Checking In and Checking Out

There is just one thing I want at this middle age, this middle place, this middle November day. I wake up with a mild migraine, one of many recently, and head to the gym to try to stretch my tired old muscles into submission so that they might release their tight grip on the back of my head. The week’s frustrations persist as I sit in my car in the parking lot trying to pick up a Wifi signal to “check-in” to one of my many social media accounts when it hits me: the only one I really need to check-in with today is God. Oh yeah. Seems I’ve lost track of Him this week, trying to make everyone else happy.

I hit the gym, then the shower and then drive west. The stores and gas stations disappear from the landscape, giving way to empty corn and soybean fields. The distance between the houses grows. The cloudy gray skies hang pregnant over the gold colored plains threatening a mix of rain, snow, drizzle or some mix of these. It brings comfort and melancholy at the same time, this cold Ohio gray that settles in for the long haul. My mind replays the week’s events for the umpteenth time as if to magically change them, but the only change is the resurrection of that migraine.

Forty-five minutes later I’m pulling into the driveway of their little log cabin where they wait at the door. I step out of the car, pause and breathe. Inside, after hugs and hellos, they lead me to the cozy living room where the front curtains are pulled back. “We have a duck,” they say, handing me the binoculars so that I may spot the pregnant duck on the far side of their pond. My eyes shift aimlessly (accustomed to staring at a computer screen), unable to see what is right in front of me. What I notice is the wind bending the pines and moving soundlessly through the tall dry grass that surrounds the pond. What I notice is the silence around me—and no one needing to fill it. No radios. No TVs. No music. No computers. We just watch.

We get in the car and head to a little hole-in-the-wall diner for lunch. The circa 1965 wood paneledinterior is covered with kitschy signs and old photos including a pin-up-girl-like shot of five bathing

suit clad young ladies from the 1940s. The sepia-tone teenage version of the owner smiles from the center of the image. She plays the piano, they tell me as I notice the upright and the chalkboard above it that reads, “Ask for the piano player … gets me outa the kitchen.”  A middle aged waitress comes over, cracking jokes about herself as she fumbles for a pen in her pocket. She smiles wide, exposing a grin sans a bottom front tooth and I think to myself: She is happy, beautiful. We eat our homemade veggie soup, sweet potatoes fries and Sloppy Joes and catch up. I share what’s heavy on my heart and Dad fidgets in his seat, uncomfortable with the burden I carry, uneasy that he can’t fix it.

We bundle up, head back to the car and go to the unsung Amish country—the one that is happy that way, quiet and unnoticed. On the drive there, I ask them:

what are your memories of your grandparents? Because I don’t know. Even at this late-middle-age point of my life, I realize that I don’t know and it’s suddenly so important that I know.  We park in front of the dry goods store and he talks us back 70 years to that dairy farm. From the back seat I watch Dad’s eyes in the rearview mirror as he recalls the soft loving arms of his grandmother, his hard-working yet stern grandfather and emotionally distant father. He remembers vowing at a young age to be a Father that laughs and has fun with his kids. “Maybe I didn’t do as well as I could have,” he starts and his eyes grow narrower in the rearview, filling up.  You were—and ARE—the best Dad ever, I say, the first thing all week I speak with complete unwavering certainty.

At the dry goods store, we buy six kinds of Christmas cookie sprinkles, candies, snacks and—from

my Dad—a painting of an Amish buggy for me. To remember this day, we all know, but no one says it aloud. Then we drive to the Amish farm for apples, wood and friendship. The wind is blowing harder and colder now.

A mother and her teenage daughter work in the garden. The gusts blow the strings of their bonnets and aprons. A dog huddles against the barn searching for warmth deep in a worn out blanket. The mother, probably my age, leads us into the workshop where woodworking tools hang neatly along the rafters and the floor is covered with sawdust. The scent makes me homesick for my childhood. My Dad asks her how she is feeling. Is she better now? Yes, she says, except for her shoulder which sometimes brings discomfort. He is in jail now, she notes when asked directly, the drunk driver that hit her and her two youngest in their buggy last year. Her son, then 10 years old, had nightmares after the accident. They are well now, she says. No resentment. No anger. And I admire her strength after mentally slipping on her shoes.
 

We walk back out to the car.  It was nice to meet you, I say. She says the same then asks, do you live around here? No. Not anymore. I live near the city now, but … I feel more at home out here. She smiles and nods, understanding me—this sister from another culture.

We drive back to Dad’s farm, me with my Amish apples, sprinkles and painting—but without my migraine. And this was all I wanted … to find God and myself again … at this middle age, at this middle place, on this middle November Birthday.