Watch it, you idiot!
As a business owner in a resort town on Memorial Day, I can only think it, I cannot scream it.
But, man, am I screaming it inside.
What started as a peaceful run on a shockingly lovely Memorial Monday—which, in Northern Michigan, could mean anything from a surprise blizzard to a barbecue on the beach—has turned into survival.
How can I forget every single year that over the course of one weekend the town transforms from Northern Exposure to Squid Game?
I’ve almost been hit four times by cars in the street—drivers looking at their phones, or out-of-state visitors gawking at the cute shops—so I navigated to the sidewalk, which is even worse. Fudgies—which is what locals call the vacationers who visit during the summer wandering the town like zombies eating fudge—walk directly into me without looking.
I’m glad I’m on foot, though. I’ve always been worried I will hit a tourist when I’m lost in thought, or exhausted, and will have to haul their body into the back of my trunk and bury it somewhere.
I finally stop for a drink at the water fountain in the park not far from my home. There is a baseball field adjacent to it. A few bleachers sit behind home plate, and a small, chain-link fence encompasses the outfield. Overhead, the clouds bounce along the sky just like a grounder up the middle.
I walk over and put my hands to the fence and watch the kids play. School is still in session—and will be for a few more weeks due to the large number of snow days—but kids, like the tourists, are ready for the summer.
Some boys are playing catch in the infield, while some girls are kicking a soccer ball around in the outfield. Just off the third base line, a little boy stomps in a puddle.
I smile and lift my face to the sun, and I pull from the recesses of my memory banks an image of me doing the exact same thing as a girl. But I was in a dress, on the way to see my grandmother for our Memorial Day date, and I could hear my mother yell, No, Susan! Don’t! when I was already in midair.
I open my eyes, and sun spots dance before me. I blink, and they disappear.
I think of being that girl.
Blink.
I think of my mother yelling at me.
Blink.
I think of never having children to play in this field.
Blink.
I think of my grandmother and how—somehow—another year has passed, I am forty, and that it’s time again for our standing date.
I blink and start jogging home.
I shower and put on a pretty summer dress. I grab a sweater in case it gets cool. I head out the front door with some scissors and snip some pretty pink peonies for my date.
My grandmother grew, and still does to this day, beautiful peonies—pink with white centers—in long rows outside her home. The blooms on the flowers grow so heavy and thick that the stem will just collapse, exhausted, like an old dog in the summer heat. I, like my mother, took starts of my grandma’s peonies for our own gardens so the legacy—and the gifts—will never end.
I lift a peony to my nose, inhale and sigh.
Heaven.
If there were one word to describe the perfumed scent of these peonies, it would be heaven.
Heaven will smell just like this, my grandma always says.
My grandma hung her laundry line over the peonies so that when I’d stay with her the sheets would smell like heaven.
I stand and look at the flowers, petals soft as silk.
My mind whirs to Tristan and faith, Jamie and Micah, past and present.
I walk into the kitchen, my screen door banging shut, and begin wrapping the cut ends of the flowers in wet paper towels.
“Are you ready?” my grandma calls through the screen door. “God gave us a beautiful day for our Memorial Day visits.”
“Coming.” I head to the door. “You look nice.”
My grandma is wearing a black dress and sensible shoes.
“Thank you,” she says. “Can’t break with tradition.”
Our “visits” have taken place in the rain, snow, sunshine and mud. And, over the years, our visits require more time, as more have gathered.
I lock the front door and follow her to her truck. Yes, she drives a truck. She loves it for hauling books and plants, for getting around the rain and snow, and to serve people.
“No one questions a granny in a truck,” she says. “They either think she’s crazy or toting a gun.”
She pops the tailgate and opens the tonneau cover. I smile.
“You’re ready.”
“Always.”
The bed of the truck is filled with miniature American flags, peonies from my grandmothers’ gardens—the ends smothered in wet paper towels—along with a cardboard box lined with sealed Ball jars filled with water. I add my peonies to the back, and she closes the cover again. When I get in the front seat, I have to move a box of Kleenex she has positioned in my seat.
“You’re really ready,” I say.
My grandmother turns on classical music and takes the side streets in town, avoiding the Memorial madhouse in Petoskey. I retrieve my buzzing cell, and begin to answer an endless stream of texts from the staff. This is one of the busiest days of the year for Sleigh By the Bay—the kickoff to the summer season—and I always take the afternoon off.
I fire replies, one after another, my fingers moving as quickly as Vivaldi.
Members of the Sleigh the Summer Book Club always get 20 percent off...no coupon necessary. They MUST show their book club card, though.
NO! Mary doesn’t get two for one. She’s been using this line for two decades. Give her a free bookmark. Makes her happy as a clam.
NO! Kids cannot use the staff bathroom, no matter how much their parents ask and how desperate they sound. We tried, AGAIN!, to make this work a few years ago, and our staff bathroom looked like it had been through a water-gun fight. Let them know there is a public bathroom available just down the block.
Maura Kendrick is twelve, but she looks twenty-one. She CANNOT buy books from the adult romance section. Her parents are attorneys, and they will kill me (if not sue me).
BUT! Chandler Moore CAN buy literary fiction. He’s thirteen but attends a rural school and needs to be challenged.
My grandma glances over at my texts as she pulls into the cemetery.
“Some things never change, do they?”
No, they don’t, I think.
The truck bumps along a gravel drive and underneath a metal gate, a sign reading Bayview Cemetery.
It is an oxymoron.
There is no view of the bay. Michigan cemeteries are not lush, lavish or large. They do not sit on breathtaking bluffs overlooking the waves of the lake. Graveyards, as we often simply call them, often rest on a rolling foothill or a quiet piece of country land next to a pastoral pasture or meandering stream. They are not filled with enormous marble headstones.
But Michigan cemeteries are plentiful. Families want to remain together. Forever.
My grandma parks the truck, we gather our goods and set out to visit our family.
Visiting these graveyards on Memorial Day with my mother and grandmother is how I got to know many of those family members I never had the chance to meet. Sometimes, during my childhood visits, my mom and grandma would laugh, sometimes they would cry—depending on the person and the length of time they had been gone—but they always ended with the same ritual: Mom and Grandma would kneel to say a prayer, pay their respects, and then place the peonies in a jar with water and plant American flags into the earth over the grave.
“See you next year,” they would whisper, passing a kiss from their hands to the earth before standing again, interlocking arms, and slowly making their way to the next party guest.
When I was younger, after my parents had died, I hated coming here with my grandma. I just wanted to spend my Memorial Day with friends at the beach, or running around downtown greeting my “summer friends,” kids I hadn’t seen since the previous summer. I wanted to distance myself from death.
But my grandma refused to let me forget.
You let too much time pass, and you forget, she would say. And you should never forget.
We wend our way from grave to grave, stopping at an old headstone whose letters are weathered and worn.
“Your great-aunt Maude,” my grandma says. “Remember her?”
I nod. “I remember all the weddings.”
She laughs. “Married six times, not the norm for a woman of that era. She was one tough broad. Farm girl who worked her way through college, moved to Chicago and became one of the first women to hold a seat on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Maude never suffered a fool. Or a husband, for that matter.” My grandma places some peonies in a container and sticks some flags in the earth. “Speaking of Maude, how are the many men in your life?”
“That is a terrible turn of phrase, Grandma.”
“I thought it was well-timed. And...?”
“I’m still seeing all three men,” I say.
“Did you hear that, Maude?” my grandma says, nudging the headstone with her elbow. “A gal after your own heart.”
“Ha ha, Grandma. I really like them. They’re all good guys.”
“It sounds like there’s a but in there.”
“But I’m taking it slowly. I’ve seen Tristan in Traverse twice since our date, I’ve seen Jamie and Micah in Chicago a few times, and we all text and FaceTime a few times a month.”
“We?”
“Not all of us together, Grandma. It’s not an episode of Sister Wives.”
“You mean husbands?”
“I can’t keep up with you today,” I say. “They’re all wonderful men. Kind. Thoughtful. Handsome. Smart. Sweet.”
“Sounds like another but in there.”
“But I don’t know anything yet.”
“It must be hard to try and pick which one is the one. I mean all of them were at the race. Any of them could be your Santa. And I know you probably—despite what we’ve all said and promised—still feel a lot of pressure on you from everyone, including your friends, the town, me and your grampa, to make the right decision.”
Do I tell her about the pin? I wonder. Or do I, like Maude’s gravestone, share just the faintest of information?
“There is,” I finally say. “I just want to take my time.”
“You know I wasn’t even looking to meet someone when I met your grandfather. Nor was your mother. We weren’t searching for a Santa cap, or a handsome face, or big muscles, something just clicked. We knew.” She snaps her fingers as she loves to do. “Just like that.”
I feel like we already know each other, I can hear the mystery Santa say at the run. Like we have a history, just like your pin.
My grandma puts her arm around my waist.
“You’ll figure it out, Susan.” She gives me a squeeze and then whispers into my ear, “You’ll know the exact moment, too, because your heart will glisten like the bay. Bells will ring, and you will hear Santa’s sleigh.”
“My poem, grandma. Really?”
“Really,” she says.
She takes my hand, and we continue our visits until we finally reach my mother and father. There are plots of green earth surrounding them. Eight plots were purchased long ago, when death was just a distant thought: two for my grandparents, two for my parents, and four for me—one for me and my future husband as well as our children.
My heart pangs.
I have no idea who decided on eight plots, or how my future family had been so carefully considered, but my family had always been planners.
Will my life forever remain as empty as these plots?
My grandma wipes the gravestones clean and then stoops to clear some spring weeds. She places peonies in containers and plants some American flags into the earth.
She bows her head, says a prayer, stands and then turns to look at me.
“It would have been so much easier to run,” she continues. “For all of us.”
I look at her, cocking my head, not understanding.
“You know, we talked about it—your grandfather and I—after your parents died. Selling everything and leaving, going somewhere where we could start over, start fresh,” Grandma says. “In a small town, we have all been defined by your parents’ loss. We are the parents who lost a son and daughter-in-law. You are the girl who lost your parents. For many years, people were afraid to get too close as if our bad luck might rub onto them. And the hate so many had toward Jordan’s parents, though they had nothing to do with it. I know it was hard on you because it was so hard on us. Everywhere we turn in town—the bookstore, the ice cream shop, in our gardens—we see your mom and dad. Their ghosts are real. But your grandfather asked what good running would ever do. ‘The memories—good and bad—still live within us,’ he said. He was right. We can never run far or fast enough. We can never disappear. You can’t hide from life or outrun the past. You tried, but you came back.”
She gestures around the cemetery, turning in a circle. “You know this community can drive me crazy sometimes. I mean, just look at Rita. I wanted to run from all these people as much as my memories. But who was there when we needed them most? They brought us food. They cared for us. I mean, Rita slept in our home for weeks helping me care for myself when I couldn’t even get out of bed. She took you to school, covered shifts at Sleigh when Nicholas and I couldn’t work. This community has saved our bookstore from going belly-up dozens of times. This community ended up saving my life.”
My grandma holds up a peony and smells it.
“Our bookstore is like these flowers. It has taken root and grown into something beautiful, something heavenly, something that—long after we’re gone—will still remain. And, call me old-fashioned, in this day and age where we can live anywhere in the world, there is something to be said for acknowledging the wonderful things we have right in our backyard. There is something to be said for having roots.”
She holds her arms open, and we hug.
I kneel on the cool earth over the graves of my mother and father, plant a flag and say a prayer: a prayer that, long after I’m gone, someone takes the time to share my story, visit me on occasion and pass along my legacy.
The scent of the peonies fills my nose.
The scent smells like heaven.