Restless Vacation - Antique Stores and Finding My Way

With serendipity, I ended up  in an antique store in Lowell, MI where the circles of my life (a la Harry Chapin) started spinning around with a fury. I was supposed to be in Maine, but my watercolor plein air class was cancelled and I decided to create a sta-cation and paint in locations around my home in Chicago... that lasted three days. I was restless.

By Wednesday afternoon, I agreed to meet a high school friend who lives in Ann Arbor for lunch in Kalamazoo halfway between us... By his map. I threw my toothbrush and contact lens supplies in a bag and took off confidently thinking I could find somewhere to paint in Michigan and maybe stay overnight. I called friends (obviously good ones) in Lansing and found a place to catch up, drink some wine, watch the last Jon Stewart and crash. They were leaving early the next morning so I could too. By then, I'd decided to take back roads toward Ionia to check in on my parents, both resting in a sunny spot at Mt Olivet with their parents, grand parents and the village that raised them.

Driving down Ionia's Main Street I stopped for over an hour and sketched my mother's family home, a once gorgeous Victorian with a porch that wraps two sides. My grandpa saw patients in the parlor there after hours.

Directly across the street, I spent many Free Fair weeks with my paternal grandmother in her tiny one bedroom apartment, sleeping on the scratchy horse-hair couch that she made up for me each night. She probably thought the highlight for those "vacations" was the Free Fair midway with the rides and games. It wasn't. It was her tiny white Jiffy mix muffins with a swipe of white butter frosting and the hours I got to play canasta with, as May Sarton said, the "girls" with the grandmother faces, her friends.

Remembering, feeling nostalgic, I continued on Main till I recognized the steep hill to the left and followed it to the crunchy dirt and gravel drive into the cemetery.

My dad visited my mother's grave, then in Florida, every Friday until he couldn't drive. For me, a cemetery is not where or when I remember those who've passed on. Yet, I found something comforting in a reminder of the inevitability of life. That cemetery holds the people that were mythological in my growing up. The owner of the drug store. A much revered great-uncle who helped my dad. The Fred who owned a furniture factory near where when my grandpa laid dying and turned off the noon whistle to not cause him pain. Another Fred along with my grandpa Fred, and the factory owner, Fred (They were known about town as "the three Freds") who started the Free Fair (Both my dad and brother have the middle name of Frederick, AND coincidentally, I married a man whose last name is Frederick. A seventh grade teacher dubbed our son, Alex as “Fred”... a nickname which remains.) Within feet of grandpa's monument there are (at least) three stones of relatives holding my name, Mary E. Longe... another reminder of life here and gone.

I stopped to remember and sketched the scene.

I let the paints dry while I took a swig on a bottle of water and decided the rest of the day.  I  meandered up and down a few streets, but even the plethora of yard sales didn't tempt me to stop. While waiting for traffic to clear on Lincoln, I saw that the road also had a road number, M21. I turned lef, west onto it, figuring my GPS would eventually figure out, a way home. I wasn't ready for the expressway. The trees and grass were too green, the flowers in gardens too vibrant, the sun too bright to not take it in at a slower pace. I needed time to process the day so far.  M21 led me to Lowell.

Maybe as a child with my parents I was in Lowell, but not in any conscious way. I drove into town, decided I was hungry and would pick one once I could see the options.  I drove three or four blocks of downtown, crossed the river, where the antique stores near the west end caught my eye. I circled around, parked, went into one, and promptly bought a new camp chair, still in its original bag, that the owner explained was left in the store when they took over. It appeared perfect for sketching with its back and a little hideaway compartment for, in my case, a sketch book, pens and  paint. Cool find. I walked next door into Glass House Designs and walked out with Christmas presents made by Michigan artists. Cool finds. Walked into Dovetail Antiques. it was the first shop where I wasn't the only customer. There were voices and activity in the back.

None of them heard me yelp. Over in a corner holding dried flowers or something inside it sat a greyed and slightly bowed wood crate with black block lettering, FRIARS ALE, Grand Valley Brewing Company, Ionia Mich… My father was the brewmaster there before I was born from just after prohibition until 1948. Prior to this, the only item from that part of his life that had been passed to me was a small promotional sign, probably made for a bar. The aforementioned Alex/Fred, a craft home-brewer himself, owns the best memorabilia from my brother's collection … Dad's little black leather-bound book, with his notes from brew school (in  Chicago) and the recipes from that brewery.

I left Lowell, after a fantastic lunch a few feet from an old paddle boat that looks like it belongs in New Orleans, by the water at Flat River Grill,. I felt better than elated… content, maybe. Coincidence? I think not. I can’t help but connect dots of having spent time with friends who knew my grandmother and parents,  of visiting the cemetery where I saw the names of the three Freds and “the girls” who taught me card games and my own name on gravestones and, of finding the Friars Ale crate, something my father may have seen stacked in shipping or loaded on a truck. I was ready to come home feeling connected with those who came before. I felt good for having sketched - my present, and a peace about what is to come. I have an unfamiliar sense of being in the right place in my life… not restless.