If I could list my gender as ‘Jersey,’ it would be the most accurate classification for this human-shaped blender full of pizza and cursing.
I’m not sure my parents would have claimed the same gender autonomy, but they were also Jersey lifers, spending their lives in this jam-packed anchovy tin—save for one strange interlude.
Once my dad indulged his fantasy of Heading West, his own cowboy dreams urged him to settle in Montana or Wyoming, driving cattle into the shadows of the mountains. Instead, a job offer for a domesticated computer programmer in flat, toothless Minnesota. Close enough.
They packed a car and drove 1200 miles to settle on a rented farm on a dirt road, where my father tilled a garden in his three-piece-suits, and where my mother met Jenny Sweeney, forever sealing her meatloaf as a Ponton weeknight staple. They dropped acid in the field and carpooled to Minneapolis with people they found on a corkboard in the grocery store.
They arrived in May and left in November, closing the only chapter in the Ponton book set outside of the Garden State. The only evidence of their sojourn are pictures of a green tornado sky from 50 years ago.
50 years later, I drive to this old farm, a location of so many numbers that it’s more coordinates than address. It’s January, -20*, a snowless and gray winter. I drive until the pavement recedes, approaching a four-way dirt intersection half-heartedly marked by yield signs.
Further down the pressed permafrost, a dilapidated A-Frame waits in overgrown brush, a place where my parents once tripped balls beneath the summer stars. I turn the car off in the middle of the road and soak up this tiny, distant piece of me that lies here, undisturbed.
Unfortunately, I am not dropping acid in some spangled field.
I’m tripping balls on the clouds of spraypaint fumes wafting through the floors, where a resident empties can after rattling can into a windowless basement.
I’m dodging the acrobatic mice who come out in droves at night, leaping through the loops of the steam radiators and pilfering bites of butter.
I’m throwing away fridgefuls of food because the electricity keeps going out.
I’m finding crystal meth in the only spot where my dog will poop.
And as I sit outside my parents’ old homestead, I need to figure out how to stay here, to grow here, because I am newly and unexpectedly homeless.
It takes 32940 months, but the sweet smell of lilac finally drifts in through the windows. We go on rides with the windows down, sway in breezy hammocks in the park, and watch bumblebees hem the skirts of lavish peonies. I find a listing for my parents’ unpaved little town (population: 14), hosting a Pride festival, where we buy a new flag and eat artisanal ice cream.
Vivaldi’s spring lasts for an exquisite 40 seconds before the news bleats that Minnesota is nested snugly beneath a doozy of a Heat Dome, which is basically a polar vortex but hot.
The massive heat sucks the life from the earth, with no rainfall to restore order. The heroic portable air conditioner does triple-time as I roll it from room to room. The dogs pant on the floor as we rub them down with ice cubes. The electricity won’t stay on, and the number on the thermostat creeps up, up, up. An electrician uncomfortably indicates that it looks like the wiring has been rigged for another unit to siphon our energy—in essence, that we are keeping Spraypaint Dude cool while we swelter.
It is 88* in this blackout house, and the sun still has hours to go. When Doc suggests that we just open the windows, I take their hands and say maybe we go somewhere else entirely?
For a few days, we hunker down in a cheap hotel, just to get some relief. The dogs wiggle happily under the chilly AC, and Doc takes a job interview that might bring us out of this place entirely if we are lucky. In a few more days, it is my birthday, and we go a little further out to Wisconsin Dells to glide down lazy rivers, eat hot dogs, and have whatever this thing was:
When we come back, an electrician has fixed some outlets, which is a godsend. With the lights on and at least some cool air to offset the oppressive heat, it is slightly more livable. But the AC can’t possibly compete with the setting sun under this heat dome. By 5pm, the house is a lobster pot, and unwinding there is impossible.
Days routinely end like this: donning our swimsuits and heading to the lake with the dogs to submerge in water until it’s time for bed. It’s an act of imagination and desperation, making this magic where we must. The freckles and rainbow sprinkles of winging-it decorate the memories of a hard, heartbreaking summer.
What I remember: ice cream, ten thousand lakes, Wisconsin sunsets, Dave Matthews, and campfire lattes.
What happened: one final, unforgivable theft.
Maybe we go somewhere else entirely.
The heat has taken too much from Doc’s sweet dog, Maslow. The wonderful news we’d been waiting for, like rain in a drought, comes too late.
The grief is cold enough to plant us inside, watching every extended edition of LORD OF THE RINGS and STAR WARS, numb from the grim reality of our situation. The only thing worse than Doc’s mourning is to watch Bear, listless and bereft in the wake of losing his best friend. He won’t eat, he won’t seek comfort. The loss is unimaginable. So Doc whispers their doubts to me, and I tell them, yes. We do the next unimaginable thing:
We get a puppy.
After driving 2 hours to Iowa, rumbling through miles of unpaved dirt and cornfield, we meet him. A tiny bumblebee of of a morkie (Maltese x Yorkie) who the breeder calls “her little dustbuster” as he rip-roars through her house. At 10 weeks old, he is the last one left of his litter. He is all teeth and floof, and Bear looks at us warily when he joins us in the car.
Doc names him Arlow.
Our tears aren’t yet dry and Arlow lunges for them, a tiny bitey kissing machine, and Bear is annoyed by this floppy creature but he’s eating and playing again, and yes now we have a little piddling cyclone but Doc just got the final phone call: you’re hired, come to New Jersey.
We will not leave this place the same. We will not necessarily leave it depleted. We will be emptied, and we will be filled again.
There it is, always. Grief and praise, grief and praise.
xx Jen