Happy Place

 

Happy Place

            My heart nearly halts at one site because of its serenity. This venue brings me ultimate peace; I use it as my happy place. When I need a moment to feel calm and relaxed, I look no further than this setting. When I feel anxiety coming on, I escape to this locus in my mind. When I am there, I feel as if every worry I’ve ever had is minimized to nothing. If I were to meditate to find inner peace, I would begin here: at my grandparents’ place on the river.

            Our family usually cruises easily over the final stretch of the four-mile gravel road that winds, rolls, and curves through the farmland leading to my grandparents’ cabin. We get to the top of the hill where we can look down on the Missouri River and see the boats tied to the buoys and the sun shimmering off the blueish-green water. After we roll through the cattleguard and into the driveway, we can see the water, scattered with speed boats, pontoons, sailboats, and paddleboats. The sun continues to shine on the river which gives it a sparkly glimmer that is reminiscent of the vampires exposed to sunlight in the Twilight Saga. The horizon is an ocean-like blue with sparce clouds that look like scattered white smoke. Mounds of Irish green separate the peacock-colored water and crystal-blue sky. The grassy land has pine-colored spots in them: the trees and bushes that cover the rolling hills.

My caramel-skinned grandfather, Les, sits in the screened in porch at the rectangular glass table in his blue swimming shorts and over-sized fishing t-shirt. His hair looks whiter in the summer. It is a good head of hair for a seventy-five-year-old man, and it is always neatly trimmed around his ears and neck, leaving only dark hairs from his ears ungroomed. He taps his cigarette over a mottled, brown, glass ash tray. When he sees us, his wide smile reveals his straight, white dentures. “Fifty-eight boats out of Whetstone today,” he calls out. He goes on about how beautiful the afternoon is and about any catfish or walleye that he’s caught in the past few days. His portable radio, a companion of more than forty years, plays the Twins’ baseball game as they get their third out to end the fifth inning. The radio has an old, worn-down strap, used for carrying; however, it is now broken in two and no longer useable. Two big knobs protrude from the front of the radio: one knob for channel selection and one for volume. The Twins’ announcer excitedly reports each ball and strike through the radio’s static.

The porch is the most important part of the cabin, and from here, a person experiences what cabin life is like. The porch and exterior of the cabin are of such significance that I disregard the cabin’s interior when thinking of time at the river. This is the one spot in the world that I always feel peaceful. This spot is a place where family is brought together, friends can share a drink and a laugh, and strangers become companions within minutes. This porch is the only spot that I feel like my worries about the outside world could cease.

The screened-porch’s ground is smooth concrete with minimal cracks, but my grandma uses rugs, chairs, tables, and benches to cover most of the concrete floor. There are two doors to enter the porch: one facing east and one facing north. The porch’s structure is the only part of the cabin where the original logs are still visible. My grandpa got sick of the upkeep of the logs on the rest of the cabin, so in 2013 he replaced the logs with a log lookalike tin siding. The wall of the porch that connect it to the cabin is pure log with two picture windows looking into the cabin and a bright pink door with a gold-colored knob separating the two areas.

A wooden table painted bright red sits below the window near the north door. Cell phones litter its bright red top, waiting to be plugged into the outlet above. Below this table is a bin of old shoes: mostly sandals for the mud near the docks but some tennis shoes for mowing, weed eating, and other yardwork. Away from the table, to allow walking room from the north door, are two lounge chairs that have removeable, pin-striped cushions. The chairs are the most popular seats in the place; they rock back and forth without much effort from the chair’s occupants, and their arms go up and down to allow the sitter to choose if they want to rest their arms or not. In the northeast corner of the screened porch, a metal bench sits where its lodgers can see the rest of the porch and easily chit-chat with the people sitting in the lounge chairs.

The southwest corner is cluttered with fishing poles, tackle, brooms, a Swiffer, and life jackets. Crowding this corner, against the shared cabin wall, rests the chest freezer which holds meat, ice cream, plain-old ice cubes, and the past few days’ catch of walleye. On the wall to the left is a counter space and cabinets, filled with mostly my grandpa’s tackle and the occasional pot or pan for cooking. The counterspace is used for my grandma to cook pancakes and sausage on her ancient griddle in the mornings. On top of the cabinets are wiffle balls and a bright green, plastic bat to match. Beside the counter and cabinets, again with enough space to walk, is a glass table surrounded by plastic, outdoor chairs that threaten to snap anytime someone leans on their back two legs.

Connected to the porch, is a sidewalk that wraps from the southeast corner to the northwest corner. The sidewalk is used as a canvas for children with chalk. Off the east portion of the concrete is a deck. Its floor is made of aged two-by-fours, separated by a half-inch each. Four patio chairs scatter the deck, and they are made of wood, the type that makes a butt sore after two minutes of sitting. The armrests are oversized, and they are often muddled with random objects: lighters, bottle rockets, the occasional cell phone, books, and fishing tackle. On the far corner of the deck is a red grill that seems to be turning blacker every summer due to cooking smoke. The counterspace inside the porch is my grandma’s spot for cooking, but the grill is for my grandpa. He cooks everything on there: steak, walleye, chicken gizzards, mountain oysters, hamburgers, brats, and catfish.

            Every time I come to this haven, I think of it as time off. It is an escape from the real world. No definite plans are formed when coming to the cabin, but everyone knows there will be options. We may go enjoy the day on the water, using my grandfather’s boat to pull people on skis or tubes. Perhaps we will go fish early in the morning sometime, starting at the bend just around the corner from the cabin. In the afternoon, it is certain there will be food while we sit around and play cards or dice; sandwiches, crackers, and cheese will likely be the meal of choice. We may light some fireworks from the deck, trying to impress each other with bottle rockets and firecrackers. When it turns dark, we might bring a couple poles down to the dock to try to recreate the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s song “Fishin in the Dark”. All these things make me feel peaceful and joyful, but there is an underlying story that makes me feel even more connected and at peace while I am visiting my happy place.

            Just months after I was born, my maternal grandfather, Dewey, was out here visiting his sister and her husband (who I now refer to as Grandma Kathy and Grandpa Les). My mom and dad were also on their way; the family was planning to have a fun get-together while enjoying some time away from reality. I was on my way with my parents, but I was only three or so months old at the time. I imagine my parents in a giddy mood ready to spend the weekend fishing, swimming, hanging out, talking, and showing off their new baby when their phone rang. My mom answered the phone, and someone she hardly knew was on the line, a friend of her dad. She did not understand what the friend was saying, so finally my Grandpa Les got on the phone and explained to her that her dad, Grandpa Dewey, drowned while he was swimming just a few hours ago.

            I imagine my mother’s utter shock and disbelief. In that moment, I still don’t think she was able to grasp what Grandpa Les was saying to her. Confused and upset, my mom handed the phone to my dad who finally got the message: Grandpa Dewey had died. I don’t know what the following hours, days, weeks, or even months were like for my parents, but I can only imagine the cabin was not the peaceful location I now know it to be for years after Grandpa Dewey’s death.

            Again, I was only three months old at the time of my grandfather’s death, but I feel as if I knew him. I have heard many stories about him; he was the kindest and hardest working man anyone knew. Grandpa Dewey was the type of man who would provide a person with money when he did not have a nickel to spare for food later that day. He was always sacrificing his own needs and wants for his children, siblings, friends, neighbors, and sometimes people he hardly knew. He owned a dairy farm and drove mail truck which took up most of his time, but at heart he was always a runner. He had been an All-American cross-country runner for SDSU, and he was winning races until the day he died. Through these things, I feel connected to my grandpa, and people tell me I am just like him. I hardly knew him, but my similarities make me feel connected to him. So the place where he died, held me for the first time, and saw me the most is the place I feel most bound to him.

Off the docks, about fifty yards to the buoys and fifty yards to the left, is the exact spot my grandpa died twenty years ago. Grandpa Les once saw me swimming towards the spot where he last saw Grandpa Dewey. I was swimming after a ball that had gotten away on a windy day. As I swam to it, my grandpa yelled at me and furiously demanded me to come back. His anger shocked me because he was always a calm, light-hearted, and funny man. Later, as we sat at the porch’s glass table, playing cards, I realized the reason my grandfather had been so vexed. He carefully, with tears streaming down his wrinkled face, explained to me that the ball was in the exact spot he had last seen Grandpa Dewey before he drowned.

As I once again look on the glimmering water, I see the boats out there, near the other shore of the river which consists of the color of a kiwi: brown, every shade of green, and the occasional black speck. When I focus my attention from the outer water to the shore, I see Grandpa Les’s docks there. The blue barrels keep the back of the dock afloat as it sways up and down with the wind that rocks it. Connected to the dock is my grandpa’s new, black, grey, and white Lund boat. It sways in rhythm with the soft wind that oscillates the dock as well.

The shore is made of small, round pebbles that feel soothing between my toes. As I walk from the shore into the water, the smooth pebbles beneath and around my feet transform into squishy mud that makes it feel like I am stepping in Play-Doh. The amount of water the Ft. Randall Dam pumps out each spring determines if people can jump off the end of the dock. Sometimes people can with the water rushing above their head and through every open space in their body, but other times, the water’s rush only reaches the waist. On the pebbly shore, my grandpa’s baby-blue paddle boat is flipped upside down to avoid getting blown into the water and halfway across the river during the night.

A boat is drifting halfway from our shore to the opposite shore, and I know what the people in the boat can see. From where they relax on their boat, they can look our way and see only a tiny portion of what our world is. They look at the cabins in our bay, spotting five of them. The two on the right are tightly settled together from the water’s view. These cabins are my grandparents’ and Jack’s, a lawyer who always seem to be adding onto his cabin. They see what looks like logs on top of a screened-in porch. The top of our cabin is pointy with two steep declines on each side, but towards the south, the steepness turns into almost flat until the end of the cabin. On the other side of these two river-homes, is a big space where a person from the boat would see another building that seems to be more distant than the cabins; this is the shared garage for the five property owners. From that point, three more cabins are tightly huddled together, making it look like they overlap from the water. Seeing the cabins from this boat makes a person wish more than anything they had one of their own. This person can also see the three docks shared by the five owners where they may see people sitting, soaking in the sun on a hot summer day.

This spot on the river has never been mimicked or replicated for me. I have never felt so relaxed anywhere else. I’m not sure I’ve captured what it feels like to be on the river looking at the cabins, on the porch looking at the water, or walking by the dock with the squishy mud surrounding my toes, but I’m not sure I ever could. These sensations can only be experienced by those who have spent significant time there. However, I hope I can at least give a taste of my happy place.