Hello and welcome to the new year. I was not intending to take two weeks off from sending this newsletter, and had planned to send out my emails as usual over the holidays. Unfortunately, my family spent two weeks sick with the flu. Thankfully, we are on the mend, and my brain has begun to make sense of sentences again.
New Year’s Day found me in the water. Even if I wasn’t quite over my sickness, I was craving a cold dip and trusted that it would be helpful. I’m not sure that it quickened my recovery by any means, but it was at least a short respite from the discomfort of being ill. By this weekend, I was mostly back to myself and able to dip twice with a whole slew of neighbors each time. I found myself giddy after Sunday’s dip, my toes frozen from standing in the cold post-dip for too long, yet hardly noticing it because of the camaraderie we found huddled and chattering on about why we love plunging in the cold Lake.
I know I have written quite a bit about cold water swimming this winter, something I was not intending to do this year and yet wow, here I am. In some ways I am amazed that I am swimming in Lake Michigan in January, but mostly, it just makes sense. I have spent years being completely obsessed with this body of water, getting as close to it as possible as often as I could. To have stretched my swimming season, which typically ends in early October, out to January feels so necessary. I almost can’t believe I didn’t do this before.
That sense of belonging, of stepping into something new that feels just right, is the theme of this week’s essay, one I have been fiddling with for the last week or so. I have been talking about the themes of it nonstop for seven years though, this sense of coming home to a new place.
Rooted in place
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This past Saturday marked seven years since I moved into the little house down the street. The 400-square-foot bungalow was where I began to make myself a part of the small community I now claim as home. It's where I lived when I met my husband, Tim, where we brought our first baby home from the hospital. I walk or drive by it nearly daily, as we now live just a few houses down. Somedays, I hardly turn my head as I pass, and other days, it feels like the whole thing is shrouded in some kind of magic. On those days, I crane my neck as I walk by, drinking in every detail.
There are some days when I still can't believe I chose to move to this little northern Michigan beach town. It feels now like such a wild decision to have made alone. But then, other days, it feels like my life in northern Michigan beckoned me into it. It was all here, just waiting for me to step through the door of that little cottage and, then, a few years later, to move a few doors down. It was as if I already knew this village, this street, as if all of the life I have lived and will hopefully live in this place already existed and welcomed me in upon first greeting.
I remember walking around outside the house a few days before I met the landlord for a walk-through and peeking in the windows. It was after dark, the dull streetlights already on. I could barely see in, but I saw it all. I saw where I would put my bed, the living room I would put bookshelves in and buy a couch for, and the loft where I would host friends.
Seven years later, I live two houses down from that little house. Sometimes, it feels like I could walk through the front door again, and I would see myself curled up on the couch with Tim in our pajamas, holding our three-month-old firstborn in our laps. I can still close my eyes and picture the screen door opening the first time Tim walked in before that, late spring sunlight pouring through the door as it slammed shut. I turned my head from the apple pie I had just pulled from the oven and took a breath. It felt as though right at that moment, we both walked into a new life. Or maybe, merged with the life that was already here, waiting.
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We walk or drive by that tiny house every day, sometimes waving at Susan, who lives there now. Of course, we are not still huddled on the couch. Of course, the place itself has changed: new furniture, the garden expanded, a washer and dryer finally added. I wonder how we lived with a newborn and no washer, and then remember the way my parents carried us through those early months. My mom would bring us dinner and hold the baby while we ate, then take our dirty laundry and return with it freshly folded the next day. An extreme gift and also a reminder: mothering never ends, even when the children are grown.
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On Saturday, the seventh anniversary of my initial move into Empire, Tim's Grandma Norma died. She was ninety, born in her grandparents' house in Empire, and later this week, she'll be buried in this lakeside village, too.
Since Grandma Norma lived here most of her life, it seems I can't go anywhere without driving past a house she lived in. She had eight children, and they're nearly all still living nearby, so I really can't go anywhere without someone knowing the family, knowing her. I wonder what it felt like for her to continue driving these same stretches of road she had grown up driving along as a child in the 1930s and 40s. Could she still see herself living with her mom and sister in her grandparent's house every time she went by? I wonder what it felt like for her to drive the stretch of M-22 before Dorsey's, to see what was once the yard of the home where she raised her children, now part of the national park.
I cannot imagine what five-and-a-half more decades will do to this way of viewing the world for me, this tender feeling that everything is happening simultaneously. Will I walk by my little house when I am 80 and still see myself first learning to be a mother inside? I hope to be so lucky.
Saturday evening, Tim's dad came over after his mother had died, and together with Tim and our son, they sat on the couch drawing together. I was behind them in a chair feeding the baby, acutely aware of the importance of the moment, of these three generations huddled close, of the knowledge that my children would never again hug a great-grandparent. All of the grandparents of that generation are now gone.
But now here is Grandpa, Dad, and son, carrying on the legacy of family, of being rooted in place. I imagine Grandma Norma sat at one point, maybe many points, during her life in the same way I did: baby in arms, watching her family from just enough of a distance that it all felt eternal. That it all felt like just one moment in a long line of all the ancestors who have come before and all those who would come next, our stories overlaying all the others.
Swim Club
I will keep this thread updated with swim club details. We are still sorting out details for tomorrow’s swim (we are in the midst of a winter storm warning), so if you’re interested, check the thread in the morning. If we go, it will be at 9am in Empire.
Sending you all well wishes for the new year.
Cheers,
Mae