Finding Raven’s Roost

Two days without The Daily. Many of you must be relieved. I am engaged in the adventure of Finding Raven’s Roost, prompted by his coming eviction from the Potemkin Village Assisted Living Facility.

As Big Mama has declined, he has regained some of his strength, and has been leaving the apartment to “go to meetings,” which is the term of art Big Mama uses for his uninvited intrusions into the apartments of other residents.

So I am here again. There has been an enormous amount of stuff to process- all of it against the audio backdrop of a dozen waxing-and-waning National Public Radio stations having simultaneous Fund Drives across the Midwest. I think that is one of Dante’s circles of hell, but habit it habit.

It was not like this with satellite radio in the rental caddy a few weeks ago, and that is really the way to travel if you have to drive 800 miles to get to the Little Village By the Bay. I will stipulate that there is no highway ride like a big Crown Vic police car, so long as you get to ride in the front.

The memories are swirling this morning, along with the brightly colored leaves being ripped from the trees in the rising fresh gale off the bay where the whitecaps are rolling toward the sandy beach of the State Park to the east.

And I need to get this out of the way and prepare for the meeting with the nursing home and Raven and Big Mama later this morning.

I am always a little dazed up here on arrival. The sun comes later, this far west in the Eastern Time Zone, and there are so few people Up North in the fall, compared to my bustling Northern Virginia. I don’t know what other motorists thought of the big police cruiser with the white “Fight Terrorism” plates of the Old Dominion roaring past them.

It was a full day last Friday, peering into gray sheets of water in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio and lower Michigan, with the windshield wipers on the Bluesmobile beating like a metronome before my drooping eyes.

It rained most of Saturday as well, finishing the dash Up North, clearing out only late in the afternoon as I drove to have dinner with some of my oldest friends in the world- family, really- in a little village in Leelanau County on the Big Lake.

It was grand fun, seeing them, and it was purely remarkable yesterday morning. I am too old to attempt the two-hour drive back to Petoskey in the dark, so I was invited to sleep over, and I gladly accepted.

I woke at 0400 to use the head and step out of the guest suite at Round Top to listen to the roar of the waves on the shore below and think about what needed to get accomplished. Fun time was over. Now, business.

After all the rain on the trip, this day dawned fresh and crisp and with the blue sky that Hemingway said only came in northern Michigan. That is nonsense, of course, as anyone from Carolina will tell you, but it was stunningly pretty as I fired up the Bluesmobile. I entered the GPS coordinates for the Cherry Hill Haven Nursing Facility in Traverse City.

I promised my siblings I would check it out as part of my attempt at “due diligence” to determine the “best value” for Raven’s “quality of life.”

The village of Leland is just north of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Leelanau County is one of the prettiest places in he world- Sleeping Bear was just voted so by the National Geographic. Were it not for the savage winters I would have been here long ago.

You can say this generally about Up North Michigan: if you were not intending to go there, it is not one of those places that you would wind up. It is not ‘on the way’ to anything except the rolling timbered hills and the spectacular views of the big lakes and the introspective looks at the hundreds of little inland lakes that snake in a chain right across the 45th parallel from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron.

Leelanau County is the little finger on the upturned palm of the hand that serves as a map of the State of Michigan. Northport is at the very tip, with views of the Mission Peninsula to the east and the vastness of Lake Michigan, all the fresh water in the world, to the west. It is the end of the line, completely out of the way of everything.

The County itself is dotted with lakes, carpeted with lovely farms and cherry orchards amid the sharply rolling terrain of the ancient dunes left by the last ice age.

The micro-climate created by the moisture of the big lake and soil has made this the cherry capital of the known universe, and the vistas of the brightly colored trees and the sharp cutting light of the post dawn filled me with wonder.

I drove south on lovely Michigan Route 22 through Sleeping Bear, and then west through Cedar, a little island of Poland that starting with the first wave of immigrants in 1868. The first wave of Poles in the county came to scout out the area. In the 1870s a large second wave came to join the scouting families.The Polish community in Leelanau County originally consisted of four small settlements a couple miles apart.

I rolled past Shomberg, Bodus and Isadore on the way out of Cedar, hardy locals in jackets standing near cars outside the cafes.

The GPS took me the shortest route, which involved county roads across the peninsula, skirting School Lake and a dozen others, nestled in their pines and maple trees. I had the window down, and the smell of the trees and soil and brightness of the light low on the eastern horizon was magical. I turned up the radio, which was playing The House of Blues Hour. Buddy Guy and Junior Wells brought me across the county with a pulsing, driving beat.

I approached Traverse City from the southwest, and GPS directed me without fault across the silent roads to Cherry Hill Haven.  This was the place that Dad had been parked while Annook took Mom on the long drive across the Midwest last summer, en route the Shakespeare Festival in Ontario. That could be the second-to-last journey Big Mama gets outside a facility, and it was stressful for all concerned.

I swerved the big P-71 into one of the empty parking places along the side of the low white building and walked up to the covered entrance. I found I could not operate the crypto lock, though the key-pad was right by the door and the code posted on the inside of a plastic sleeve taped to the door. I lifted the flap, entered the four digits, and nothing happened.

The admonition typed on the outside read: “Do not allow residents to see code.” Apparently ‘demented’ does not mean ‘not clever,’ like me, apparently.

I sighed, and decided the plea was on full lock-down for Saturday night, and this early on a Sunday the place was secured. I walked around the building and saw a couple of the residents sitting in the lounge, staring ahead. It looked fine, as a place to sit, and I wondered if Raven would know the difference. I made a note of the phone number to contact the admissions people on Monday, after the interview was done with the Bay Bluffs people.

The hazard of distance is an issue. If we warehouse Raven in Traverse City, it means essentially that we will not see him again. Even if it is more expensive, I think The Bluffs location across the bay will enable us to visit him. I was feeling introspective, so I called my best pal to talk it through.

“I wonder if we should move them both? But having them in Traverse City would make the house in Petoskey irrelevant.”

“Why don’t you wait and see how they are doing. Are you going to Potemkin Village for lunch?”

“Yeah, but I want to stop and look at Meadow Brook in Bellaire. That is a home in Antrim County near where their old friend Dee lives on Torch Lake. That would be funny- Mom grew up in Bellaire, Ohio. I probably could tell her she is going home.”

“Let me know how it goes,” she said, and somewhere between the cell towers on the rolling hills of Michigan the call was dropped.

I decided to wait and see how Big Mama was doing at lunchtime, when I made my formal appearance in the Northland for this trip.

I made it across M-66 and several county routes I had never experienced. This is incredible country, down in the blazing color of the trees in the valley of the East Jordan River, and I hit US-131 near Boyne Mountain in time to roar north and arrive at Potemkin Village in time to find them still in their apartment, unaware that lunch was being served. Big Mama was dozing on her bed, and Raven was perched on the couch in the living room.

Raven had not been shaved in weeks- probably not since I left them three weeks ago- and he looked like hell. Mom was delighted to see me, and not at all surprised at the unannounced arrival. I told her a couple times about that fact that Raven was going to be having a big meeting on Monday, and might be taking a trip, though the implications did not penetrate.

I shaved Dad and got him into a sweatshirt over the t-shirt he was wearing over his sweatpants.

Mom took exactly one bite of lunch, while Rave demolished his ham-steak after I cut it up for him, and mashed most of his pumpkin pie (and Big Mama’s) into his mouth at the conclusion.

I screened the mail after lunch, and announced that I had a couple of meetings to go to- part of the big Hemingway conference I am planning for next summer, around Big Mama’s birthday. That is a convenient fiction I have manufactured that borrows from reality and pure fantasy, which is where she is living these days.

Raven startled the shit out of me. I was sitting on one of the wooden chairs from the little dining table (nothing can soak into the wood, and I prefer to sit on one rather than the couch) and he pointed at the fancy silver Zuni bracelet that holds my watch.

“I like that,” he said, and then went silent again. He is still in there, someplace. Damn.

I reminded myself to get the title to Big Mama’s car changed into my name so I can sell it.

The appointment to have Raven assessed is in three hours. I assume I will know more after that. Then I will take them down to lunch and back, and then try to get some work done at the house- or hit the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Mom remembers the trip from last summer, and perhaps we can get Raven roosted some place without a lot of drama.

At lunch, and later at dinner, Big Mama remarked about how strange it was. She talked a lot about her old home, and the cemetery and the people who have gone before. She is determined no to lose them, though of course it is the essence of what is happening to her that she clings so intently to some facts while the rest are allowed to float free and vanish in the breeze.

“Can you believe it?” she said, picking at her chicken dumpling. “How we all got here?”

“No, Mom. I could not have imagined it in my wildest dreams.”

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com