Steamboats and Guilty Trips

A powerful storm torn through our campus several hours before twenty residents from the Independent Living building were booked to go on a steamboat ride down the Grand River. When the severe weather alerts went out we were all thinking the trip would get canceled, but it turned out to be one of those slam-bang-thank-you-mam kind of storms and by the time our bus picked us up we couldn’t ask for better weather. 

Sitting in the lobby waiting for the bus someone pulled the paddle boat’s website up and read a listing of things we’d be seeing: “Trees, streams, flowers, boulders, boaters and paddlers, people fishing, jet skis, fish, Bald Eagles, Herons, Cranes, Ospreys, Swallows, waterfowl, turtles, islands, trash traps (unfortunately), bridges, dead trees…and so on.” By the time the list got to “trees with woodpecker holes” we were all making fun of that dorky list and the Activities Director said if she had time, she’d make us some bingo cards based on that list. Imagine our silly delight and laughter when we got on aboard and they handed out bingo cards like that. It doesn’t take much to entertain old people.

All kidding aside, the steamboat has two paddle-wheels that operate independently so it can maneuver better through narrow channels and sandbars in depths of water as shallow as 22 inches. We’re talking a structure that’s 105 feet long, 25 foot wide and 20 foot tall and holds 144 people including the crew. I don’t care who you are that’s impressive. And the fact that steamboats just like this one have operated from that very same loading dock since the 1830s with it’s hey days ending in 1910---well, all I can say is my generation may have given mankind computers and cyberspace but other generations have built some pretty amazing things as well. Steamboats were an important part of commerce at one point in our history.

Did you know the units we use to measure energy output was named after the guy who invented the steam engine (1769)---James Watt? I didn’t until I started doing research for this post. A steam engine converts water into steam and the steam is what moves the paddles and other things like the wheels on old farm trackers. Not that I needed to research to know how steam engines work. Michigan hosts the biggest steam engine shows in the world and you can’t go to them without learning a thing or two.

Back to the human side of the trip down the river. Five of us from my group lucked out and got a table right next to the captain’s pilothouse so we got the wind in our hair and a forward view that didn’t include other tourists. Two others at our table were from a group of 35 widows and widowers. One of the ladies had been a widow for 15 years, the other less than a year and they hit it off with a newly minted widow from our group. They told us their club meets for lunch once a month and for dinner once a month. They also hold support groups weekly plus outings like we were on four times a year. My brother went to one of their support groups after his second wife died and said he’d never go back. “I couldn’t take all those crying women,” he said. Judging by the guys from this group of widows and widowers---who were keeping the dance floor busy on the steamship---other widowers aren’t as allergic to tears as my brother.

Summer is going by too quickly, isn’t it. It seems like yesterday when this place was hanging flags for Memorial Day. Residents with occasions to celebrate have been keeping the community room busy with their private parties and sometimes that puts me on the spectrum between jealousy and melancholy. But it is what it is. I can’t compete in that arena when others have four to six kids and countless grandchildren and great-grandchildren to help them commemorate special occasions. Not only don't I have any wiggly little ones of my own I don’t even know the youngest generation---my great-great nieces and nephews---well enough to keep most of their names straight. Not to mention they live too far away for me to see more than a couple of times a year. The most I can hope for is one day when they're adults they’ll know my name from reading the family history book, assuming at some point they want to find out more about one of the branches in their family tree. I suspect, though, that having an interest in genealogy is a dying hobby with interest waning the farther way one gets from their immigrant roots.

Whenever I get into this kind of poor-me-I-don’t-have-little-kids-in-my-life mood it reminds me of my Aunt Maggie and I feel guilty that I wasn’t warmer to her growing up. She didn’t have any children either and she had some learning and/or mental disabilities. She worked her entire adult life scrubbing toilets and floors in a Catholic hospital so she couldn’t have made much money. Even so she never missed sending me and my brother a few dollars in a greeting card on our birthdays and holidays. Sometimes she’d take a bus out to see us from her tiny apartment near the hospital. 

My mother couldn’t stand being around my aunt and whenever my mom got frustrated with my then-undiagnosed dyslexia she’d say, “You’re just like your Aunt Maggie!” It also took me a very long time to break myself of the brain fart that made me repeat the same things twice which is what my aunt did constantly that drove my mom up a wall. Technically, those brain farts are called Palialia which is on the Tourette's spectrum. Ya, I know, if only they'd had labels for syndromes and conditions back in the '40s and '50s then the mom's of the world would have done better. One could compare this with the awaking happening now regarding the biological causes of transgenders and non-binaries. Scientists know, now, how that (faulty) brain wiring happens but it's taking the general population awhile to catch up and universally accept that's it's not a choice.

Back on point: My cousins treated my aunt better than I ever thought of treating her. There was a genuine warmth between them. Me? I was as stiff as a board when I'd have to accompanying my dad when he'd visit his sister. He loved and was protective of her, knew how hard a life she had---lost her mother at five or six, bullied in school, and was even purposely set on fire once. If I wrote a book about my aunt and I'd title it The Hard Luck Life but I need get off this guilt trip I’m on because it’s heading towards Sadness Lane and it’s too nice of a day for regrets rooted before my teen years.  

Until next Wednesday… ©