The Ritual

There’s something terribly unwelcoming about the penetrating chill that Michigan greets its guests with in the winter months. For Las Vegans, walking down the jet bridge after a day-long journey, the greeting is especially rude. We’re a delicate people, when it comes to cold. Give us 110-degree heat and scorching sun; but that frosty stuff, forget it.

My wife and I recently made just such a trip back to Michigan, and the greeting, though more mild than it has been in previous trips, was no less inhospitable. As soon as we reached the baggage claim, we unzipped our bags and pulled out the winter coats that have hung in our closets since last year’s visit. We wrapped scarves around our necks, gloved our hands, and sunk our heads into our thick winter hats, then brace ourselves for the 6-yard-walk from the baggage claim doors to the waiting car. Life is hard.

We’ve heard all the excuses there are for why we can’t handle the winter weather, and we’ve used many of them ourselves.

“You’ve just acclimated to that desert heat.” “But this is a particularly cold winter.” And my favorite-- “Your blood’s just thinned”. The truth is, we’re wimps, plain and simple.

For all the violent shivering and the use of Baptist epithets against the frigid breath of the Mitten state-- “Good grief!”-- there is one thing that warms the body and the heart against it all: the sight of home.

As our car rounds the M-81 bend, there is Katie Jackson’s house, welcoming visitors and those returning home to Cass City. Although Katie is now gone, as are the candles in every window that added so much to the sensation of “homing”, the house will forever be “Katie’s” and will always signal to the Cass City native, wherever they are coming from, that the trip home is complete.

Into town we drive, the broad Main Street (99-feet-wide, to be precise) lined with two-story brick buildings, the faces of many of which have looked down onto the same parades, families, and even some businesses for well over a century, stand at attention. Some have been refreshed with 21st-century facades and signage; others’ peeling paint and empty windows speak of better days. But all of them are familiar faces that seem to smile back a “welcome home”.

Down through town, past the theatre, the corner drugstore, the village clock that is always 5 to 10 minutes slow, up the hill past the large homes built by the town’s former luminaries, and into my parents’ neighborhood.

If I’m to be honest, and I will be, the trip to my parents’ home does not require a drive down Main Street; it’s out of the way, in fact; but it’s part of my routine, part of the Ritual of returning to the Thumb of Michigan.

I spent the first 23 years of my life in this area, the sixth generation of my family to call it home. Every building, every street, contains memories, mine and those I’ve adopted from others. The Ritual I follow whenever I return to the area, done almost without thought, exhumes these recollections, and brings with them a melancholic smile to my face.

The Ritual changes little from visit to visit--that’s what makes it a ritual. But there is one deviation. When visiting in the summer months, my first stop is my grandparents’ home. (They spend their winters down south, so I’m out of luck at Christmastime; hence the deviation).

Most often, Grandpa can be found in his garage behind the house, where he is working his craft, bringing new life to aged autos. His shop smells of work, of body filler, lacquer thinner, and metal dust. I purposely scuff my feet on the concrete floor as I walk through the garage door. I don’t want to startle him. He’s deep in thought as he examines his work and plots out the next movement of his hands. Bending. Sanding. Painting.

We talk about his latest project, and he asks me about my travels; where I’ve been, where I’m going. After awhile, I ask him where Grandma is. (I always know the answer, but it’s part of the Ritual).

“She’s in the house,” he says. “Go on in and see her.”

“See ya later,” I say.

“So long,” he says.

Inside, Grandma stands in the kitchen, where she’s busy washing dishes.

“Hellooo,” she says to me.

I’m expected. It’s part of the Ritual.

We sit at the table and talk about my trip, the latest local happenings, family developments, and such. If she’s been to Turner’s Blueberry Farm, she gets a bowl for me, and pulls a half gallon of milk out of the fridge and the sugar bowl from the cupboard. I eat the sun-warmed blueberries, as we talk. Before long, it’s time to go.

Then to the library--if Grandpa & Grandma aren’t home, it’s the first stop. As the doors open, I smell the unsurprising, but still-pleasing, aroma of books.

In many towns and cities, the library is a receptacle of knowledge; a place where anyone, no matter their race, religion, creed, or social standing, has equal access to information. That’s good.

What’s great is Rawson Library. Here, the community gathers under the pretense of acquiring books, and that we do; but we gather there, also, to connect with neighbors, to organize ourselves, to exchange news--both that which is true and that which we heard is true. The library is all those things for me and more.

My visits always include conversations with the library staff, my former co-workers. We update one another on family and community news. We ask each other for more details on status updates we read on social media. We talk about books we’ve recently read. And we do this because...it’s what you do when you’re at the library.

The Ritual includes other places, too.

There’s the cemetery, where I visit the graves of loved ones departed. I don’t talk to them--they aren’t there; but it’s a good practice to remember them, to think about the ways in which our lives intertwined, and to consider the brevity of my own life. As one gravestone there reads: Where you are now, I once was. Where I am now, you will be. Prepare, in time, for eternity. I am prepared; but a visit to the cemetery is good for a soul nevertheless.

There’s the antique shop in a neighboring town, where I peruse the latest finds by local consigners. Sometimes I purchase small things; but usually not. It’s just part of the Ritual.

I drive down River Road and look down into the Cass, lazy in the summer, frozen solid in the winter.
I drive by my boyhood home on Shabbona Road; Lightning Hill, we called it. My corner bedroom looks so much smaller than it did when I was 5. Could it be the same place?

At least one morning of each visit, I have breakfast at “Nick’s”, the local restaurant. The menu there changes little, if any, from visit to visit; but that’s part of the charm. A bowl of oatmeal or a couple slices of toast hits the spot. I always come prepared to pay, but often, I find that someone else--sometimes an anonymous someone else--picks up the tab.

I now live in a city of 2 million. We have every form of entertainment you can imagine and enough dining options to make your head spin. There are well over 30 movie theaters in the city, many of them open exceptionally late. We have an Amazon fulfillment center close to us, meaning if we can’t find it in the store, we can get it delivered to our doorstep very quickly. It’s great. I enjoy it.

There is, however, no house at the curve to tell me I’m almost home; no grandparents to hug and talk with; no buildings smiling at me as I come into town; no talks with friends at the library; no roots and no memories.

For those things, I have to go home. I have to go back to the Ritual. And I’m glad it’s there.
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