It Didn’t Feel Like 35 Years

 It didn’t take long last night before it felt like it couldn’t possibly be thirty-five years since we graduated from high school. No. Nope. No way. Nuh-uh. Thirty-five years, really? Thirty-five years…huh.

There were not an enormous number of name tags at the Registration Table. In 1989 The Post Crescent declared that 380 students were graduating from Appleton West High School on June 8th. For some reason, I always thought there were 444 kids in our senior class and the way I remember it is because that’s the number of days the US hostages in Iran were held in captivity. Yeah, that happened when I was in 5^th grade, but the correlation is unbreakable for me. Yet I’ve heard rumors that our class size was closer to 477-478. I understand that class size doesn’t equal graduation size. Then there’s this nebulous piece of data that had something to do with kids getting caught cheating on the Physics final and they were prohibited from “walking” during the commencement ceremony? Trust me, I was never in any sort of Physics class whether it be high school, college or graduate school. That’s something that could likely be mis-memoried. Hey, I like the sound and definition of that new word I think I just created. I know the correct grammatical term is mis-remembered, but mis-memoried seems more emotional to me, and if the displayed poem and Talisman articles out for display last night are any indication at all, yes, I go with the emotional!

I remember writing the “censorship” article. The Valentine’s Day article though? Not one thin string of memory can reconnect me to writing that. Last night I literally cringed when as reading the article and kept referring to female students as “chicks”.

MY UNDERGRAD MAJOR WAS WOMEN’S STUDIES FOR CHRIST’S SAKE.

AT AN EAST COAST LIBERAL ARTS UNIVERSITY.

Just goes to show that a person can have her consciousness raised and become much more aware and sensitive that how we refer to each other can be deeply telling about our own crap at the time. Read the article and you’ll totally understand what I’m talking about.

I haven’t gone to all of our reunions. I missed twenty-five and thirty. I was at number 20 though because that’s when the people I was closest to in high school were invited over to my parents’ house where while we were in high school, we either a) spent a lot of time in my parents’ basement or pool, or b) didn’t spend a lot of time there but the time that was spent was memorable in some way, or c) you were at my graduation party on June 24, 1989 and if you were, the first thing that comes to mind is Wowzers.                           

There are SO many classmates that I would love to see again. Some of them had nametags at the ready last night. Others didn’t or haven’t at the reunions I attended. I’m not going to name them here, but God-damn Matt Thompson, Adam Hardt, Robb Bosser, John Falcus, and Pat Van Derhei you need to get yourselves to our next one. We’re not going to live forever, you know. It’d be nice to see you again before I die.

Our Reunion Committee kicks ass. At each reunion there is something created in memory of those from the class of 1989 that we have already lost due to tragedy, accident or illness. I was shocked to find two names of boys I knew from junior high added to the memorial. I went to junior high at Wilson with them both. It’s hard tracking down anyone who knows the details, but really that information is to satisfy my own curiosity. It doesn’t change the fact that 35 years ago, they too walked across the stage assembled in our high school gym. 380 teenagers slammed into the gym, let’s average two guests for every graduate, that’s another 760 bodies, plus the representatives from the Appleton Area School District, staff/faculty/administrators from our own high school, I figure that’s roughly 1,200 people in that gym on a cloudy and damp early June evening. Wearing polyester robes over the clothes we were already wearing. It’s a gift from God, a mitzvah if you will, no one went down that Thursday night.

              
I wrote a poem dedicated to our 35^th class reunion and it was on full display last night. I brought markers so everyone in attendance could sign it or write something on it. At first a fellow alum and I stood there, saying, “What do you write on this sort of thing?” Then she said, “Is it like a yearbook where you write ‘Stay cool and have an awesome summer!’” My mind went racing with the number of variations on that theme I’ve written in yearbooks since 1984.                                    

I talked to and hugged a lot of people last night. It felt amazing. I spent more time with other people than the people I arrived with! All of the high school pettiness evaporated years ago, but it’s good to be reminded that high school is not the way life will always be. I know there were official group pictures taken by Brian Blazer (WTF Blazer? You don’t even say “Hi!” to me??) I’m over it, I really am 😊And I look forward to seeing those in the near future.

I bought an official copy of our class graduation picture snapped in the pouring rain at the Banta Bowl and I am already circling people’s heads and adding their names. 

At the time of high school graduation, I would be in the camp that wanted to selectively remember classmates and experiences. Then I started working as a School-Based Mental Health Counselor through the PATH Program of the United Way-Fox Cities and I was so excited for my first day at West that I walked into the Student Services Office and boldly said, “Hi I’m Kris Porath, your new PATH counselor!” Then I erupted in laughter and said, “Ok, no, I’m Kristine Sack and I’m your new PATH counselor, but the last time I stood in this office, which was across the hall by the way, my name was Kris Porath, class of 1989.” The three secretaries/administrative assistants looked at me as if I had two heads. I mumbled that I needed access to a certain room number and could one of them please let me in. How returning to that specific place, all those years later, brought me right back to the way I identified myself then is surely something Freud would have me on the couch for years analyzing.

So, thirty-five years have come and gone. What an exquisite life it’s been. Wouldn’t you agree?                                                    

Family

 Well, that’s an incredibly small and incredibly large subject, isn’t it?

 When I started putting this blog together, it was going to be a simple description of how I had been finishing the pad of Jumbo Word Finds that I ended up with after my Grandpa Krause died in February 2018. Ultimately it will be, but I had to explore a bunch of tributaries before I got back on the river this particular tribute to my maternal grandmother would become.

I’m a quasi-genealogy contact for my family of origin. That said, tonight I sifted through obituaries, funeral programs, printed material from ancestry.com, and database information that my second cousin on my paternal grandfather’s side had created. Yes, Bruce Schaepe, I will call you out because whenever we have been together, unfortunately it’s always at family funerals, we have created a pod of just the two of us talking about family history and genealogy. Bruce’s mother married a brother of my Grandpa Porath. So, his mother was my great-great aunt. Establishing family relationships at times makes my head spin. Tonight, I tried to organize some family documents into folders. So far, I have a folder titled “Krause” (my maternal grandfather), “Wilber/Ziemer” (my maternal grandmother), “Porath” (my paternal grandfather), and “Kuether” (my paternal grandmother). Yeah, I know, my head is spinning right along with yours.

Now, getting back to the original purpose of this blog: I hope everyone reading this can say, “My grandma was the best grandma EVER!” I can certainly say that without doubt. In my maternal family we have this tradition I have posted about before called “Gravehopping.”  Quick hits info: either the weekend before or Memorial Day Weekend we go to the graves of our maternal grandparents’ family, which now consists of three separate cemeteries, and remove the fake flowers we placed last year and replace them with “fresh” fake flowers.

When my Grandma Krause (my mom’s mom) was able to go with us, when we got to the grave of her grandma, she always said, “She was the best grandma ever.” Every year I would tell her, “No, you’re the best grandma ever.” She would look up at me and say, “Oh, I can only hope so, Dolly.”  She ALWAYS called her five granddaughters “Dolly” when ending a phone call or a letter.

Back on the river and off of the tributaries: As I alluded to earlier, I have my Grandma Krause’s Jumbo Word Find Pad. I don’t know the date of my grandma’s last attempted word find, but the title is “80 Reunion Time.” The clues include “guest”, “memories”, and “mementos”.  Of the 28 words, she found 15. Today I completed 10 of the remaining words.

I left one incomplete on purpose. The word is “Farewell.” It’s in here somewhere, but I haven’t looked for it. Despite the number of years that have passed since Grandma Krause passed and where she lived at the time she passed, I like to think about one year when we were in Shawano, on the small front porch of the house on Smalley Street and Grandma said, “They must not have the stock car races at the Fair anymore.” My cousins and I shared a knowing look with each other and one of us said, “Grandma, they’re racing the cars right now. Can’t you hear them?” She answered, “Oh, no, but I’m glad that you can hear them.”

The BEST things about Gravehopping was that on Sunday of Gravehopping weekend, Grandma Krause would fry eggs over-hard for me in the bacon grease in her cast iron skillet. To this day, all of these years later, I have not eaten anything that comes close to how absolutely perfect these simple fried eggs tasted.

I have no idea who got Grandma Krause’s iron skillet, but I have my Grandma Porath’s iron skillet and I have yet to attempt the “eggs fried over hard in bacon grease.”  I hope that I have the courage to fry eggs over hard soon. In a way, it will complete the “farewell” Reunion Time.

How Will I Know?

When we lost Peanut on May 26, 2010, it was exactly one month later, June 26, 2010, that we brought Apollo home. If you knew me during the Peanut years, you know how completely devoted I was to him. Living in a household without a dog got lonely and when we chose Apollo and he chose us, it felt right. When I close my eyes, I can still feel his little puppy body curled up in my lap on the drive home. He was warm and I could hear him breathe. We picked him up in Wausaukee and had a significant drive home from his foster family’s house. I held him steady with my left hand, playing with his ears, looking out the window, contemplating his name.

His name. As someone who silently giggles when I come across “unfortunate” human names, this was a defining choice. His foster family named him Red, which was a no-go from the start. So, I’m doing some free association thinking and the movie Troy with Brad Pitt as Achilles floats into my thoughts, and how he fell in love with Persephone, the protector of the oracle of Apollo, the Greek god of light, their Sun God. The Romans worshipped Apollo as a god of healing. Light, the sun, healing…exactly what was needed in the vacuum of our lives that Peanut left. Not a replacement, but a healer. That’s a lot of expectation for an eight-week, nine-pound puppy, but fucking-a did he deliver!!

From the moment we got back home, his huge personality filled every shadow of darkness. It took two rounds of obedience classes to get him to honestly, the sub-par level in which he would listen and “obey.” We did get him kennel trained which was huge because Peanut wasn’t, and it eventually became problematic – like the time in Milwaukee when he got my new $1,700 eyeglasses off of my night stand and I woke to the sound of him chewing and destroying them a mere two hours after I fell asleep.

 It’s been 6 months and 10 days since we lost Apollo. I am finally able to look at pictures of him without crumbling into tears, although if I look at anymore than three, my thoughts wander to how much he was loved, how much he loved all of us, and how much I still miss him. Then the tears roll, like they are now.

Two weeks ago, I opened my Petfinder app and plugged in the info about what type of dog I was looking for (size, sex, age, etc.). Then I added our info (kids, other pets, type of yard, etc.). This is the website where we found Apollo. There are small-to-medium sized male puppies available for adoption. Some of them are part-terrier with wired hair like Apollo had. Some of them have the same black and tan markings that Peanut had.

While looking at pictures and reading puppy bios, it crosses my mind that I may be looking for a “replacement” for Apollo, and that if a pup has a different personality from his, which of course he will, I will be disappointed.

I just untangled my own answer right there.

Key West Rhapsody

Key West Rhapsody

Yes, I stood in the ocean and wept with joy.
I floated in the gulf and brushed seaweed from my hair.
Hearing a waterfall under water sounds like thunder.
I miss roosters crowing in the morning…and all day.
She decided to start living the life she imagined.
Closer to Cuba than the nearest Walmart, I found Sun Drop at $1.79 a bottle at Fausto’s Food Palace, cheaper here than it is where it’s made, Shawano WI.
I caught my own Mahi Mahi and ate it seared with olive oil and Key limes.
I never imagined there were so many shades of blue.
Just before the rain poured, I picked up 4 college kids from Pensacola in my 4-seat golf cart and drove us to Mallory Square.
The humidity is high and stagnant.
The air smells of orchids and cigars, is subtly spicey and subtly sweet.
The water feels thin and light.
There are two places where my soul feels at home; one is Manhattan, the other is Key West.
There will be a time when I go there, to Paradise, and I won’t come back. 

Those are some of the major “be mindful in this moment” memories from our trip to Key West. Before Mark and I spent eight days there in late May/early June, I had spent a total of roughly eight hours there twenty-nine years ago. But I knew then, “even if I have to live in a box on the beach”, I knew this is where I’d retire. Considering my ability to work remotely from anywhere in the U.S. in my current job, and, having lived in the equivalent of a tiny home while we were there, the possibility of moving there sooner than retirement is a high possibility.

It was very freeing to have a small footprint of space available to live in. Anyone who has ever helped me move or has been to any of the places I’ve lived in since I lived in Boston as an undergrad, may find this shocking. I have a ton of shit. I have been hauling books I read in high school (and never re-read), yearbooks from junior high, photos of my parents in my childhood and “junior cookbooks” with me since the day I moved into my first off-campus apartment in Boston. I still have a bookcase that was in the bedroom I shared with my sister in 1984.

I’ve been reading about people my age and younger living in Key West for roughly six months each year, depending on the climate they are coming from, and living the other part of the year where it’s likely much farther north, but they also call “home.” Apparently, there are boarding houses in Key West that offer this option. I haven’t looked for something comparable in Wisconsin yet, but I’m not hopeful.

Just by looking at photos of me from Key West is proof enough for me that this is a place where I belong. Not because of the touristy stuff we did, like deep sea fishing and then having the fish made to order at a harbor restaurant. I belong here because my soul feels full. I look forward to each day here. All I need is a small golf cart to run errands and for grocery shopping. I need to spend every day in water, a pool, a gulf, an ocean.

                                  

                                                          This is where my soul feels at home.