new books, the cold, strong-fisted winds would have ripped pages from our hands. The next day the winds abated, but it was still chilly. So, we read our books in a local coffeehouse while sipping hot mugs of tea and coffee.
Drury Lane dreaming puts a smile on my face.
A great place to read a book, as long as Lake Superior is behaving
Ziva and her birthday present, big enough for her and a small pony, January 2024
Ziva was born in Barrett, Minnesota, on a rolling farm, but has lived her life in Wisconsin at the tip of Lake Superior. Her father’s name was Rufus and her mother’s name was Ziva. So, yes, Ziva is named after her mother, but she is also named after Ziva David from the TV show NCIS. I think the Ziva David character is very kick-ass with a great sense of humor. Our Ziva, however, is a forty-six-pound baby, who has more in common with the Cowardly Lion. But our Ziva does make us laugh. Her full name is Ziva Baby, and it suits her
March 2019
If I show you a picture of Ziva, you will probably think she is a black poodle. But, we’re not so sure. When Ziva was three-and-a-half months old, two different poodle breeders told me she was actually a blue poodle. “What’s that?” people sometimes ask. In Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck describes his blue standard poodle, Charley, by saying that he looks like a dirty black poodle who needs a bath.
When she was three months old, I enrolled Ziva in a puppy socialization class. She had mixed feelings about the course. She was okay with the part where she got to sit on my lap while the dog trainer answered questions. And she didn’t mind being passed around from human to human. But when it was time to mingle with the other puppies, she crawled under the bench and hid behind my legs. Finally, the dog trainer placed us with a group of designer micro dogs, figuring the teeny-tiny pups wouldn’t be as scary. Ziva still crawled behind my legs. When she finished puppy socialization class, she was given a certificate of completion. Purely a feel-good thing because she was too shy to socialize with the other puppies.
December 2013, a Bulldog fan
Riding high on Ziva’s lack of success in the puppy class, I enrolled her in an obedience class. She loved it. No one expected her to play with the other dogs. She excelled, and after two sessions, she was clearly the teacher’s pet. Me, not so much. Turns out it was not your traditional sit-stay-come-heel class. I had unknowingly enrolled Ziva in a class that was for people who wanted to compete in dog shows or obedience trials with their canines. Ziva learned so quickly that the dog trainers used her to demonstrate different walking moves and turns. The problem? When I had to perform with Ziva, I was all left feet, with no sense of rhythm. Ziva got praise, I got scolded. We only went back to the class a third time because I had to return a collar I had borrowed. After we dropped off the collar, I told the instructor I had to take Ziva out to go potty. But we got back in the car, and feeling like that adolescent girl who couldn’t make the pom squad, I cried. Ziva licked my chin, and crawled onto my lap. We became dog school dropouts.
Ziva with her favorite toy, Ducky
For years Ziva was a reader — books, magazines, and newspapers. She loved to chew on the written word. I still have the copy of All Quiet on the Western Front that we both savored, except I wasn’t the one who left teeth marks on it. I learned to walk around the house and make sure every book and magazine was put where she couldn’t reach it. But her desire to read triumphed, and she became resourceful. She put her paws on tables and scooped up books. She threaded her face between two couches set at a right angle and slipped my quilting magazines off the bottom shelf of the end table. She poked her snout between the chairs at my desk (placed to keep her out) and selected books off the ledge under the desk. When I successfully blocked these accesses to my books and magazines, she started reading boxes of tissues. So, I left old newspapers on the coffee table in case she wanted to read. About once or twice a month, I’d return home to find shredded newsprint all over the floor. These days she seems to be over her urge to “read.” Perhaps she has become farsighted.
May 2018, after a day at the spa
If her sister, Cabela, had a toy she wanted, Ziva would run to the back door and pretend she wanted to go outside. Cabela loved to play outside, so she would drop her toy and run to the door too. My husband or I would open the door. But as soon as Cabela was outside, Ziva turned around and grabbed the toy Cabela had dropped. Cabela is gone now, but Ziva uses this technique on my husband and me. She stands by the back door and pretends she wants to go outside, when we open the door, she does a half turn and stands in front of the microwave, looking up at her bowl of treats. We laugh at her and turn away. But she will do it again and again because she occasionally gets the treat.
Ziva loves a car ride, January 2023
Ziva loves to go for rides. She knows when it’s Sunday morning because that is grocery shopping day. She loves to hear “Want to go to the bank?” because she can withdraw treats. When we get the suitcases out, she knows we are going to Michigan. Sometimes Ziva gets carsick, so we keep old towels and blankets on the van floor, and on long trips we give her Dramamine. She is a true road warrior.
Ziva is ready for the big game between the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs. She believes she has the best seat in the house. It’s a bed sized for an Irish Wolfhound or a Great Dane. She has room for a companion on this bed, but she would object to another dog sharing it. However, she would share her oversized cushion with my seven-year-old grandson, who snuggles with her on the couch. He has already tried out the bed and declared it “very cozy!”
but I’m pulling for the Bills, who have never won a Super Bowl.
And no, Ziva doesn’t think it’s necessary to watch the action. She will just listen to Tony Romo and Jim Nantz call the game. She doesn’t care about the temperature and wind conditions on the field. She doesn’t care who wins. But she likes that Taylor Swift is there cheering on her beau. And by the way, so does my eighty-three-year-old mother, who went to see Swift’s Eras Tour in the theater and loved it. After all, “Girls just wanna have fun, that’s all they really want.”
Bogey is the tall, fluffy poodle. Ziva, my poodle, stands in front of him.
“We’ve had this conversation before,” Ziva says. She is smaller than Bogey, four years older than Bogey, and a guest in his house. And he could easily knock her to the floor. But none of that stops her from putting her four paws down when he tries to play with a toy at night.
“Don’t touch that ball. Definitely, don’t squeak that ball,” Ziva says. “I tell you this every time I come to visit.” And she does. For the last eight years or so, Ziva has accompanied my husband and me to Petoskey, Michigan, whenever we visit my mother.
A moment before this photo was snapped, Bogey asked my mother to open the closet door. (If you look to the right in the photo, you can see his box of toys in the closet.) His yellow duck rested on the top, but Bogey selected the white ball because it has a delicious squeak, and because my mother will toss it in the living room for him. This is his nightly routine when we aren’t visiting Mom, and he sees no reason to give it up just because there’s company.
This bothers Ziva. And it bothers me too. Everyone has settled in on a couch or a chair. The humans are talking and watching TV. It’s hard to hear anything over the noise of Bogey’s squealing ball and stomping feet.
Tonight, Ziva rebukes Bogey as soon as she hears the first shriek from the ball. She springs from the couch where a second ago she seemed to be in a deep sleep and barks as she approaches him. Bogey drops the ball before she reaches him.
“Go ahead. I double dare you!” Ziva says, watching Bogey while she looks askance at the ball. They stand close together, frozen, for at least a minute. She doesn’t make a move for the ball because she doesn’t want it. She never wants his toys. At eight o’clock at night, she wants peace and quiet. Bogey has turned his head away, and refuses to make eye contact. He waits for her to go away, but she doesn’t. Not another word passes between them. Like a pair of disgruntled lovers, they’ve had this conversation so many times over the years that it has now become a wordless exchange, each side knowing what the other side would say if they did speak.
Ziva, asleep, yet completely tuned in
Ziva refuses to retreat. Finally, Bogey gives up and leaves the ball. He crawls under the long skinny table behind his favorite couch and sulks and waits. Ziva returns to her favorite couch.
Ten minutes later Bogey emerges from under the table and silently shuffles to the closet. He roots through his box of toys and pulls out a multi-colored stuffed caterpillar. He slinks into the den with his toy. He knows if he enters the living room with it, he won’t be allowed to have it. The ball Bogey had wanted to play with still lays on the living room floor. If Ziva heard him, she ignored him, allowing him a small victory.
Even tucked out of sight in the den, Bogey knows not to make the caterpillar squeal. He’s a very smart dog, and he has never won this argument.
One of mom’s trees before she started putting them in front of the mirrored wall in the living room. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the later Christmas trees.
At Christmas time when I was a child, my mother transformed our old farmhouse into a magical place. Fresh boughs of evergreen, sprayed with canned snow and trimmed with white twinkle lights, nestled on the mid-shelf of the corner hutch in the dining room. The soft glow of pastel-colored icicle lights outlined the large picture window in the living room. A tall, portly Christmas tree festooned with old fashioned ornaments and C7 lights stood in front of a mirrored wall, which made it appear as if we had two trees. Mom always bought a real tree. She would ask the attendant to hold tree after tree, while she walked around each one. The tree had to look good from all sides, and the trunk had to be straight. Once she sent my father to pick out the tree, but only once. Father’s tree spurred a loud conversation and a few tears.
Mom baked loads of homemade cookies, filling round tins with Mexican wedding cakes, sugar cookies, peppermint meringues, gingerbread men, and spritz cookies. In the days before Christmas, I skimmed cookies, sneaking one now and then from a tin then rearranging the remaining ones to fill the empty space.
The weekend before Christmas Mom took us to the American Soda Water Company, a place filled with bottles of the tastiest soda in so many delicious flavors, such as grapefruit, grape, strawberry, cherry, orange, root beer, cream, lime, cherry cola, black cherry, and more. She pushed the cart in which she had placed a wooden case that held twenty-four bottles. My siblings and I buzzed around the aisles plucking our favorite flavors and some of our father’s favorites. After we filled the case, mother placed another empty case on top of the full one. We would leave the store with four cases of soda, enough to see us well into the New Year because we weren’t allowed more than two or three a week. But we pilfered the occasional bottle of soda. Eventually, only empty bottles remained in the wooden cases, and Mom returned them to the soda company and collected her deposit, a nickel a bottle.
Winter at the farmhouse. The only animals we ever owned were dogs and cats. But it had been a working farm at one time. The buildings in the background belonged to neighbors.
On Christmas eve, my siblings and I nestled under our covers and tried to sleep. And when I couldn’t, I peered out the small window at the side of my bed and searched the starry sky, hoping to spot Rudolph’s red nose. However, by the time I was six, thanks to a know-it-all neighbor boy who was three years older than me, I knew there was no Santa Claus. Still, wanting to believe, I looked for Santa’s sleigh in the sky, and when I spotted red lights on a commercial jet heading to Billy Mitchell Airport, I would pretend it was Jolly Old St. Nick with Dasher and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, and Donner and Blitzen, all led by Rudolph and his shiny nose.
Eventually all was quiet in the house, my siblings and I softly snoring and dreaming of Christmas morning. At this time, my mother’s shift as Santa’s elf would begin. It took her hours to wrap presents for her four children. She couldn’t do this ahead of time because she needed her Christmas bonus from Marc’s Big Boy where she worked as a waitress, which she received just a few days before Christmas. Bonus money in hand, she drove to the store and paid off the layaway balance on our gifts, which she hid in the trunk of her car until Christmas Eve when her children were all fast asleep. Each package she wrapped with bright cheerful paper and tied up with ribbons or decorated with bows. She artfully arranged them under the tree as if she were staging a scene for the Gimbels storefront window in downtown Milwaukee. Then in the wee hours before dawn she slipped into bed for a few hours’ sleep.
We had strict orders not to wake my parents too early. This meant we weren’t to get out of bed until about eight o’clock. But sometimes before dawn, we might tiptoe down the stairs and into the living room to see the presents under the tree. We kept our distance, not wanting to break the mystical spell of the Christmas tree tending to our gifts tucked under its boughs. And we didn’t want to get into trouble with our parents. We tiptoed back up the stairs and climbed back into our beds. Waiting.
Christmas morning, circa 1969
Christmas morning never disappointed. We opened our presents one at a time because my parents wanted to see us enjoy each of our gifts. Mom was a wonderful Santa. There were always some toys from our lists, but each year she surprised us with wonderful presents we hadn’t even known we would want. Puzzles, games, art supplies, books, pajamas, and clothes spread across the floor as we unwrapped our gifts.
Once the wrapping paper was cleaned up and breakfast had been eaten, our job was to stay out of the kitchen and out of Mom’s way as she began to cook Christmas dinner, a feast of turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, and green bean casserole, all cooked to perfection. Later we would be asked to set the dining room table, and after dinner we helped wash and dry the dishes. But Christmas morning and afternoon belonged to us, a time to play with our new toys and games.
In mid-afternoon Uncle Freddy and Auntie Pat arrived with our three cousins (Brian, Dee Dee, and Lisa) and Nana Kitty. We ate at an elegant, second-hand burl wood dining table covered with a crocheted cloth my mother bought at an antique store. Before we filled our plates, someone said grace, giving thanks for our feast. Then began the passing of the dishes and the filling of the plates. With twelve people seated around the table, this took some time. It was fair game to interrupt any conversation with “Could you please pass me the . . . ?”
Christmas dinner. From the left and clockwise: Auntie Pat, me, Steve, Nana, Mom, Uncle Fred, Kimberly, Dee Dee, Suzanne, Grandpa Howard (who had recently married Nana) Brian, and Lisa. My father took the photo, circa 1972.
At the end of the day, when the dishes were done, when the company was gone, except for Nana who stayed to babysit us, my parents would meet up with friends at a local theater to see a movie. It was the perfect end to a perfect day. My siblings and I would fold up the crocheted tablecloth, exposing the thick pad that protected the dining table, and set up our new art supplies. We painted or sketched or wove hot pads while Nana visited with us. We snacked on cookies and soda. At bedtime we put on our new Christmas jammies. As we drifted off to sleep, we knew before we could do it all again, we had to wait 365 days. A lifetime to a child. A snap of the fingers to an adult.
Christmas gives me the blues. I miss the magic of childhood Christmases spent with my siblings, and I miss the magic of Christmas mornings I spent with my young children. I miss family and friends who have passed away, and the special Christmas traditions we had. Because nothing stays the same, nostalgia can be heart-wrenching.
So, I’m weaving some new traditions into some old ones.
When I was in my twenties, my mother-in-law took me to my first ballet, along with my two sisters-in-law. It was December, so of course, we went to The Nutcracker. I loved it. For two hours enchanting music, graceful dancing, sparkling costumes, and magical sets swept me away to another world. Attending The Nutcracker with my mother-in-law became a tradition for a handful of years.
This year I took my twelve-year-old granddaughter, Clara, to see The Nutcracker, her first ballet. My mother-in-law would be happy to know I’m reviving her tradition.
Clara and I were dressed in the past and present. I wore a pair of old garnet earrings given to me by a friend, a black-and-red plaid sweater given to me by another friend, and a string of pearls given to me by my mother. I carried a black purse my sister had sent me. Clara wore a black skirt I’d bought her, black leggings, and a cream-colored sweater with a brown geometric design that her grandmother had worn when she was young. We were wrapped in the beauty of the present and the comfort of the past.
The ballet started at two o’clock, so we left the house at one o’clock. Because it’s a short drive to Symphony Hall, we arrived early. Happily, we discovered a foosball table in the lobby. This might be an odd place for a game table, but Symphony Hall is next to a college hockey arena. (An air hockey game would’ve been more appropriate, but they are noisy, like the ear-splitting clack-clack of a pickleball game.) There was no foosball table when I went to the ballet with my mother-in-law. But she would have approved. She liked quiet adventures. In her seventies she painted her nails with canary-yellow and key-lime-pie-green nail polish. She changed the spelling of her first name. She asked me to take her to see Willie Nelson. She went to see The Pirates of the Caribbean with me.
My granddaughter reached the foosball table first. She dropped the ball down the side chute and pushed and pulled on the handles. “Want to play?” I asked. “Sure,” she said. A small smile tickled the corners of her mouth.
Dressed in our semi-elegant, mostly black clothes and coats, we stood opposite one another. We cranked handles and spun our foosball players. Trash talking was minimal. We focused, each of us giving 110% to our plastic, featureless foosball athletes. The game went back and forth with the lead changing many times, but in the end, I prevailed by one goal. I wanted to do a Chariots of Fire victory stride, but well . . . I was wearing pearls.
The lights reflected in the window make it appear as if the sky has lights that illuminate the Aerial Lift Bridge.
It was after 1:30, but the ushers still weren’t taking tickets. I wondered why there were so few people in the lobby. But then a ship came through the canal, and the staff, Clara, and I walked out onto a balcony to watch it glide into the harbor. No matter how many vessels we locals see enter the canal, we never tire of watching them chug under the lift bridge and into the harbor to take on a load of cargo. After the ship passed by, the staff, Clara, and I returned to the warmth of the lobby.
The ushers still weren’t taking tickets, and I got a strange feeling. After I talked to one of the staff, I found out the ballet actually started at three o’clock. Clara and I had been an hour early. We had time to whittle away, so we explored the lower level of the building. We sat in lobby chairs and watched people walk by. We checked out The Nutcracker merchandise. I bought Clara a light-up wand made of optical fibers and myself a pair of socks decorated with nutcrackers.
Finally, the auditorium doors opened, ushers handed us programs, and we found our seats.
Shortly after three o’clock, the lights in the auditorium dimmed, the orchestra began to play, and the curtain rose. My Christmas blues were chased away by pirouettes and leaps, jumps and high kicks all performed by dancers in colorful costumes. Some of the old tradition of the ballet I’d seen with my mother-in-law remained, but it was given a new twist. Instead of being set in the Victorian-style home where Clara’s family and Drosselmeyer gather on Christmas Eve, the set had been transformed into a train station. The ballet was still set in the early 1900s, but the dancers, other than the lead ballet performers, were dressed as street vendors, travelers, lumberjacks, and gingerbread cookies. I have to admit that at first I missed the version I’d seen with my mother-in-law. But the ballet was so good. And clinging to the past too tightly brings a sense of melancholy. Nothing stays the same. So, I let it go and wove the night’s new traditions in with the old.
If life were A Christmas Carol, my mother-in-law would have been Fred, the ever-cheerful nephew of Ebenezer Scrooge. She knew how to keep the spirit of Christmas in her heart all year long and how to rise above characters like Scrooge. (Circa 1935, I chose this photo for the cover of the book I helped my mother-in-law write about her life because it captured her personality so well.)
After rounds of curtain calls and clapping until our palms hurt, Clara and I exited the auditorium. We left the bright lights of the lobby behind and walked out into the dark, cold night. We stuffed our chilled hands into our mittens. Beneath our stylish coats, our hearts were warm.
And for a while my Christmas blues were banished. Maybe next year we will go to the symphony or a Christmas play, then the following year back to The Nutcracker. It’s good to look to the future.
I taught my twelve-year-old granddaughter, Clara, how to play cribbage. The first two rounds we played were full-disclosure games because we laid our cards face up on the table. It’s the easiest way to teach someone to play. I taught her strategies for tossing cards into the crib, how to maximize her chance for a better hand, and how to peg points while preventing her opponent from doing the same. I taught her how to count the pairs, runs, and combinations of fifteens. Cribbage is a complicated game, but that’s what makes it fun.
I learned to play cribbage when I was nineteen years old. I was a bartender in a small unincorporated town, population 350. One of my customers asked me to play cribbage. I told him I didn’t know how. “Well,” he said, “you’re going to have to learn because when customers come in and it’s slow, they’re going to expect you to play.”
I’d grown up eight hours away in a metropolitan area, and I’d never heard of cribbage.
The customer grabbed the cribbage board and a deck of cards off a ledge from behind the bar. “I’ll teach you,” he said. He placed the pegs in their starting holes and shuffled the cards. I carried over a barstool and sat down in front of him but stayed behind the bar. After all, should another customer have shown up, I might’ve had to pour a beer, mix a whiskey-7, or pop a top on a soda. He taught me well, and I played many games of cribbage with him and other bar patrons, especially on quiet winter days and nights.
Shortly after Clara and I started our third game, I asked, “Do you want to play without us seeing each other’s cards?”
“Sure!” She smiled and her eyes sparkled, excited that Nana felt she was ready to be in charge of her own hand. She did well and quickly caught on to counting her hands, but luck plays a part in cribbage, and I had better cards. Yet none of that mattered. We laughed and celebrated our high-scoring hands. We laughed and mocked our low-scoring hands, saying, “two, four, and there ain’t no more,” or “I got nineteen.” (Nineteen equals nothing because it’s not possible to score nineteen points in a cribbage hand.) I almost skunked her in one of the games, but she managed to avoid the stink of getting beat by 31 points or more. And we laughed about that too. Both of us like to play cards and board games, but neither of us is bothered by losing. There is always another game to be played.
Clara and I played on the same cribbage board I used when I taught my grandma Olive to play cribbage. I have two other boards, but I liked knowing that Clara and I were touching the same pegs and moving them along the same holes on the same board Grandma Olive and I used forty-five years ago.
When I was eighteen, I moved in with my grandparents, George and Olive, and lived with them for almost three years. Grandma Olive and I didn’t always agree about how I should live my life. She believed I should sing in the church choir and attend Sunday sermons. She believed I should be present at the dinner table for breakfast, lunch, and supper. She believed I should be home before midnight. She believed I should have a better class of friends. She believed I should iron my shirts instead of wearing them wrinkled.
I believed Sunday mornings were for sleeping in. I believed if a friend said, “Let’s go swimming” or “Let’s play tennis,” skipping lunch or dinner was no big deal. I believed being home by midnight was for Cinderella. I believed my friends were wonderful. And I believed the heat from my body would smooth out most of the wrinkles in my shirts.
But I loved Grandma Olive, and I knew she loved me and worried about me. And because neither of us liked conflict, our disagreements were soft-spoken, thirty-second exchanges of point and counterpoint, in which neither of us would change our minds. Then I would leave the room. And she would exhale a heavy sigh.
When I wasn’t working or with my friends, I liked spending time with Grandma in her kitchen. She taught me how to make an angel food cake (lots of sifting and gentle folding) and Amish sugar cookies (pressed with the bottom of a cut-glass crystal sugar bowl). She taught me how to play Shanghai rummy, which used two decks of cards and had increasingly complicated hands of sets and runs, which players had to attain to score points.
Grandma often heard me talk about playing cribbage with customers when I bartended. “I wish I knew how to play,” she would say, so I bought a cribbage board. One evening as we finished up the supper dishes, I offered to teach her how to play. I can still picture her standing in her slightly remodeled 1940s kitchen, wearing her patterned apron trimmed in red rickrack, one of its pockets bulging with an ever-present handkerchief. She teared up, smiled, and said, “Oh, yes!”
Grandma Olive loved me even if drove her crazy, and I loved her even if she didn’t understand my generation.
Grandma Olive with me on her lap and Grandpa George with my sister on his lap, 1960. Seventeen years later I would move in and teacher Grandma how to play cribbage.
I lived with my grandparents for nearly three years. I thought I was easy to have around, and in many ways I was. But looking back, I realize that my grandparents, especially Grandma Olive, worried about me. They’d already raised three children, so having their eighteen-year-old granddaughter come to live with them during their golden years wasn’t ideal. Grandpa, who was never a talker and still worked at his gas station six days a week, would remain an enigma to me. But Grandma and I came to know and appreciate one another, most of time.
So sometimes when the baking and cooking and dishes were done, Grandma Olive and I would sit at the old wooden kitchen table covered in oilcloth and play Shanghai rummy or cribbage. We talked and laughed, and forgot about our disagreements, neither of us caring if we won or lost the game.
A few years after I moved out of my grandparents’ house, Grandpa George died, and Grandma Olive developed dementia. She and I couldn’t play cards anymore.
Comes a time when there isn’t another game to be played.
Writing Near the Lake 