cousins – I Just Have to Say…

Still a part of my new life as a widow and a grandma in the making…

Esther and I were enjoying our time in North Carolina, the second day after her arrival. When we get together, Esther often brings me some piece of clothing that she thinks I would like. This time I was gifted with a nice cotton dress, the kind of dress that should be worn often and enjoyed, so I was wearing it on this day and feeling quite comfortable in a fun, old fashioned way.

Gwennie Ru and I went on a walk, as was our new custom. This time I stayed on the paths that were not difficult to negotiate while wearing the dress, that was just a bit above my ankles. It was easy to check my legs for wood ticks, and there were none after the walk. But, strangely, there was a bite that looked and felt like a tick bite. I was bothered all night, wondering where the tick might be. Every little sensation, anywhere, had me searching all over again. If you’ve ever lived in wood tick country, you know what I’m saying.

The next day the four of us girls started on our trip to Pennsylvania. It was a rainy day with tropical storm Ophelia. The night before, I had seriously thought about cancelling. I could imagine having an accident on the way and risking all of us, Dennis’s whole family, being wiped out on the way to his memorial. But, I’m not superstitious about my worrisome thoughts, and it didn’t seem like a message from God either. Morning came and gave us a break long enough to load the car and set out. Of course, I prayed for safety and then began the drive. I was concentrating on the road all day and didn’t think about bug bites, or itching.

We arrived at our destination and were getting ready for bed that night when I realized there were bites all over my legs and midriff. All over, and they were inflamed, and they itched. They were not wood tick bites, they were chiggers. I had heard of them, but never experienced the misery. I spent the next two days taking Benadryl every four hours just to get through the weekend. I am rethinking going on walks down by the river, in a dress. Just so you know, there were no bug bites on my grandbaby.

Thankfully, nothing was able to ruin the time together with the Pennsylvania family. The memorial was a chance to reconnect with them and strengthen family bonds. We talked and remembered things about Dennis and his growing up years that made him who he was. I saw my children and their cousins coming to appreciate each other and their life experiences. I enjoyed the same welcoming spirit and comforting love from Dennis’s brother and sister and their families that I had always felt. I realized that I had let some of that lie untended and forgotten.

The truth is that with any love, for myself, for others, or for God, doing with intention is necessary. Even though I may not have told love to die, it will up and do so all by itself, unless I tend to it. Time goes by and the distance created becomes more tolerable. I can forget how special it is to love and to be loved. That is a sad position to be in.

Now, we are safely back in North Carolina. My bug bites have healed. I am sticking to safer paths for the time being, no matter what I’m wearing. And I am seriously thinking about how the next Dietz reunion might look. The weekend had some valuable results, just sayin’…

A spider is probably not anyone’s favorite image to attach to a memory or a place, but when you grow up calling a place Spider Lake, you eventually quit thinking about real spiders and just think about the lake. This lake is really a chain of lakes, four to be exact, connected by short rivers. For many years one of my cousins has owned the Spider Lake Golf Club and Resort and it was only recently I learned that it is actually located on Clear Lake in the Spider Lake chain. Big Spider (ugh!), Little Spider and North Lake make up the other three.

My visit this summer was prompted in part by a reunion of my cousin’s family, as well as my own. This was the day we met at Spider Lake Golf Club for a wonderful dinner cooked on the grill and lots of family fellowship. Cousins from as far away as Alaska and Florida (me) got reacquainted with each other, and fed mosquitoes. It seems the mosquitoes are a force to be reckoned with everywhere near the water or woods in Wisconsin. The young people hunted frogs, played catch and got underfoot. The rest of us visited and ate. It’s kind of a standard theme among us. Always have food.

One of the most interesting activities at our gathering was making an African Praise Poem about mom. Mom is one of three surviving siblings in her family of seven and a favorite among all the cousins. After dinner we “poets” and mom talked together about the important events of mom’s life and the memories we had surrounding those times. There were tears. All these recollections were recorded and will be arranged, poetically and mysteriously, in the form of the African Praise Poem. We’ll all get to see it when daughter Esther puts the finishing touches on it. We asked mom how it felt to be the subject of an interactive poem like this and she admitted that it felt a little like being at her own memorial service, but not a bad thing overall.

I think Spider Lake is known for being a good fishing lake, and there are resorts and cabins available there still. It was a beautiful day, and a beautiful lake.