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August 13, 1998
The Season of Good-byes
By Anne-Marie Oomen
Sun contributor
I’m sitting at my kitchen table making a grocery list when I notice the sugar bowl is empty. It is empty because I have been saying good-bye for days. Whenever someone stops to say good-bye — to leave for the winter, for school, for another job — we share some sweet sun tea. It is that reason — sweet tea and sad good-byes. The contradictions we live. The days are still hot enough and long enough for the tea to steep and be chilled for visitors, but the season is changing even as I write this. The company from California have caught their plane home; my relatives have driven back to Chicago.
And I am thinking about good-byes.
Recently, I attended two gatherings for young people going away to college. I watched their confident faces. Though there were tears, I knew that the old cliche sticks because it is mostly true — for them good-bye is a beginning, not an ending. I realize they don’t know what good-bye means in the way we do when we are older, watching them leave. Though they will learn it, I believe we are left with the greater sadness. Many young friends leave, pulled ahead of themselves, living already in different places and times, looking toward the new life even as they tenderly kiss their farewells. I remember my mother accused me of not understanding her sadness when I finally left for college. I didn’t believe her, but she was right. We learn the depth of good-byes from age and experience.
Other good-byes come back. This year, in order to pursue long-time dreams, two beloved friends have left for the opposite side of the planet. They are full of hope, and I wish them Godspeed, but now, in the emptiness they leave, I miss them and rattle around for days until I finally pick up the pen and start writing, easing them good-bye with the news of our everyday life.
Many of us are so pained by good-byes, we can barely speak of them. A close friend, confiding to me about saying good-bye to his son when he moved to a far-away city, confessed that he could not cry. When I asked why, he said, “If I would have let myself begin, it never would have stopped.” So, he told his son he loved him, but left dry-eyed.
Sometimes we learn the depth good-byes can assume when we say them for the last time. In this year, my family said good-bye to a beloved sister/aunt who was dying. She was the first of my dad’s siblings to die, and it was difficult for all of us. We were forced to realize those we have looked to for so long are changing their seasons too. There is no good-bye more painful, more necessary. Sadly, we have also had to say good-bye to those who died unexpectedly, who had no time to respond, and that one is harder still in these small communities where we have known each other through many winters.
However, the cynical good-byes we share with summer people are not so painful. After the joy and intensity of the summer experience, these friends leave us to go back to their other lives, but we know they’ll be back. Their good-byes feel more like rituals, ceremonies of leaving matched by the ceremonies of returning in the spring. And their leaving is the true harbinger of a new season. Though I will miss the bustle and energy and pleasure of summer friends, I will be the first to say I cherish walking in the quieter woods and on the empty beaches. When John and Celeste, Ben and Kristin, Ruthie, Betsy, or Pauline point their cars home, David and I stand in the driveway and wave, filled with the mix of lonesomeness and gratitude for these rich friendships. Then we do the laundry, clean the fridge, and stretch back into our places.
Our summer friends’ leaving signals the end of a season, and I am aware of what will be missed — shared grocery lists, sweetened tea, picnics on the beach. And what will be gained. I sit at my kitchen table, realizing I won’t have to buy sugar because I don’t bake much when there’s no company. And it will be quieter around here, a delicious gift. There will be the September swims for just the two of us, the golden October walks, the late garden harvest. But when beloved people leave, they often take a little sweetness with them. We learn about the small emptiness like my sugar bowl, a bit of hollow pewter with a sticky spoon.
Posted by editor at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
Yarn Shop feature
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
Fingers weave their way through strands of soft thread: casting on, knitting and pearling, decreasing and increasing stitches, ultimately creating tapestries of each sock, mitten or sweater.
There is a story in every piece of clothing at the Yarn Shop, located in the Village Sampler plaza in downtown Glen Arbor. Young women and old women alike browse through Mary Turak's store, push their husbands off toward the next shop and join the knitting circle — an unofficial club of mostly summer residents who spend their carefree days weaving yarn and sharing yarns with each other.
The round table discussions usually begin when a timid, yet eager visitor realizes the peaceful joy in the knitting circle, and asks one of the members for help getting started. Turak, a former school teacher herself, usually answers the distress call. Her motto is written on a sign hanging on the left wall: "To teach is to love" — a slogan she claims is written on billboards all over the country.
"It's amazing how many people come in with no intentions of knitting," Turak said. "But they catch the bug and decide to start a project. Knitting is very therapeutic, you just sit and it gets your mind off your troubles."
The knitting circles almost become pseudo-support groups as the interwoven threads hold sweaters together like five or six women sitting in a circle, comforting each other with stories from their youth.
"Teaching other women to knit, you find out about their families, their children and where they live," said Mary Jane, Turak's righthand woman on any given day. "And the next year they're up, they come back."
Debbie Bordinat is one of those women. She says she bought her yarn a year and a half ago, but she didn't actually learn to knit until she came into the Yarn Shop this summer. Now Bordinat knits at her job — collecting $5 fees at the public boat ramp on the end of Lake Street.
"A woman came into the Yarn Shop to knit once, just after see saw me knitting at the boat ramp," said Bordinat.
The knitting often seems as contagious as the tails that follow.
Grab a seat next to Mary's mother-in-law Olga Turak, and one might hear about her immigration to the Pennsylvania coal mines from the hard times in Ukraine, as a two-year old. She says that everybody from Europe was coming over here at that time. Olga has been back to visit Ukraine, but she wasn't allowed to see the old village where she was born. Apparently, it was so impoverished that some don't want Americans to take that knowledge home with them.
The elder Turak isn't knitting anything right now. She's just sitting in the circle, spinning yarns of a different kind — the kind that make you listen in wonder.
Though the informal knitters club gathers nearly every day in the early afternoon, the Yarn Shop does have some designated discussion sessions. There's a Book Club which meets here twice a month in the summer and once a month in the winter, at 8:30 on Friday mornings. The turnouts aren't large: maybe 5-10 people. But they are big enough to have true literary discussions.
"Anybody can show up, they're very informal," said Mary Turak. "We don't tell you to do a report. You don't even have to have read the book. Just show up."
The next Book Club meeting is scheduled for ???, and the featured book which will be discussed is "Buster Midnight's Cafe," a moving novel about Montana in the 1930's.
But given the informalities of any gathering at the Yarn Shop, the conversation may shift away from the pages and toward childhood reminiscing, or even current events. For instance, one may learn how Mary's grandchildren Cassie and Chase fared, running at the Junior Olympics in Norfolk, Virginia recently. Mary claims her youngest grandchild Kiefer can run fast too, but only when he gets into trouble.
Sometimes Mary brings Kiefer to the store and babysits him there. He's usually the only kid in the store, but one can imagine how this cute little child draws in women of all ages.
Though it usually raises a few eyebrows, a member of the weaker sex also comes into the Yarn Shop every once in a while. Usually the men scurry away to look at t-shirts elsewhere in the Village Sampler, but the contagious fingers-to thread-to story appeal has seduced a few husbands into picking up the needle and thread.
"I almost always get one man-knitter every summer," Mary said. "Last year there was a couple who'd come and knit together. But I don't really have a lot of men's clothing. I only do men's sweaters to order because men are so picky."
Turak won't discriminate by gender, though knitting traditionally appeals to women more than men. What makes her day is anyone who comes in with a good story. And on one particular afternoon a couple of weeks ago, Mary received a visit from Lyndon and Angela Welch.
At first the names meant little to a history buff like her. But Mary soon learned that Lyndon's father was Joe Welch, the East Coast lawyer hired to defend the American Army during the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. Her spine twinged when Lyndon recited his father's famous words: "Have you no decency sir, have you no decency?"
Mary claims that these words turned the tide of the overboard senator Joe McCarthy and his infamous Red Scare era.
All within the annals of history, but all woven together into one giant tapestry.
Posted by editor at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)
The sensual joys of baking soda, orWhy Bibb's Market hats can survive a nuclear holocaust
By Brian Hester
Sun contributor
My evening began innocently enough, I was spending the night at Bibb’s Market — the fresh food store that my wife Marcie and I own — doing a lot of grunt work, just washing all the walls and scrubbing the toilet. My friend John Belanger had been here helping me jack up my convection oven. I was tired of it sitting on treated 4 x 4’s, so we put them up on legs and, after he left, I was just about to begin painting the oven.
After I'd evaluated what I'd need to paint, I grabbed the 4 x 4's and took off through the back of the building, accidentally turning the knob the wrong way on the back door. It was 11:40 at night on August 3rd, and I'd just locked myself out of the building. Still, I kept up my unassuming stride around the east end of Bibb's Market towards my truck, which I knew wasn't locked.
But as I walked around the picnic table closest to the Market, something stopped me dead in my tracks, a color that stood out against the dark night — the way a young boy pulls up lame just as he's about to step in a patch of yellow snow.
I met the skunk directly, nearly missing stepping on it by half a foot. A split-second later I saw it lift up its hind end and shoot directly for my face. I heard the squirting sound — an audible pssssssst, like something was being squeezed out of it.
They say you sometimes do strange things on a dime in desperate situations. Well I'm not left-handed, but I grabbed my brand new Bibb's Market hat — that I'd just received from two customers of ours — with my weak hand and threw the hat as far as I could.
Milliseconds later, it was as if I had walked into a glass wall. I suggested to myself, "Maybe it was just a little hit." This was all happening in seconds. I've been robbed before. I've been shot before, so I know how quickly the mind processing these things. In a matter of milliseconds my life was passing slowly before my eyes. But this had to be fate that we met point blank. The skunk had made up his mind to shoot me long before I locked myself out of the Market.
Two-three seconds later I was pretty much overwhelmed. I started walking towards the front door of our sandwich shop. But I realized there was no way I could go in there. So I stood in the parking lot, twenty yards from M-22, and stripped down to my boxer shorts. I thought about revealing all, but I told myself, "I smell like I've been hit by a skunk, they'd arrest me for sure."
So, in nothing but my boxers, I took off toward my friend John Belanger's house on my daughter's bicycle. Because my eyes stung so badly, I held up one hand in front of my face as if I could stop the air from piercing my pained skin.
I rode the bicycle one-handed, swerving like an inebriated dink-fart, while I cruised down Lake Street towards Lake Michigan. My buddy John lives behind Becky Thatcher's.
As I passed Art's Bar, things were hopping as usual. But still I thought to myself, "I'll bet I could go in there and sit anywhere I wanted." I was laughing at myself the whole time uttering, "I got sprayed by a skunk, I got sprayed by a skunk."
But after crossing M-22, things were getting darker and darker as the lights became fewer and fewer. By the time I got to Becky Thatcher's I had shifted into the lowest gear on the bicycle because my eyes were watering and I was having trouble seeing.
I pulled up to John's house in my boxer shorts, went into his garage and pounded on his back door with enthusiasm. No answer. So I went around to his bedroom window and yelled "John!"
"What?" he replied.
Knowing that I was about to ask John to let me, "Pepe' le pew" into his house, I had to think of something clever to tell him. I told him that we needed to trap a skunk.
"Tonight?" he asked.
"No," I said. "We'll trap him another night. I just met him and I didn't catch him tonight."
A long, drawn out "Oooooh Brian!" followed.
I said "Yep ... point-blank, direct hit. You gotta help me out buddy."
He asked, "What do you want me to do?"
I told him, "Turn on the shower and make it a nice tempy. Then open the door and clear the way."
Going down to the garage door, I took off my boxers and waited 45-50 seconds. Who knows? It seemed like an eternity. I saw the back room light turn on and I took off, running through the garage. John opened the door and I hit the deck in perfect stride, ran through the house and jumped in the shower. I took two complete hard showers with soap, but they didn't seem to make any difference.
So I squatted down in John's tub and asked him for his cordless phone to call my wife and tell her that I was going to be home later than expected. On my first attempt I got the machine and yelled excitedly for someone to pick it up. I hung up and called on redial. Finally, my wife Marcie answered the phone and asked what I wanted.
I didn't mess around. I told her that I had been sprayed by a skunk. She asked me what I had done about it so far and I told her that I had taken two showers — neither of which had worked. She told me to ask John if he had any baking soda. He did. I told my wife I would try it. She wished my luck, but told me to come home even if the plan wasn't a success.
I hung up the phone and caked myself with John's industrial-sized Sam's Club baking soda. John placed it on top of the toilet and said, "Brian, you stink."
I thanked him.
I stood in the back of the shower after caking myself completely, rocking on my heels, chanting, "Yep, I got hit by a skunk. Hey, you ever met anyone who's been bit by a skunk?" I figured I was the only human being out there in the world who could say, "Yes indeed, I have been sprayed by a skunk." At one point while rocking in the shower I slipped and John thought I had fallen.
For or five minutes went by and I was finally ready to rinse off. As I rinsed, the caked soda began to slide off and run down the drain to the septic system where it belonged — with the rest of the aromatic pleasures no one ever - ever - ever - except me has had to deal with. After rinsing myself clean with pure, pristine downtown Glen Arbor water, I was free.
John had gone to bed. Meanwhile, I was experiencing the most glorious short-term recovery in the history of these parts.
I yelled out "John!"
"What?" he replied in annoyance.
I told him I needed some clothes, knowing fully well that I had left my own ones safe and secure by the roadside, in front of Bibb's Fresh Market across town.
I dressed, not needing to say goodnight to my good friend John Belanger, and jumped on my big two-wheeler for the trip back. When I returned to the scene of the crime, I grabbed my clothes and stuck them in a brown bag (my favorite boots included), and tossed them in my truck.
I was just about ready to leave when I remembered my hat. There it was, lying in the lot next to Burdette's Flower Court. I hesitantly approached it, knowing it was going to have a pungent aroma. I drew closer and closer and then stopped, bent down to cradle it for perhaps the last time, and found it had come through unscathed.
Imagine that! Not only do I have an incredible wife who loves me enough to say, "Come on home Skunky," she cures me and hat lives on.
I can go to work selling food tomorrow and still wear my new hat. I can't wait to tell Jack and Renee.
P.S. Pepe ' le pew has moved on to another place in town. Beware Glen Arborites ... he could be lurking anywhere.
Posted by editor at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)