If you must know, if I'd read the Spring Festival information page thoroughly, we would have known that it ended on Sunday and that there were no rides on Monday. But, c'mon, who takes the rides down before the day that is actually the holiday?
Carnies, that's who.
Nonetheless, our 24-hour trip was a riveting success. We still got to play Who's Your Boyfriend and Who's Your Ex-boyfriend. We still were obviously ogled everywhere we went. (Dear Men of Moses Lake: We can seeeeeeee you. Best regards, Ida and Sjet.) We still ate tacos at Tacos El Rey. We still looked at the ditch and camped in a borrowed tent.
Ah, the campgrounds. We pitched our tent at Willows Trailer Village, a location two miles from the home of my youth and to which Erin and I would trek to buy things like Lemonheads and Boston Baked Beans and Fun-Dip. We'd eat sugar and wonder why anyone would camp in the middle of nowhere. (Really there is fishing nearby and I'm pretty sure several families are not camping but living in those RV's.) Sjet and I bivouacked next to drunken and stoned softball players who hassled us in a fashion that I'll leave her to charmingly relay.
My hometown feels like it always did, but there were things I was not anticipating. Say, a million billion flags everywhere. Sure, sure, it was Memorial Day, but there were giant flags in front of every business and many homes. We stopped in Ellensburg later and only saw two flags, so it wasn't just Eastern Washington. It was peculiar. There were so many flags at the cemetery that I couldn't breathe.
We decided to go to the cemetery after we'd discovered that the carnies had betrayed us and that there was absolutely nothing else open. I had the ukuleles in the car for busking purposes, so the new plan was to go sit at the graves of my grandparents and play songs that they would like. The Moses Lake Cemetery is out in the middle of nowhere, just southeast of the sugar beet factory, just this side of derelict. I was picturing it to look like it always does: empty. I should have known better.
We took the left off "M" and the oasis of flat gravestones and a few trees was revealed to now be an oasis of artful granite in a new parking lot (still made of unplanted field), about two hundred flags, and the entire town—living and dead. The only thing that made this slightly less disconcerting was that about twenty minutes earlier we'd seen a September 11 memorial in front of the library that horrified us, mostly just because it existed. The spot it's in is the same spot that the town places a nativity scene every year, so we were imagining the Baby Jesus and some shepherds strung up between two basalt towers. With that thought in our minds and ukuleles in hand we got out of the car. "If we run into anyone I know, it's going to be here," I said.
We walked towards the Mormon section of the cemetery (eerily titled Garden of Deseret) and I immediately saw about thirty people with whom I could make small talk. We slowed down our pace. The throngs moved on and we noticed that my grandparents' grave had been decorated with a heart made of hand-strewn yellow roses and a jar of peonies. Seeing something that my living relatives had made not so long ago (the flowers had not yet wilted) made me feel a little guilty for not calling any of them. We sat down near the point of the flower and I took my ukulele out of its case.
We had plucked out I Love You Truly and Bicycle Built for Two when a man came up and said, "are you singing for your grandparents? Which son do you belong to?" Sonya said, "I don't belong to anyone" (as she's done on other occasions when we've run into my relatives) as I stood up and said "I'm Max's daughter." I took off my glasses. "You're Elden, right?"
Elden remembered me without the glasses. He had on a feedlot hat and his teeth were perfect. I was amazed that I'd remembered his name, especially since I'm sure I've never said it outloud as a greeting. We talked about how his wife had died last year and how my father took me flying in his little blue Grumman. We admired the roses and peonies. Elden reminded me that the yellow roses had come from the rosebush my grandmother had tended at their home in Vernal, Utah.
I'd forgotten that. I knew both flowers were my grandmother's favorites and that they'd come from her yard—my aunt and uncle live there now with their two still-at-home teenagers—but I'd forgotten that she'd transplanted that yellow rosebush when they moved to Moses Lake in 1942.
Elden left us to talk to his son (my second-cousin-once-removed) and I began to play The 6ths You You You You You. While we were singing it, I thought of what I would transport from place to place in my own life, what it would be that I would tend carefully for over fifty years, what it would be that my grandchildren might touch while forgetting its origin.
I'm pretty sure I know.
Posted by Ida at May 27, 2003 01:49 PM