Once every summer, we drive 4 and a half hours north to find silence. This morning, I woke up to sunshine leaking past the curtains. I walked down to the dock on Flour Lake. When I am in the city, this is the place I imagine when instructed to go to a favorite restorative spot in my mind. This dock, these gently lapping waves, the line of pines reflected in the water, the white, billowing clouds. An eagle circling over the trees to my right. Today, I settled on the dock cross-legged, drank in the beloved view, and closed my eyes.
At first, I heard nothing. My city battered ears felt dull and muffled. I breathed in, letting the taste of cool water and pine linger in the back of my throat. A spot of sun burning on my left cheek. Gradually, as my ears settled into the quiet, I began to hear. A single car passing on the access road a mile away. Birds chirping. A bluejay’s squawk. The slight movement of leaves in the breeze. And then, the mad cackling of a pair of loons, calling to each other, over and over on Hungry Jack Lake - the next lake over in the lacy pattern of scattered water that makes up the Boundary Waters.
I feel my edges dissolve. This is it. I am home on this precious planet Earth.
My father sits on the deck, and clears his throat. His voice is barely audible, his words slurred. He hasn’t said anything more than yes, no, or ok in weeks, lost in some nonverbal space the doctors call dementia. I have to move closer. He starts over. “I need to make one more trip to Germany, and I want you to be my travel companion.” My heart clenches. We had this conversation a year ago. At the time, Ron said immediately, “Impossible.”
But I understand that yearning for home. I researched all possible ways to make the trip, including checking into the logistics of getting handicapped hotel rooms and making an ocean crossing. I discovered that it would be impossible to get travel health insurance for someone over 85 with a history of heart attacks. He’s prone to losing all sense of time and location, even at the Assisted Living, so I would have to share a room with him. I wondered if he wanted to go home to die. If that was it, I wanted it to be possible, but in the end, I was relieved when he stopped asking.
“We could fly to Boston, and stay a few days with your sister to recover, and then fly to Frankfurt. From there we could take the train to Gera.” He’s thought it all through. Travel planning was a constant all his life. Even after he retired from his career in international sales, he lived for the next trip. When he told me that he was done traveling six years ago, I think he expected he could just lie down and wait for the end.
I listen to his whole plan. When he is finished, I try to divert him by asking why he wants to go.
Remind him that he had decided he couldn’t fly to Europe anymore. He really doesn’t have an answer. At some point he says, “I don’t want to get sentimental about this.” He never could talk about feelings.
Instead, he says he wants to pay his respects to his companion Hannelore’s grave, and that he wants to see his childhood home once more. I ask him if photographs would help. If he would like to Skype with his sister. He nods. That might help.
Ten minutes later he starts over. “I need to you to come with me to Germany one more time.”
I try several different approaches, but as the evening advances, and the June Minnesota sun begins its slow descent behind the trees, I realize that nothing short of “no” will work.
For decades I carried anger against my father for not letting me return to Germany. The memory of how trapped I felt as an adolescent still makes me choke. But having to say “no, we cannot make another trip to Germany. You have to stay here, now” doesn’t give me the slightest satisfaction. It only breaks my heart.
In my book, I wrestle with the idea of my national identity. I learned years ago that my moments when doubts drop away - the moments I feel rooted in the place where I’m standing - come when I’m participating in the American political process.
Before I go further I have to explain my decision to include my politics, both in my book and in my blog. Shortly after I first started blogging, my friend Anita Mathias, an established blogger, was caught in a web tempest. One of her tweets was retweeted by thousands and trashed violently. During the search for the younger Tsaernev she ventured to say that she was praying for him as well as the victims. I empathized with her - I had the same thought earlier that day. After all, my daily meditation practice is meant to enhance my capacity for compassion.
What lesson do I take from this? The danger is small. Unlike Anita I write in relative obscurity. Yet I wondered. How should I approach my internet life? My friend Barbara counseled me to use her grandmother’s rule of polite conversation: Never talk about politics or religion. As soon as I heard her say it, I knew that wasn’t going to work. My spiritual and political life are one and the same, and deep expressions of who I am.
So it was today, that I found myself at the Minnesota State Capitol, singing, clapping, standing for five hours, waiting for the Senate to vote to legalize gay marriage. I mention this because it was with amazement that I found myself singing “America the Beautiful” several times during those hours, meaning every word, choking up. I even managed to cobble together enough of the lyrics to the “Star-Spangled Banner” to pass. And I have never been prouder to be a Minnesotan than in that moment that we knew the measure had passed. Today, I felt at home.
