Once More to Pine Hollow

          The end game was me sitting on a dark porch listening to static on a faraway radio station and staring at the dock lights on the other side of the lake. This was Pine Hollow -- now a discarded hulk, not unlike the frosted ice tea glasses you got for a wedding gift and never opened. It all began in 2005 when the tail did not wag the dog -- it possessed the poor animal: Peg and Jenna were buying new bathing suits and I suddenly found myself in a Sea Doo dealership being told by my family "we'll use it a lot." That led to paying twice as much as we wanted on a vacation house because it was closer to boat ramp. At first it was pure glee. If Martin Luther King could have imagined it, this, not children of all color playng together, would have been his dream. Evan, 16, Chad, 13, and Jenna 10, were perfect ages. Our friends came and they brought boats; there were long hot days tubing, skiiing, and wakeboarding, fueled with beer and barbeque and late night bonfires. The grass was brown and so was our skin. But by the middle of the second summer Evan began to spend 18 hours a day with his head pressed on the living room floor in sleep. The rest of the time he sulked around demanding to go home. Chad and Jenna, so enthused with the place at first, now boldly stated their feelings: "Do we have to go there every weekend? We're sick of Pine Hollow." Peg was busy wondering why we didn't spend 5 times more and get a place at a resort. So as I began to wake up alone more and more in Pine Hollow, I began to think of renting it. I announced this to the family and they were relieved they would not have to hear me beg them to go ever again. That was 2007. Grudgingly, now Chad and Jenna have recently said they miss Pine Hollow. I've told them to do what I do: Sit on the porch at home, listen to a battered radio, and imagine the school parking lot lights in the distance to be the dock lights at Pine Hollow.

Time for Vultures to Circle

In first grade I was told by a mustachioed nun to never let food go to waste because children were dying in Africa. Permanently imprinted in me, I have dogged my children all their lives to eat leftovers. It's usually me though, who pries the tops from faux Tupperware, mixes the dormant bacteria-laden food and then watches it "blend" in the microwave. Evan for some reason actually paid some attention to me and will eat cooked leftovers in a "raw" state (no sauces, garnish, or evidence that any other food has touched the surface). Evan recently left home and we heard he landed a spot on a friend's floor for the time being. Well, he's come over to watch football the last two Saturdays and we've allowed him to make Evan Nachos - simply chips with microwaved sizzled cheese over them. Last Saturday, I offered him Friday's steak and he was too full after his redneck fondue plate (nachos). He fell asleep at haftime, stayed that way -- on the floor -- for four hours and never ate the steak. Trouble is, Peg and Mai won't eat it and my doctor says it's too much cholesterol for me. So, tommorrow when he comes over for the football game, I've planned to give him the same steak (now going on 8 days old) but with a bottle of his favorite barbeque sauce on the side. It'll be just like the old days when he used to live here: a pond of Sweet Baby Ray's on the plate and a big chunk of meat stuck to a fork dangled over it, and Evan will be driving his teeth into the brown meat like an anxious preschooler attacking his first cotton candy.

Once more to Jane Street

It was going to be a trip to 8-Mile Road because Jenna was obsessed with the movie, but I was coaxed on by passengers Evan, Jenna, and cousin Cayla. They wanted to see "the old neighborhood." My sister, Gravalier, wanted none of it and pleaded for me to turn around. As we decended down Chalmers from Jefferson, there seemed to be more multi-colored cinder-block "party stores" than homes; the store windows and doors had thick black bars guarding goods that undoubtedly would be paid for through 6-inch thick bulletproof glass. Along the street were vacant lots, lots with piles of debris that were once homes, boarded-up houses with painted gang codes and brick scorched like open barbeques at Belle Isle Park,  and people, lots of people. Two things I'd read about Detroit before I visited crossed my mind as we stopped at a light on Charlevoix: Detroit was named one of the 10 deadliest cities in the world; and it is a "one race" city. I could remember the urgent sound of my mother's instructions in 1967: "Roll up the windows and lock the doors; we're in a bad neighborhood." Gravalier was claiming an anxiety attack and reaching for medication. The kids wanted to wave at people and "be friendly." I told them I wasn't sure how the Detroiters would take that: a carload of white people waving and gesturing in an area it didn't appear any white people traveled. For, as we winded our way through the old neighborhood, passed St. Juliana Elementary School, passed our childhood home on Jane Street, passed Denby High School, and finally ended up on 8 Mile, we did not see one other white person; however, it didn't seem like anybody really noticed anything different about us.