The Exciting And Wonderful Business Of Being Alive

First, there was Detroit.

As an outsider, they expect you to just write about the tattered edges of Detroit. The empty buildings filling the downtown skyline, the open fields that were once neighborhoods. Of course I saw all this, of course it left an impression. But in the midst of weeds growing from cracks in the pavement, vacant lots, burnt out husks of houses, wood pried off the windows of disused schools, I saw a happy little manicured garden, decorated with bright pink flowers and homemade sculptures. Downtown, in the shadows of empty skyscrapers, I visited a hopping speakeasy, where the owner weaves his way through the crowd, hipsters and non- perched on orange vinyl-cushioned bar stools under the watchful eyes of Meyer Lansky and Billie Holiday, making sure everyone is eating well, drinking well, having a good time. Beyond the highway carrying traffic out to the suburbs, a market heaving with produce grown in Detroit and the surrounding area. A botanical garden bursting to life with lilies, marigolds, daisies. Playgrounds, swingsets, sandboxes, pools filled with families. Neighbors who pass and nod hello. The sun setting through the trees on a cool summer night, casting moving shadows on the sidewalk, just like it does everywhere else in the world.

And they say Detroit is dying.

When you visit Detroit, you learn that cities are not simply built of houses, of streets and churches and schools and water treatment plants; they are built of people. They are communities, families, a packed bar in the middle of Downtown. They are the people who make you feel welcome, the good people who will sit for hours and talk about important things, stay up late and laugh about silly things. People who understand what it means to a neighbor to stop and ask how she's doing. In Detroit, there are so many of those people. And I fell in love with the lot of them.

So how am I supposed to write about tattered edges?

***

I left Detroit and headed south, past Toledo, weaving my way through the farms, bait shops, and nuclear power plants on OH-2 to Lakeside, Ohio. Lakeside is full of little gingerbread houses, ice cream stands, fried perch sandwiches served by a boy whose voice cracks when he offers you cream and sugar, an Ohio State Alumni Marching Band concert, drum majors tossing batons high into the air to "Stars and Stripes Forever." Soda jerks and swinging screen doors.

After Detroit, this all seemed ridiculous. I kept waiting for someone to shout "action!" from a crane overhead. I wondered out loud if the houses would taste like lollipops if you were to lick them.

We sat around and told stories over plates of baked beans and fresh corn. Uncle Dave and Aunt Rosie shared jokes their preacher told them; Uncle John brought up an old grudge Uncle Dave had with him over a goat. They reported on replaced knees, failing memories, the inability to spend more than two hours in a field. Deaths, births, jobs, marriages. We did as much catching up as we could, as much as it would take to see us through to the next year.

We all seemed so much older than I remembered.

After the other relatives had set off on their journey home, I sat with my parents on a bench, swatting at horseflies, comparing hands and feet, thinking up ways we could all meet up more often. I kept getting teary about all of us getting older, about living so far away.

I'd been reading Madeleine L'Engle's Meet the Austins on the plane. There's a point early on in the book, after the death of a family friend, when John, the eldest son, says: "I like us exactly the way we are, our family. Why do people have to die, and people grow up and get married, and everybody grow away from each other? I wish we could just go on being exactly the way we are!"

His mother answers: "We can't stop on the road of Time. We have to keep on going. And growing up is all part of it, the exciting and wonderful business of being alive."

***

Jim has a picture on his site of a burnt-out car with a bumper sticker that says "Be Patient: GOD isn't finished." If there's more to the message, it's obscured by burn marks, but to me, this is message enough. Whether or not you believe in a god, any god at all, the world as we know it today, in this moment, is never finished. We're building our own stories, our own communities, our own cities and families, and we'll keep building. We'll go around and come back again on the road of Time. Cities may fall apart, but they'll be rebuilt by those with the heart and the respect for community that is necessary to do so. Families may grow up and move out and eventually die, but not before children are born, lives celebrated, stories told at annual gatherings.

Whether we like it or not, this is all part of the exciting and wonderful business of being alive.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.