On the last day of the year, the houses through my window across the way are so dark that I wonder if there’s been a power outage. There are cars on the street, though, so somebody must be home. The last day of 2023 is a good one to stay in.
I was either too smart or too dumb for the hide and seek games we played at Grandma’s house with our cousins 60 years ago. I didn’t understand that not to hide too well was the essence of the game, that the idea was hide only well enough to be the last person found. It was my idea to not come out until it was getting dark and it was time to go home. ‘Where ya’ been?’ my brother would say, laughing, ‘You missed the apple dumplings,’ but I wouldn’t tell him I’d been behind the battleship tree next to the field of ripe tomato hand grenades because I wanted never to be found the next time, too.
Losing to time would be the end of me. Winning meant that I would never be found. I was the last Japanese soldier 20 years after Nagasaki in a cave not able to understand that the Americans had won and now we are friends. “Wait a minute,” that guy said. “Didn’t somebody tell us to never surrender in the struggle for the soul of our nation? I did that. I won.”
“There’s a new game,” the unexpected guest from academia replied. “That was then, and this is now.” That game ended. On a battleship. “You missed the ample dumplings.”
Our house was a cave in winter cold when we got home yesterday from our grandson’s third birthday celebration in Minneapolis. Seven or eight of his closest friends and twice that many grown-ups, converged two days after Christmas at a kids’ suburban theme party fun-time store, like Chucky Cheez, but more acoustic than electric. Unselfish toddlers played with unplugged toy trains on low tables of wooden track and then assembled in a back room for pizza and a chorus of Happy Birthday. “…to you,” on cue, our Vern blew, and Judy and I later noted the absence of meltdowns. No tussles over the same caboose. No “Where’s my present?” These kids are alright.
I have a vague recollection enhanced by a photo of my own third birthday, but I don’t expect Vern to remember his day. Whether he does or not, there is some spirit of himself that Vern will swim back to later. From out of the place from before the time when memory gets in the way, he’s headed off into the instinctive journey of hope we share, the one that comes with a new beginning. It's his chance to make good on the repair the world promise that we ran out of time to keep. At the end of our trip, it’s fun to see the start of his.
We were raised to believe that things would continue getting better, better than they were, even objectively, with measures like the gross national product and something called the standard of living. Now, those seem like the measurements we needed to tell ourselves what we wanted to hear. At this stage, it can feel like we were naive, swimming upstream against barriers that, of course, outlive us.
But somehow, after swimming unwittingly for 67 years, somehow, a few of us have gotten over and around enough obstacles to return to a familiar spot, a spirit place where dreams are born. Funny, it’s called Choo Choo Bob’s Train Store.
We’ve brought you something. I’ll leave it here. And you, I see, have something for me.
Maybe you are a grandparent, too, awakening upstream exactly where you are supposed to be, at the family preserve, somehow situated now next to Costco, as it turns out, near Interstate 394. Where being Grandpa means a hug from the power of love, and watching Vern blow out three birthday candles with his friends at Choo Choo Bob’s Train Store.
‘Come out of the woods, Grandpa,’
He’s too young to remember the day, but there was some spirit of himself there, that he’ll carry on. From out of the place from before the time when memory gets in the way, he’ll head off into a new version of what we want to see, the chance to make good on the promise we ran out of time to keep. Sixty-seven years later he’ll arrive swimming at place he did not know he had left.
I’ve brought you something. I’ll leave it here. And you, I see, have something for me.
Come out of the cave, Grandpa.
A new game started last week at Choo Choo Bob’s Train Store.
It’s started to snow. The houses through my window across the way are so dark that I wonder if there’s been a power outage. There are cars on the street, though, so somebody must be home.
Music: "How To Fight Loneliness" by Wilco
