Life in the Cheese Drawer

yesterday was the party to celebrate the people who were there for my family while charlie was in a coma as well as to celebrate charlie being alive. we had scoped out a park in lake city early this spring and locked it in with two shelters, and good thing we did because when i drove in at 10 a.m., it started to rain and continued to do so for the next three hours. 
but it was a good party, a great time, and there were people there who were the right ones to be there. the rain cleared up, the sun came out, and the weather was, for once, not humid and gross. the evening was great, and after we cleaned out the shelters, i took off for home at 10 p.m. (i had too much stuff to do to break camp and drive to st charles before heading up to st. cloud in one day.)
it was pretty dark when i turned south out of the park and through lake city. the lake was on my left, and the waning gibbous moon was low on the horizon, climbing into the sky. the night was clear and calm, and the almost-full moon reflected off the lake, creating a shimmery column of water light across the lake toward me as i drove out of town, past the marina, past the overlook.
when i was small, maybe six years old, my aunts kathleen and colettie took me to a bed and breakfast in lake city. i don’t remember much about the b&b besides being uncomfortable with the strangers at breakfast, but i do remember taking a walk after dark to the overlook, where i climbed the steps and leaned over the rock wall to look at the moon reflecting a shimmery column of light across lake pepin.
charlie was always my aunt colettie’s favorite. i kept my eyes on the moon-colored lake last night for as long as i could, smiling and thinking of how well the party turned out, my aunt C, and letting this chapter of the story wane away into a shimmery sheath of light.

i like to say i grew up in the faux-country. we were only a hop skip and a jump from town, and there were many houses across the street that had their half acre or acre parcels, none of which compared to the 80 acres our house stood on. we had the old, broken down farmhouse. a big white barn, a white 2-story garage, a pumphouse, the field, the pasture, the acres of lawn to mow (for years, my dad had an old farmall that would cut mowing time drastically). 
we didn’t plant. we didn’t own animals. we barely kept a garden. but we did grow pine trees. we rented out the fields to farmers who would use it. family or renters pastured their sheep, horses, cows in the pasture. we weren’t sheltered from country life, but we weren’t immersed in it. for that, we would have to drive the mile and a half down the road to my aunt and uncle’s farm.
we grew pines, and we had a lot of space to run around during the summertime. giant oaks dotted the yard. every spring, the crabapple tree outside the kitchen window would burst into pink blooms. we wandered through the pasture to the creek, or out to the edge of the field, wondering if we really WOULD get lost in the cornfield. (what a crock; follow the rows and you’ll come out eventually.)
the end of the day during summertime was the worst. when bedtime rolled around, it was still a little light out. the crank-out windows were wide open in the bedroom, and we could hear the yells and screams of the neighbor kids – all of whom were older – filtering into the bedroom while we lay there, wondering why god is so cruel as to create bedtimes during the summer months.
of course i could never sleep right away and instead propped myself up at the window overlooking the driveway, pumphouse, and pasture. the fireflies lit up at the edge of the pasture while the semis rolled over the rumble strips on the freeway a quarter mile away, the bass line to the neighbors’ playful murmur and crickets’ evening song. 

my grandma died early monday morning, and after i got home from work that afternoon, i hauled out my planters. the weekend before, i’d gone to the amish greenhouse down the road and gotten some flowers to plant for curb appeal, and they had been sitting in their pots waiting for an opportune moment. what better opportunity than to celebrate the life of a woman who kept more flowers than i could even imagine. 
my grandma’s house in st cloud had tulips lining the house, so every spring when the snow melted, the season was greeted with red and yellow tulips. her moss roses spread all over the yard, and her rhubarb was getting to the point of unwieldy. The front door’s walk was small, but my uncles had spent some time to dig it up and create more garden space for more flowers. 
she was the plant whisperer. inside her house, there were african violets in pots all over the surfaces next to windows, and big planters with large ferns, lilies, and other greenery lined her living room. and in the pots were little ceramic animals or a small bird or last easter’s palms or maybe a bird’s nest with some eggs in it. a large philodendron sat on top of her hutch, with its green leaves hanging over the edges. she almost always had starter spider plants in glasses on the windowsill in her kitchen, waiting for homes. her thumb wasn’t just green – it was the vibrant green of springtime and tree buds.
i dragged out my planters, some of which i’d gotten from her, and filled a bucket with dirt from my vegetable beds to set my flowers in their home. my tulips i’d planted last fall were up and blooming, heralding springtime, and i had moss roses waiting to plant down by my mailbox. of the many traits that my grandma passed to her off-off-spring, including a baking itch and the ability to enjoy shopping, i think the need for dirt under the fingernails in the appropriate months is my favorite. seeing opportunity in a seed, hope in a bulb. 

last winter i took part in no-shave winter. my legs were nice and furry by the time march 1 rolled around (meteorological spring), and it was very satisfying to finally shave them (so smooth!!).
this year, i went from september to mid-january (shaved for work reasons, haha). once again, nice and smooth.
i was in the tub shaving tonight when i suddenly remembered a very awkward shaving incident i had. 
i was a first year at st. ben’s, and i shared a dorm room with angie englebart. it was near the end of the year, and her family had come to visit. it was warm out, so i decided to shave my legs to wear shorts. it was kind of annoying to have to go to the showers to shave your legs, so i decided to shave in the sink in our room. 
i was just finishing up on the second leg, when i cut myself right down by the ankle on the outside hard-to-reach spot between the bone and achilles tendon. of course, angie and her family chose that moment to come in the room and take a look at me with my leg in the sink, razor in hand, and ankle bleeding out. 
i quickly grabbed my towel and covered up my bleeding ankle, hoping they didn’t think i was some weirdo who did this all the time (seriously, that was the first and only time i did that). 
end my awkward shaving story. and maybe i’ll go another two months before shaving again. we’ll see what spring brings. 

stubbornness is quite the thing in the derry family. if you haven’t experienced german stubbornness, then pray you never do, because there is no greater piece of stubbornness than a german stubborn person. 
grandma derry, despite the very irish last name, is 100% german. her house is spotless, she likes everything in its place, and man is she stubborn. 
except she doesn’t think so.
one time maybe 10 years ago she was visiting the wallace household (which, though very scottish in sound, was a very german household as well), and the topic of stubbornness came up. grandma sure didn’t see it as stubborn; she was determined. so a debate ensued as to whether or not determined was just a nicer way of saying stubborn. 
if you know the wallaces, you know we’re word people. of course there’s a giant dictionary just hanging out in the living room on a podium. (of course.) so i sauntered over to the dictionary and looked up the word determined and read the definition out loud.
one of the first words to describe determined? stubborn. then some more discussion about stubborn versus determined happened (it’s quite the meeting of the minds with a bunch of stubborn germans in the room), and so i looked up stubborn.
“why grandma!” i exclaimed. “your picture’s right here in next to stubborn in the dictionary!” 
then of course she did her little scrunchy frownie face, waved her hand, and said “oh you,” like she does when she’s been had. 
nothing like alleviating a little stubbornness with a little humor.