Recently, I was contacted by a reporter who wanted to talk about how I think my hometown is responding to the current pandemic and political turmoil. It quickly pivoted to a more personal response that became an organ of a story that encompassed a wider scope of my community in terms of neighbors working together to make sure needs are met.
We talked for several weeks. I haven’t been able to make a counseling appointment in many months, so this was a welcome and cathartic experience for me. Finally, someone interested in what my hometown had to say, interested in what we were doing about “all of this.” Finally, someone who was willing to sit down and let me tell the long story, the whole thing, about what pushed me to take one of my biggest leaps of faith so far: starting a community movement to save my city.
But I think there was a major point lost in all of this, and I would like to set the record straight on a few of my perspectives that could be potentially misconstrued after reading this (beautiful) article.
Please don’t call me the hero. She was.
I have always adored my Grama Barb. She influenced my life in countless ways that I cannot help but think have made me a better person than I could have ever hoped to be without her. In everything I have done, I have strived to impress her, to please her, to make her smile and make her proud. She validated me in ways other people in my life could not. I see the rest of my life as an opportunity to continue to return her kindness.
I came home to be with her, to be near her, to have as much of the missed time back as possible. I felt robbed when she died. Not by her, but by everything that had kept me from her in the last 20 years. By my father, by my bad decisions, by my ex husband, by life’s circumstances.
Giving back to my city allows me to take back that missed time. It brings her back to me for a moment or two, when I remember her sharing her cookie with me. “If I have two bites, then I have enough to share,” she told me.
I work for a non-profit organization that helps connect people in need to organizations that can help. I answer phone calls from scared and angry people who all have something in common – a crisis. I used this service before I provided it. I knew the system before I helped navigate others through it. For me, this job has served as a vessel in which I am slowly but surely finding the way toward forgiveness. Maybe we could call it karmic reimbursement. For all of the bad I have done, or perceive myself to have done, every good call takes a tally mark off my record. Every filled pantry is a tally mark erased. It’s a day I didn’t go see her, removed from the calendar of my should-haves. It’s a time I didn’t return her call because I was too busy, taken from the record of my missed calls. You can call it penance if you’d like, but it’s what keeps me from shaking shattered windows from this broken pane.
I don’t do these things because I want to be seen as a saint. I do not want to be remembered as a victim, or a braggart. I’m terrible at accepting compliments, I didn’t get a lot of practice as a child. I don’t want pity. I don’t want a pat on the back. I want you to learn something.
I want you to learn to love your life. Love it for what it is, not for what it isn’t yet, or might not ever be. Don’t love it for what it used to be. Live in the now and love every moment of it for what it is. Call your grandma back and tell her unabashedly how much you adore her.
Because if you do not, you may very well end up in the same place you drew your first breath, spending your life living for memories.
I will spend the rest of my life doing this, working to keep her alive in places where now, she only exists in my memory. I am terribly afraid it will chain me to the same few square miles she paced. Yet, with every act of kindness I witness, I feel more reassured that the seeds she reaped will continue to bloom after we are both gone. Maybe someday, I can move South and write that book like she told me to. I don’t think I can tear myself away from here until I am certain.
I recognize that there are some descriptions in this article that might not mesh with the memories other people might have of her. I know she wasn’t World’s Best Mother. I know there were things that happened before I did. I know she died with a heaviness in her heart that nobody could lift.
But CNN didn’t ask for your story, and when my role models were unable to be parents, she became my hero. She was better suited to be a grandmother than anything else, I think, and that’s okay. It’s the noblest of professions.
So. She raised me until I was six. By then, I was already living with my father. I’d already been shuttled back and forth in spans of time I don’t remember clearly, between my parents. I don’t remember much of my time with either of them, but I remember her, always.
And every day for the next twenty years, until I was 26, I thought about her and I thought about home. It was one of the happiest, most hopeful days of my life when I pulled into Bay City as a resident again. I screamed and I cried and I texted everyone I loved and hated just to tell them all my dreams had come true.
Now that I am here, I realize that without her, it feels very different. There is a remarkable void, a very obvious large chunk of missing pieces to this landscape. I wonder every day if my father was right, if I need to start packing those memories away in a safe place and move on. Maybe forward, maybe even up. Sometimes, I remember things he said and how I felt resentful when he said them. Now I understand it was his method of kindness.
But I digress. Back to Bay City, back to the story. It isn’t just about me. It’s about Bay City. It’s about all the people who responded to my question, responded to my need. It’s about all the people who have been sewing the constant tears in this community quilt the entire time since I’ve been away and back. It’s about Mark Morand, the man who encompasses the spirit of this town that keeps drawing me back. It’s about how the generation of good fortune has seen the boom and bust of it, and how they have stayed to pick up the pieces time and again. It is about resilience, and how no matter what, we have mucked through. Put on your raincoats and go play in the rain, this is what we are left with. Why? Because our grandmas raised us here and we can’t think of a nicer moment in our memory to relive.
Some things are worth preserving. Make sure you’re working to save the right things. Make sure you’re honoring the spirit you want to be remembered. Make sure you’re living your life for the lessons you want to learn, for the love you want to know.
One of the staffers asked if I still loved Bay City.
It flows through me like the Saginaw River flows through it: full of years of mistakes and memories and strewn with diamonds of hope on sunny days.
-xoxo
The Saturday Evening Poet 