The Blogosphere & The Biological

Hello friends! 

The blogosphere has reeled me in. I am so charmed by everyone else entries and updates. Here is a decidedly tangential first entry.  

I'm cutting up I-79 North, launching myself past roads I see 4-5 times a week, for work, onto roads I see 4-5 times a year, for holidays, or for when the weather reaches a particular type of niceness that makes me long for my childhood backyard and the farm across the street. 

I'm moving from the mundane to the familiar.  

Aforementioned backyard circa 2021

This is a day trip, a heretofore uncommon occurrence, to my dad's house. The 4 hours there and back used to feel insurmountable, but now that my work commute is 3 hours that amount of time seems... negligible. Funny how the impossible becomes inconsequential with practice. There is something to be said here about the human spirit. But, I am not going to be the one to say it.  

After 2020, a year in which I did not see my hometown once, I started some traditions to mark my time at "home". My favorite is to take a simple pilgrimage down Main Street. I note what has changed, what is the same, what I wish Wheeling had, and what I think is strange. 

• there is a green turning arrow at the intersection where my car got totaled when I was 17 (not because of having to turn left though) 
• a game store
• a wood-fired oven pizza place
• TWO breweries 
• the shop my mother used to buy second-hand romance novels at is now a cafe run by a woman I had Japanese language class with in high school.  

Briefly, I am a tourist. Briefly, I am a historian. 

As I'm driving I come up behind a car with a license plate cover that is American flag patterned on one side and rainbow flag patterned on the other. 

Artistic rendering of said license plate

We all have our own expressions of pride. Sometimes it's a flag, sometimes it's a tradition.

Time at my dad's is always steeped in nostalgia, but this visit is particularly pungent as we all sort through old Christmas decorations, claiming what we want, consenting to donate the rest. In addition to getting my holiday decor in order I also buy ice cream from the corner store (out of obligation, more than hunger), and make a point to sit on the back porch and stare at the trees for at least 5 minutes (out of joy, I love this backyard, it was a great place to be a kid).

Then I'm off to my aunt's house (a quick and hilly 15-minute drive away), which is the reason for the trip in the first place. My aunt and uncle (married, living in AZ) have come to visit my other aunt and uncle (married, living in PA) and also help finish the house they've lived in for almost 30 years so they can sell it. 

Hellos and hugs are handed out, catching up is done, and everyone takes a turn entertaining my cousin's seven and four year old daughters. I am never around this side of the family without thinking of the phrase "cut from the same cloth". Our patterns blend right into one another. 

Right before dinner another aunt and uncle (married, living in Pittsburgh) show up. This uncle, when he walks in, reminds me strikingly of my granda- their posturing and hair have become the same. My grandpa, to me, is like a fable. He had a whole, long-lived, life that I saw very little of. Allow me a small (medium-sized) divergence. 

Family portrait. Yes, my grandfather is holding a pineapple- we'll get to that.

Our time on this earth only overlapped for 11 years. And during those 11 years, my grandpa's brain was muddled. He would confuse things in a way that felt funny as a child but seems distressing as an adult. Once, he told a story about being unable to land a WWII plane because there was something wrong with the microwave. He told this story well, as in, it held everyone's attention, but also with real distress. The plane, in his memory, was rapidly running out of fuel.  

My grandfather had plenty of experience landing WWII planes, he was an airplane mechanic during the war.  But none of them would have had microwaves- those weren't invented yet.

            A note: While writing this I have learned that microwaves were invented as a result of radar technology

              used during WWII. A fact that perhaps lived in my grandfather's brain alongside his time as an airplane 

              mechanic and later wove its way into this story. 

He was also easily angered and easily confused during those years. By all accounts, I never got to meet the man who raised my mother and her siblings. I am told he was a writer.  And an avid reader. He marked every book he owned with a stamp he made that claimed them as part of his personal library. After most of the kids were grown and moved out he made them all come back for a bit and help him build a new house- across the crick from the old house. 

The new house. Notably built without AC or windows that opened.

After it was finished he added an office for himself, three of the four walls were just bookshelves. As a teenager he gave a performance as Rip Van Winkle so memorable that for the rest of his life people called him Rip (including his kids, including his grandkids, including his wife). In the above family photo he is holding a pineapple because, for the first time in a long time, none of his children were small enough to hold during a family portrait, and he needed to be holding something.  

This has strayed far from the main path- but I do love an excuse to show old family photos. 

The point is that people have many lives. Most of which I will not know and will not get to see. But god, it is so precious to be afforded the glimpses I do get. Even through misplaced memories. Even through online blogs.