Morgan’s Granddaughter
I only have two resources to deal with this type of situation. Two movies both named after locations: Elizabethtown and Garden State. Orlando Bloom’s character Drew returns home after the sudden passing of his father and Zack Braff’s character Andrew does the same in response to the sudden death of his mother.
While my grandfather’s passing was not sudden I must reference my friend’s response to my news of his passing that “forewarned is seldom forearmed”.
Andrew returns home from Los Angeles where he is trying to “make it” in the film/ TV industry, very relatable for me and shoe designer Drew flies back to the small town in which is father grew up. My sister actually wanted to design shoes when she was a child.
You recall pieces of memories like that when you’re going through lose. Drew recollects the road trips he and his father took to Elizabethtown and Andrew remembers his mother comforting him as a very young child.
I remember the anticipation of packing for the 8hr hour road trip north and east from the Chicago suburbs to the small town of Lake Orion, Michigan my mother’s hometown.
Early, Early, EARLY! In the morning we would stack up our bags behind the family car and my father with boy scout skill would allocate each inch of space in the trunk to accommodate our necessary travel items. My mother would pack us each a lunch box of snacks that my sister and I were never allowed to have in normal life and after 50 miles east on I-94 and 3 toll out of the city we were able to delve into the treats throughout the remaining 277 or so miles of the ride.
The rest of the miles are a blur from there, there was some napping and some listening to music, fidgeting, possible fighting between siblings and countless “how much longers” even though we would know when we arrived.
When the pavement turned to gravel we were there.
After a bit of a bumpy ride on the unpaved roads around grandpa’s house we would arrive and grandpa would come greet us with a hug and a kiss on the cheek his five o’clock shadow scruffy on our face and the smell of juicy fruit gum. Gum my sister and I would plunder throughout the visit.
He would help us lug our bags up through the narrow stairway from the garage into the house and we would settle in. He always got us pizza, which my sister and I loved and butter pecan ice cream, which he loved. The morning brought itty bitty individual boxes of cereal for us to pick out. The sugar filled ones that grandpa’s can get away with giving their granddaughters.
My sister and I discovered building (and destroying) with Lincoln logs at grandpa’s house. We would roll down the hill next to the house and return inside for dinner grass stained. We would take walks down to “grandpa’s lake”. My sister and I had no idea it was actually called Long Lake until we were all grown up. It was Grandpa’s lake; it was his lake for us to spend time at. He would bravely captain his pontoon boat out into the little lake that looked so much bigger to us and we would swim and fish. Grandpa would hook up his riding mower to a cart and pull us around through the cold water from the sprinkler when the days were hot and when the nights were dark would build a small bonfire in the backyard and look out into the night at the bright Michigan stars. I earned my fire-making merit badge thanks to my grandfather’s backyard.
And at the end of the trip, saying a goodbye was always hard.
Saying goodbye is always
Always
Hard
There was always the promise of next summer and more ice cream and tiny cereal boxes and Lincoln logs and every following summer brought more memories to hold onto while waiting to anticipate that next 8 hour drive back to the gravel roads.
And the memories are what we will always have as we say goodbye. The taste of butter pecan ice cream, the smell of juicy fruit gum, tiny boxes of cereal and bright clear Michigan stars prove he has forever left an imprint in our lives and though we say goodbye we never will forget and we will wait with anticipation until the time that time we again see him when our grandkids are remembering the times they had with us in our life.
