TooMuchInformation

Last summer while I was in
Columbus, I was introduced to Punk Rock Aerobics.  The Surly Girl Saloon, a bar in the Short North, offers a free class once a week.  It’s led by three women who do it just for kicks.  They begin each class with a disclaimer about their amateur status and a reminder that we shouldn’t sue them.  At the end of each class everyone is offered a complimentary can of beer.

I started the class with new friend Michael.  As a 12 year old, Michael climbed a tree to read a book instead of taking out the trash and accidentally touched an electric line that sent him flying.  He fell to the ground screaming.  His next memory is coming in and out of consciousness in an ambulance and then a lengthy recovery at Children’s Hospital.   Twenty years later, he had a burn scar across his thigh but no super powers. 

Three weeks into Punk Rock Aerobics, Michael decided the class wasn’t for him.  In spite of being abandoned in a room of sweaty girls, I chose to stick it out.  We did moves called “The Lead Singer” and “Beat on the Brat” to the music of the Sex Pistols, the Breeders, and the Ramones. 

After one particularly grueling class, I drove to Kroger to get a bite to eat.  I wandered the aisles of the supermarket trying to find something satisfying and healthy.  I passed a display of Entenmann’s cinnamon rolls.  Jumbo sized.  I have a weakness for Cinnabons and can’t seem to manage to get through an airport without buying one.  I decided to pick up a box of the similarly delicious Entenmann’s just to hold onto while I pushed my cart through the store.  For comfort.  As a reward for not ditching the class as my friend had.

My plan was to have the box in the child seat of my shopping cart so that I could fantasize about their sweet glaze and sticky cinnamon while I filled a container at the salad bar with lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, celery, etc.   Afterwards, I would remove the rolls from my cart before checking out.  I rationalized that the pleasure was in the memory, not the experience itself.

When I got home I set my salad on the kitchen counter, filled a glass with water, pulled a plate out of the dishwasher and heated up one of the cinnamon rolls in the microwave.   Some plans don’t work out as intended.  Something came over me as I was checking out of Kroger.  I hadn’t pushed past the Entenmann’s display on my way through the store and never had the chance to replace the box.  And I didn’t want to be one of “those people” who unload stuff in the gum and magazine racks.  I ate the heated roll before even opening my salad.  Punk Rock Aerobics was hard.  I was hungry.  The roll was delicious.

My salad wasn’t bad either.  I ate it dry, without any salad dressing.  You know, because of all the extra calories and corn syrup they put in there.  

 

I remember when my mom turned 40.  When an islander reaches 40 s/he is rewarded with an obnoxious trophy most appropriate for bowling or cheese making tournaments.  The recipient’s name is etched on a brass plaque and attached to any available surface, joining the names of those pioneers who’ve gone before.  Mom was officially old in my 12 year old mind.  And like her contemporary Tina Turner she was rocking - albeit to a slower, more country-western beat.  She held onto the trophy until the next islander crashed into old age.  In this case it was my 7th grade science teacher. 

This is what I like about island life.  The small town flavor is compounded by isolation in the winter.  The population drops to 400 and everyone has at least three relationships with each other.  Your teacher will also be your neighbor and mother’s best friend.  Your cousin is your boss and volleyball team captain.  The church organist is also your aunt’s arch-nemesis and the favored toilet papering target of your older sister.  There’s no avoiding anyone.

Just before turning 40, when Mom was a newly minted divorcee, she and three other island women formed a club. Demographically they had a lot in common: in their 30s, raised on the islands, divorced, children at home.  Reliving their 20s, misspent on organizing PTA fundraisers, they became the Midnight Ladies.   They committed alcohol induced activities a son prefers not to theorize. 

One of their adventures I do recall vaguely.  Or rather, I have a memory of a mother nursing a hangover, saying to me “Don’t drink too much when you’re older.”  And then later that same day driving with her to the home of a neighbor around the corner.  I witnessed her apologize to him while he mourned the carcass of a 1929 Ford Model A Roadster. 

This neighbor was a good friend of my father.  My sisters and I regularly climbed the tree in his front yard.  One of my earliest memories is sitting on my father’s lap in his home and tasting the foam of a just opened can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

But on this particular day I stood silently observing my contrite mother and him shaking his head sorrowfully.  When we left I asked her “What was that about?”  The night before, assisted by a fair dose of spirits, the Midnight Ladies “bought” the vintage car with an envelope of Monopoly money.  On their late night adventures with the car they managed to break an axel, rendering the car immobile.

Fast forward 20+ years, when my own sister is on the edge of 40, while visiting the island this summer I saw my dad’s latest project.  He and my cousin Michael are reconstructing a Model A.  They’re reconstructing the engine and frame but keeping the car’s rusted body.  It’ll have the appearance of a clunker but the Conshafter/Burgess talent beneath.  The first part to be replaced will be an axel, broken years ago, by a crew playing a midnight prank. 

 

My first week in Columbus I contacted a friend from college – Chris Hughes. He’s one of those people who requires two names. In school Chris Hughes was quiet but not shy, wore button-down shirts, and smiled with half his mouth and forehead. Today he works at the Columbus AIDS Task Force and has developed the catalog of morbid humor needed to get through a day. He invited me to a cookout one recent Saturday. I said yes, took some beer, and went. I met his partner Jeremy and their two shelter rescued dogs – Lucy and Susie. “Why not Lucy and Ethel?” I asked. “We didn’t want to confuse them,” they replied. I’m a cat person, so it didn’t make much sense to me either.

The cookout was at the home of their friends David and Daniel, so we packed up the beer and some more beer, and headed over. There I met a dozen or so interesting people, including Tim and Lyndsey, who Chris met in 2004 while waiting 2-3 hours in line to vote. Their voting precinct, and its majority Democrat voter registry, only had one Diebold voting machine. Long lines lasted all day. So they made the best of a Slavic situation and chatted each other up, discussed home ownerÂ’s insurance, exchanged phone numbers, and became friends.

As the night wore on and the beer flowed, I grew hungry. I panned the back yard for a grill. I saw one, but it wasn’t heating. There wasn’t a tank of propane, no bag of charcoal, no bowl of marinating chicken breasts, no bag of hot dog buns. What the hell kind of cookout was this? As soon as the question entered my mind someone said “lets order pizza!” I love drinking beer outdoors and I love pizza. It was a great night.

A week later I contacted another friend from college, Sweet Melissa. Sweet Melissa was three years behind me at Western, when we both had long curly hair. She wore heavy wool Himalayan sweaters then. Maybe she still does, but in the current heat wave she was sticking with short sleeved cotton. We met up for coffee, discussed brick buildings, relationships, and trash talked old friends.

That night I discovered that Sweet Melissa and sister Tanya play on the same softball team. Small world. Apparently my sister and I have the same propensity for meeting everyone. And our mother’s propensity for being memorable.

Tickled by the connection, Melissa invited us to a barbeque at her friend Tex’s home. We arrived to find trays of olives and cheeses and roasted peppers waiting for us. Tex poured a bag of charcoal in the grill, doused it with kerosene, and singed the branches on a maple tree. We ate salmon and Vietnamese salad and drank white wine. Tex told us about khat and growing up in Corpus Christi.

Besides reconnecting with old friends, staying with my sister and brother-in-law this summer has been a truly amazing thing. It’s great to witness the warmth and health in their home. Being far away, it’s easy to forget and worry about family members. But seeing the supporting network of friends that Tanya and Chad have created makes it easy to know that everything outside the reaches of my possibility to control go well. It’s a gift.

With half the summer gone, I can already say that it’s been the best of times. With more to come.

My first week back home I shared a bedroom with my nephew Kaveh, the five year old prodigy. I’d stay up late at the Round House Bar, drinking with cousins and high school friends. He’d stay up late reading a geometry book he found at the library. I’d sneak into my old bedroom around 1am. He’d be up reading and would say to me “Did you know pi is an irrational number?”

“What’s that?” I’d ask. “You and Gramma made a cherry pie?”

Nonplussed he’ d continue. “Did you know that the square root of 2 is also an irrational number?”

“What’s an irrational number?” I’d ask, my toothbrush in my mouth. It was like coming back to the dorm room in college and finding your roommate studying for a calculus exam.

What tickled me most though was that less than a year ago I’d been given a child’s introductory book to Hindu gods. Each page included a small box with the headline “Did you know … ?” and would then go on to say something like “that Ganesh is one of the most beloved Hindu gods?” and then tell a story about Ganesh, or Vishnu or Shiva, etc.

Like the seasons cycling, here I was with the reincarnation of Marie Curie quizzing me on numbers in the same manner. “And did you know,” he’d go on, “that if you added up all the angles of a triangle it equals 180 degrees?”

“And I bet they could dance on the head of a pin,” I’d say. “Do you want the air conditioner on, or the windows open?”

Kaveh would shrivel up his nose and look at me. “I don’t care.”

Windows open and fan on, I’d crawl into my old bed, and he’d be in his across the room, light on the night stand illuminated, his small legs disturbing the blankets only slightly, the length of unused mattress spreading out in front of him like a workshop table with books and pens.

Half of the days on the island Kaveh made a To Do List for the next day. He’d list the games he was planning to play (Sorry and Monopoly and Old Maid), the relatives he was planning to visit, the meals he intended to eat. And at least one entry for his math book. Sometimes two. The next day he’d dutifully check each item as it was accomplished.

On the trip down to Columbus we stopped at the Thomas Edison Birthplace and Museum in Milan, Ohio. He wasn’t too interested in the old furniture and clothes in the cottage along the canal. In each room on the tour he’d sit on the floor with his math book and read. He was a little interested in the old phonographs and the ticker tape machines on display, but mostly he was trying to tackle how to calculate a cube root.

I watched him pay no attention to the tour guide as she informed us that Thomas Edison was home schooled by his mother because he was deemed “unruly” by his teachers. And that as an adult he was never far from his laboratory. Couldn’t even be bothered to come down to the sidewalk for a photo with his staff in Menlo Park, New Jersey. He just stuck his head out the third floor window.

Kaveh was happy to have his photo taken with his Ohio and Michigan cousins the week he was on the island. Big cheesy 5-year-old smile. Front row.

Family has always played a big part of my summers growing up. Heat and cousins were synonymous. Since that time, I’m closer and more comfortable with cousins than friends. Or rather, my closest friends are in my family tree. Even if it’s a grafted branch. Who better to commiserate about the absurdities of parents, but the people who probably experience the exact same idiosyncracies?

Within hours of being back in Ohio I was hugging both sisters, my mom, an aunt and uncle, and my two nephews. I don’t think my younger nephew Nema recognized me. His older bother Kaveh gave me a big hug and smile. Such a great feeling. But Nema held back behind his mother’s legs and gave a cautious smile.

He warmed up to me in a short time. Now he frequently jumps into my lap. My favorite is the first moment he’s awake each morning. I’ll be up eating breakfast or watching the news and he comes down stairs, all smiles and giggles. He’s very social.

When I was about 4 years old, my family took a trip to Toledo to visit Aunt Verna. I remember my sisters being very happy about the trip, and I caught some of their enthusiasm. But, after the 90 minute drive I grew cautious. Verna was my grandfather’s sister. In my young mind though, I had confused her with my grandmother’s sister Vera.

At 4, I knew and loved Vera. She had dark hair, wore Keds and glasses, drank wine and laughed. She was born on the island, but lived in Cincinnati. She said she didn’t like to be touched, but looked in your eyes when she spoke. Where my grandmother was crazy scary, Vera was crazy fun. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know Aunt Vera. She came up to the island multiple times every summer. She told stories about the islands and knew the histories of every home and family.

When we pulled up to the home in Toledo my sisters ran to a strange woman. She had thick red hair and wore a pant suit with a matching purse. She smelled of perfume and hugged us tightly. I didn’t know who she was. I was expecting Vera. I didn’t want to get out of the car.

Eventually my sisters and parents convinced me to meet this woman. She won me over with multiple hugs and ice cream. But the initial feelings of confusion and shyness I haven’t forgotten. For better, her hugs became more familair as the visits became annual.

And so, it’s been two years since Nema last saw me. I don’t know if he’ll remember re-meeting me in Columbus, but I hope he’ll recall later the smiles he gave me each morning this week.

Like my own childhood, this week has been a juggernaut of family. In addition to the large group retrieving me from the airport, I’ve been lucky to reconnect with two more aunts, three more uncles, and 22 cousins (1st through 2nd-once removed), not to mention visits to two cemeteries. Like my own childhood we’ve caught lightening bugs, watched fireworks, played board games, gone on bike rides, boat rides, car rides. This time around though I’m one of the adults. Sort of.

I’m still at times that kid sitting in the car hoping there’s been a mistake and that the universe will follow expectations., but trying to muster the courage to accept that things might be better.

Two seconds after walking the first load of luggage into my mom’s house I noticed I had a mayfly on my chest. Silent and harmless, they cover everything at home. Right now I count seven clinging to the screens in the windows. One merely needs to exist to attract them.

I’m home for the summer, reacquainting myself with relatives and insects I haven’t seen in two years. And birds. Red winged black birds in particular are welcoming. They’re smaller than I remembered, but the red stripe on their shoulders is brighter. Sort of a ketchup red. But with a hint of orange.

Speaking of orange, last night I took a ride around the island with my dad and his dog in the dog hair mobile. With the harbor behind us, we rounded the curve towards East Point and I looked at the sun setting between Middle Bass and Gibraltar islands. Pink and orange filled the sky, and the sun melted into the flat lake. It was nice. I didn’t even mind the dog smell.

In Grenoble sunsets are impossible. The mountains block the colors. Sunbeams shoot over their crests until simply extinguishing. Beautiful in its own way, it’s not a Lake Erie sunset.

On the morning of day two, I woke up at 6:30. The house was quiet, but the birds outside were loud. I had a bowl of cereal in the kitchen. Watching me through the screen door was Mr. Jones, a stray cat my mother feeds. He was sitting patiently and blinked his eyes politely, waiting for something. I saw a bag of catfood and opened the door to the porch. He took a step back and watched as I filled a dish for him.

Mr. Jones is one of dozens of stray cats on the island. Living behind garages or in caves in the woods, eating at backdoors. There used to be a handful of cats behind my mom’s house that she passively cared for. All of them were caught, fixed by the vet, and taken to a barn on the West Shore to live. The process was the brainstorm of an island woman. Within 6 months though Mr. Jones came back. He must not have liked life on the kibbutz.

He finished the bowl I set for him, then silently indicated he’d like another. He purred while I poured. His fur was thick, full of burrs and nettles.

When I was a kid we had pet cats. Thomas, Harvey, and Henry were the first. Then Elizabeth. Then came kittens. Rapidly. Every cat we had for thirty years was descended from these first four. Mom would try to get them spayed or neutered before their first heat, but frequently misjudged the passing of time. One cat would get fixed and another would get pregnant. “Yay! Kittens!” we’d scream.

Sometimes though we’d come home from school to discover the kittens were gone. “Where’re the kittens?” we’d ask. “Drowned,” Mom would say, her voice cruel and dark, as if she’d follow with “now eat your gruel!”

When she was finally better able to get control of the kitten boom, the cats we kept (read: hadn’t pawned off on strangers or inhumanely euthenized) were finally fixed, guarenteeing no surprise generations.

Our last cat was Samantha. We named her Sam, until she got pregnant, then it was changed to Samantha. This misdiagnosis of gender was typical and played a major role in our situation. Samantha lived a long time, outliving her kittens and grandkittens. I attribute her longevity for a proclivity to the back yard. Most of our cats died after being hit by cars. Samantha lived long enough to see me enter kindergarten, graduate from high school, finish college, and start my first job in Cleveland.

In the cat’s waning years, Mom would curse her. ‘I can’t replace the carpet until that cat dies,’ she’d say. ‘As soon as that cat’s gone I can replace the scratched wallpaper by the back door.’ Frail and blind Samantha ceased to have a name, she merely represented a major roadblock to decorating achievements.

Eventually she died from cat leukemia and Mom got to update the house. The porch and back door Mr. Jones sits at wouldn’t be recognized by any of the cats who proceded him. But, in Mr. Jones my mom found a comfortable middle ground. She gets the joy of having a clean, fresh scented home and the daily company of a cat waiting patiently at her back door. Along with the mayflies.