Take Me to the River

You know the rest.

My boys and I drove through a tornado last Wednesday and took shelter in an Allstate car charging lounge. It wasn’t so bad. There was free ice cream and a raffle for car accessories that nobody needed, but my kids desperately did. Forty-five minutes later, we were back on the road. I would do just about anything to get to my dad’s house on the St. Croix River in Lakeland, Minnesota. We just call it “the River,” because in our family, there’s only one.

Every formative memory of my childhood happened there. It’s my favorite place on earth, not because it’s fancy or strikingly beautiful, though it is, but because it’s haunted. Haunted by the people I love who aren’t here anymore. My Grandpa Joe lives in the couch cushions and the workbench in the garage. My Grandma Eileen, the kitchen, specifically the stove. My mom, the second bedroom on the first floor, where she used to take long summer naps after a dip in the river and a bike ride.

One of the great pains of losing people you love, especially when you have small kids who never met them, is that they don’t get to know them. The next best thing is Ruben falling asleep in the exact spot on the couch where my grandpa used to nap as his WWII shows blared on the television. Or Leon playing in the closet where my grandma kept her bejeweled dressing gowns and gold lamé slippers, the ones she wore to make us feinkochens —Yiddish for omelet. Or me, taking a bike ride down the same path where my mom once rollerbladed into a deer, and feeling, for a second, like we’re all back together.

It can feel strange to talk about dead people to children. Some people are squeamish about it. But I’ve endured enough loss that I don’t have a choice — I have to get comfortable telling these stories, and so do my kids, with hearing about them. I find the easiest way to resurrect someone is through the small, ordinary memories. Last week, I took the boys on a walk to forage for raspberries and wildflowers, on the road I used to walk with my mom, and I taught them the old line she taught me: “Leaves of three, let them be.” So they wouldn’t get poison ivy. Then, like she always did, I recounted the great poison ivy outbreak of her childhood.

I never thought I'd be the kind of person who's comforted by ghosts. But here we are, all of us, rash-free.

The exact spot where my twin and I lived during our youth.