Wisconsin

In 1962, my grandparents bought some land and a little cabin on Lake Mildred, a small spring fed lake in upper Wisconsin.  In my early childhood my family would go there for sometimes as long as a month in the summer.  Some of my earlier memories are of bouncing along in that1971 Subaru, the one where you could peel up the mats and see the road going by through the rust, all the way up to Wisconsin.  Me, my mom, my dad, a cooler, a sewing machine and a month's worth of projects, books, toys. 

Once we were within the last half hour, long white wooden signs in the shapes of arrows would appear at intersections of roads curving to meet at unconventional angles.  "The Larsens," "Teagues,"  "DeZeutles" names of families were painted on the arrows to direct lost guests or confused family members in the right direction through the homogenous wooded roads.  The last curves of the road to my grandparents' summer house were the best, as the trees closed in and became more dense above us.  Finally, the entirely wooded "Shoreview Drive" would turn to the left and become a path with two tire ruts.  The path would fork, and we would go to the right.  Coming slowly down a set of gentle but bumpy hills, the little red house with a green roof would come into view.  A sign saying "The Andersons" was hung above the door. 

When I was small, it was a paradise with boats, swimming, fish and grandparents.  When I started getting old enough to want friends, there was another girl my age who lived year round at the lake with her grandparents that I would play with.  Somewhere along here, life began to intervene.  My grandmother died.  My grandfather's Alzheimers meant that my dad would come up for the entire summer so that his father could still spend the summers here in place that was familiar.  My dad always wanted me to come, and devised various strategies to get me to spend time there, including bringing friends, finding a local music store that would let me practice the piano in one of their spare teaching studios and a paddle boat.

Despite his best efforts, when I started to be a teenager, it became unbearable.  Following an incident involving a bicycle, a dog, a couple cans of paint, one of those arrow signs and a swarm of northwoods mosiquitos, I asked to be sent home early and as soon as possible.  I was 14 and I did not return until my late 20s. 

The first trip as an adult was fine.  I was worried but it was enjoyable and a nice break.  I rowed out to an island daily for alone time and score study.  The loons were nice, but I was ready to return to civilization after the four or five days. 

Fast forward a few years, and I went again in the midst of an odd transitional summer while deciding whether or not to spend another year in the UK.  I visited my father in Wisconsin, ever his summer hideaway, even with his own father long gone and his new wife being 'not a fan' of the woods, mosquitos or even the hint of bears.  He gave me his blessing and I went back across the ocean to continue my pursuit of dreams.

Two years later, back in my own country yet so far away from what I've always known that I feel like I'm in another foreign place, I learn that my father now has Alzheimers.  Once a probability and now a fact that it turns out he had been hiding from me for eleven years.  This came out because another murky northwoods incident involving my father and his younger brother, age 68 at the time, trying to take down a dead tree by themselves.  The next year, I fly to Wisconsin directly to spend some time with my father while my uncle is away on business.  I am glad that I came, because it seems clear to me that he shouldn't be alone up here.

A couple of years later it is doubtful if my dad can make it to the lake at all.  My uncle mailed us the keys, and my boyfriend, his dog and I fly to Ohio, rent a car and pack my dad in for the trek.  It was a wonderful week.  Even though my dad was having trouble stringing enough words together to make sentences to express himself, we discovered that his powers of profanity were still uneffected as he tried to get his legs and knees in and out of the slightly too small rental car.  We also discovered that despite having to ask which token was his on every turn, my dad could still play and win at Monopoly.  We watched on TV as congressman Anthony Weiner of New York City resigned, and my dad got a great laugh when we explained why.  We did as much with the lake as we could, but getting my dad into the boat to take a ride was harrowing, and he didn't enjoy the ride very much as his mistrust of Paul's boat driving was apparent. 

Fast forward to another summer and my father is much, much worse.  We decide to try, but are prepared to go without him.  This time we fly to Chicago and my step mother drives my dad there to meet us.  We transfer him to our rental car, bigger than last year after our experience and he settles uneasily into the backseat with the dog.  Everything is slower.  He certainly couldn't say who I am, but he does know that I'm not a stranger and important.  Stopping for dinner becomes a nightmare when I offer my dad a choice of condiments for his burger.  Bad idea.  He tries to use dirt from inside his glasses case as pepper on the burger.  He takes 10 minutes to deal with a small cup of ketchup.  Finally we make it to Wisconsin.  My uncle and his girlfriend are waiting, and we are very thankful because we needed their help this time. 

The week is good, but my dad is confused by food and needs to be constantly reminded which room is his.  My uncle helps get him dressed and supervises a shower.  He brings him down to the pier where he has bought solid folding chairs with good arms so that he can get in and out.  He puts a fishing pole in his hands, but my dad isn't really interested.  He seems as content to be there as anywhere, but he sleeps a lot.  The one time we got a true response from my dad was after dinner the first night when I made the  mistake of talking politics with my uncle.  My uncle is a great host, generous bartender and a Republican, the only one in our extended Anderson family.  So we were argued for quite some time about various politicians and elections past, and my father was very engaged listening and then had something to say.  Actually he had a lot of say, and went on for some time.  The only problem was that it came out as what I can only describe as word salad.  The cadences and tone of his speech were the same as they always had been, but the words were all mixed up and didn't make any sense. 

When we were getting ready to leave Ohio at the end of our trip, I knocked on my dad's door early to say that we were getting ready to leave.  He actually got up quickly so that he could say goodbye.  How could I know that this really was goodbye for us?  Three months later he was gone.  I spent my childhood watching my grandfather go down so slowly and so painfully with the same disease that I never expected this.  I look at what happened and what was ahead, and I do see it at least intellectually as a blessing and last summer as an amazing gift. 

In the midst of all of this, I have come to love Wisconsin, even almost crave being there.  This whole year I've been thinking about sitting on the lake in a kayak and watching the loons and eagles go by and just being. Although it definitely has something to do with my dad, it is not only my missing him that makes me want to go.  I find a great and beautiful stillness there.  My life is frenetic and busy and I love it, but I am starting more and more to crave stillness and be ok with not always being. 

I've only had one dream with my dad in it since he passed, but we were in Wisconsin and he was talking to me.  He was sitting on the sofa in the place it used to be.  Two weeks from today, we fly out.