I will tell the wondrous story
It took a surprising two and a half days before the first completely surreal moment of my trip to Wisconsin with Operaman and his family. We were running some errands and he popped in a CD of the music for church on Sunday. The kids joined in the song. And the wholeness of the scene hit me like so: I am in the passenger seat of an SUV driving through suburbia, drinking bottled water while the kids in back are singing along to Christian music.Oh, shit.
I managed to pull myself together rather quickly. We do not live in suburbia, I reminded myself. We are just visiting, for the fiftieth anniversary of Operaman’s parents. And if the rental company hadn’t screwed up the reservation, we would be driving the compact car we reserved. And the Christian music is playing because Operaman is going to perform it. And the tap water in Wisconsin is gross.
This moment of complete dislocation was thankfully just a moment. Most of the trip was crazy and awesome. There was lots of Wisconsinalia – cheese curds still warm from the dairy, water skiing in the lake, two-stepping at the Friday night fish fry, custard twice a day. And there was lots of family – big, loud family – O’s parents and his three sisters and his one brother and all of their spouses and most of their kids, family that filled and spilled out of the cars we drove around and the tables we ate at and the rooms we slept in.
And it was exhausting sometimes, to be honest – every night a late night and every morning an early morning, and all that driving from Rome to La Crosse to Prairie du Chien, and constantly watching my wording so as not to exclaim Fuck! in front of a room of nieces and nephews. And it was my first time traveling with O’s kids, or any kids, and traveling is hard on kids, and I’m not sure I was always so understanding of that, because I was tired sometimes too. But a couple times his daughter fell asleep on my lap, and that felt good.
It felt good, too, when we sped along the Mississippi in the hilly corner of the state untouched by glaciers, and when the sky darkened with a distinctly unOregonian thunderstorm, and when the dusk brought a field of lightening bugs. It felt good when O’s dad told me stories about being a pilot in the Air Force. It felt good when O’s youngest sister hugged me goodbye, and stepped back, and announced We Like You.
It’s not the most natural thing in the world, for a smartass only child who prefers solo travel to suddenly share confined quarters with a shifting population of kind midwestern relatives for five days. But I suppose it is also a bit of a challenge when the sarcastic Jewish girlfriend of your divorced son/brother shows up at your Evangelical church service, even if she joins in for I Will Sing of My Redeemer. I think we all did pretty well.
What Am I Doing? I texted PD when all this felt like the wrong kind of crazy.
Making a life, she reminded me. Making A Life.
posted by tortaluga @ 11:57 AM
2 Comments:
Welcome to my world. Now you understand why I will never, ever get a minivan and why I will be getting at least 1 more tatoo. And it will help you understand when I start drinking.
Hey- nothing wrong with minivans when you have 3 dogs and a kid on the way, and it gets 26mpg (at least this is the mantra I keep repeating to myself). I think maybe I am in denial. Now I need a drink- can I get the fetus started early on having a high tolerance for alcohol. Maybe I should go for the tatoo, or just accept that somehow I became a pseudo-urban professional who is far more pseudo than urban. J, tell me I'm still edgy...
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