Where does young love go?

This is the fifth short story of Minnie. She's healthy, in her 70's, her life is fine -  but she has taken herself away from all that is regular on a personal quest to remember who she was and figure out who she has become so she can know what comes next.  At the end of this story I'll remind you of the first four chapters. 

It would have been reasonable for Minnie to turn east out of Sioux Falls to start back to Wisconsin except that the sun, still low in the east, made her eyes squint. So she turned west, smiling a little to herself as she remembered the year she and Dennis took Evie and Laura to the Badlands. They’d been so young; Evie five, Laura barely three.

Dennis’ mom, as always, had criticized sharply. “You're a doctor, Denny, not poor like we were when you were a boy! You should take my grandbabies to Disney World while they are still young enough to believe in magic! Plus, you fly there, stay in some nice resort, just be there and relax. Why would you drive for all that exhausting distance just to see tan hills?”

Dennis clenched his jaw the way he nearly always did when his mom called. Being raised in struggling families was part of what he and Minnie had in common. They’d each had enough to eat and no one abused them, but both knew the stress of stressed parents. 

But this morning, so many years later, was beautiful. She admired a murmuration of starlings weaving back and forth across the sky. She let her thoughts swirl similarly until she saw a sign for the Corn Palace in Mitchell. And burst into laughter. 

That had been an incredible day. 

…

“Mommy, Daddy! Look, it says PALACE! Are we going to a PALACE?” Evie pushed on the armrests of her booster seat, trying to see out the car window better. 

They’d probably answered calmly and logically, because that was the way they tried to be with the kids. No, the Corn Palace wasn’t where they were going that day. They were going to Badlands National Park just like they had described umpteen times though, of course, that didn’t mean anything to their young girls.

“OH, Daddy, we HAVE to go to the PALACE!”

Laura, who at three didn’t even know what they were talking about, wailed with her sister. They usually pestered each other but when motivated, they could also pester together very effectively. 

When Evie started to weep, Dennis and Minnie rolled their eyes at each other. She was not generally a whiny kid but she was powerfully determined to figure things out. Her kindergarten teacher said she’d rarely met such a stubbornly curious child. She had politely offered that this was probably going to work well for her as an adult although, the teacher said, it did mean she was sometimes ‘inconvenient in group settings.’ Minnie and Dennis had laughed ruefully and said they understood and would support the teacher any way they could.

Now this child was determined to see “the PALACE” and Laura was already lisping about queenths and kingths. Minnie and Dennis gave in. What was the point, they mumbled to each other, of hauling crying children half way across the country? Surely it wouldn’t take more than an hour.

It took half a day. The girls, who had never seen a palace outside of picture books, did not understand that what they were viewing with awe was a rather tired 1920’s red brick municipal building decorated with murals made from colored corn. It was, as Dennis’ mother would have criticized if they had told her, definitely not Disney World.

Their little girls were awed and held each other’s hands as they stared up at the murals. They pointed to characters in the scenes while deciding what kings and queens and fairy tale characters they must be. They started to run around the building to see everything so Dennis had to run after them while Minnie sat down on a bench to laugh. Inside were more surfaces covered with more corn mosaics; the girls ran hither and yon to look at it all. By then everyone was hungry so they ate hamburgers and pancakes in a local diner where the server brought the girls gummy worms and coloring books.

It was early afternoon before they got back into the car with full, happy, sleepy children who napped all the way to the Badlands. Minnie and Dennis used that unexpected quiet time to unravel what had just happened. They considered the difference between supporting kids’ interests versus ‘enriching’ them and that had been an important conversation for their careers as parents. To figure out the difference between entitled and curious behavior and how to honor the second.

The girls were just waking as they arrived at their motel, which, to the girls’ bliss and joy, featured a modest swimming pool. The girls screeched to go swimming right away. Minnie and Dennis muttered that since the Badlands were a half millions years old they’d probably hold for another day. That night, reading quietly so as to not awaken their utterly exhausted kids, Dennis looked at Minnie sideways and she rolled her eyes and they didn’t use birth control because they were fairly sure they were outside her cycle. 

They were wrong and that year, at Christmas, baby Holly was born. Not in their plans, but they were learning that the best plans were about trying to clear a path for love. 

…

Minnie saluted as she drove past the Corn Palace sign that morning. She had her memories; she didn’t need to revisit the site. Three hours later she turned onto the highway that led into Badlands National Park. 

At the first overlook she walked the park’s boardwalk to the natural window which framed miles of buttes, rises, and jagged pinnacles in the far distance. She remembered when Laura had stood in this same place, looked at the landscape and asked, “Are these angels?” 

Just as her mother-in-law had derided all those years ago, the Badlands WAS “just” tan hills of moonscape slopes and canyons that stretched to the blue horizon. Mounded hills striped with mauve and gold. Blowing winds, aridness so intense one felt like bread in an oven. There was nothing else quite like this; this brilliant, intense American desert in August. 

She was deeply glad she had come. She stopped at every overlook, walked every boardwalk to tableaus straight from science fiction. She ate frybread with a beer at the park’s center and bought hoodies for everyone and a book about geology for herself. She wondered if Evie and Laura would remember. 

The next morning she rose early to drive back into the park to witness sunrise. She parked the car, climbed a low hill, then held her breath as a brilliant sliver appeared behind the jagged purple silhouette of distant hills. Wind swooshed and stirred. As she watched in awe, the whole sky became a citrus striped sunrise. 

Later, back at the car, she put on her backpack and set off to hike the Castle Trail. There were no kids or spouses this time, just her, and she felt as adventurous as if she were traveling solo on a tramp steamer. 

The trail was a skinny path trod into the prairie grass by the years of hikers who, like her, trudged from steel post to steel post. The sun beat down, her sunscreen, sunglasses, and sunhat helped but the world was exponentially drier, harsher, and more intense than the prudent precautions of humans.

She cautiously climbed gullies and ravines not much taller than herself, yet slippery and uneven, requiring respect about where to put one’s next footstep. There were long flat spaces next to steep-sloped buttes, she admired their crumbling sides held in place by time, habit, and sparse weeds. Everything was open and exposed to whatever wind or weather came along. The day was so brilliant that she considered that this is how it would feel to be inside a diamond. The topography endured and crumbled at the same time. It was exhausting to be in it, but also powerful and energizing. 

Every hill she walked around opened to a new vista of jagged hills, canyons, and plateaus. Magpies swooped, she spied tiny footprints of small animals who scurried across and under the grasses. Bison plops like fetid chocolate cookie batter baked in middle of the path. 

One hour quietly melted into the next. Minnie checked her watch occasionally to make sure her heart beat was peppy but not clinical. Sweat stuck her t-shirt stick to her back as she realized her feet were also hot and then, suddenly, she realized she needed a break. She made her way to the shady side of towering butte that blocked the sun. She sat on the ground to gulp her lemon tea while she devoured the entire snack pack of Oreos she’d bought at the gas station. 

She was out of the wind and in some shade. She was by herself when she realized the world around her was as quiet as if a bomb of silence had exploded over the land. As she listened all she could hear was her own breathing.

Unexpected tears started to roll down her cheeks. She wiped her face, letting her mind go to the memory that erupted not from what she saw, but from the nothingness she heard. 

…

Evie was away at college. Laura was a high school junior earning good grades and hanging out with good friends. It was an election year so with some others she joined a Milwaukee area group of teenagers dedicated to supporting candidates who were women, or Black, or Hispanic. She was so busy that autumn; she understood political issues and was learning more. 

Then one Saturday she came home late in the afternoon with Xander. He was tall, Black, and, for a teenager, astonishingly handsome. When the two of them walked hand-in-hand into the kitchen, Minnie looked up and her breath caught. Here was her funny middle kid, who suddenly was a young woman in love with this young man who kept his eyes on here, who obviously loved her back. It was as if they brought light with them into the room. 

She was a junior; he was an 18-year-old senior at a high school in Milwaukee. The two of them were two peas who had wandered a fair distance to find their pod and after that they spend most weekends together. They canvassed, made calls, attended meetings, lobbied all the people they knew for votes and money. Dennis laughed that he was glad he had become a physician because otherwise he didn’t know if the family could afford to so support so many candidates. But what he was saying, and they knew it, was how proud he was of both of them. 

Xander ate dinner with them often. Often Dennis would drive him back into the city to his family’s apartment at nine of ten at night. Dennis told Minnie one night that Xander had nervously told Dennis that they were both sure that had a long future ahead of them.

It was startling. Evie was both jealous and congratulatory when she came home at Christmas. Holly loved having a big brother around. A few times the entire family went into the city to dine at Xander’s aunt’s small Jamaican restaurant with his mom and his little cousin who lived with them. 

At Christmas Xander and Laura gave each other silver cocoa-pod bangle bracelets that, he said, represented both Jamaican beauty and resistance. 

And then, one evening early the following summer, carrying take-out jerked chicken home to his family, he was caught in gang crossfire and was killed. 

Just like that. Laura and Xander, young and in love, looking forward to college and futures in politics, when their bright future snapped shut and went dark. The world went silent the evening Xander’s mom called Laura from the hospital. Laura didn’t even cry. She simply collapsed and curled up on the hardwood floor of the dining room. There was only the silence of shock. 

Minnie and Dennis paid for much of the funeral and in bed after that awful day, they had held each other and wept. “We worried we were going to have pay for a too soon wedding. But here we are, paying for a funeral.”

Laura went to bed after the funeral and after that, she would not get up. She didn’t cry. She slept. Hour after hour, day after day. Week after week.

 Minnie and Dennis didn’t know what to do. No one did. Laura was barely eighteen, too young to be a widow but that was the reality she was living. Minnie brought her smoothies and later took away half empty glasses. When they came home from work, sometimes the soap was moved in the bathroom so they knew she was sometimes taking showers. But all they ever saw was their beloved, vivacious, lively daughter now sideways in her bed, covers pulled to her chin, sleeping. It was as if she had gone into hibernation.

Holly would go in to ask Laura a question but Laura didn’t answer. Minnie and Dennis tried to talk to her about school. She replied, quietly towards the wall, that she didn’t care if she flunked. She was not going to school until she didn’t know when. Maybe never.

Minnie and Dennis talked to each other, to therapists, to friends they trusted, about grief in a person this young. No one had answers other than Dennis’s mother who, unasked, said that girl just needed some gumption and they shouldn’t coddle her.

That had been a moment of his whole life when Dennis pulled the phone from his face and shouted into it. “I have never yelled at you, Mom, but you will be cut from our life completely if you ever again, even once, say that what my devasted family needs is gumption. I used gumption to grow up and leave you. I could do it again.” 

He slammed the phone back into the cradle on the kitchen wall. She had shut up. A small mercy in the darkest time.

A week after the funeral Minnie went into Laura’s room with a camping chair. She set it in the corner, opened an escapist whodunnit, turned on the desk lamp, and read. Laura never turned over. Minnie read a few hours and then went to bed.

She told Dennis what she had done. The next morning he got up at his regular early hour but instead of going to the gym he went into Laura’s room and sat in the camping chair to make some notes for himself for his day.

That became their routine. They stopped most of the cooking, house chores, and the regular routines of life outside of their jobs. Minnie and Dennis took shifts sitting in Laura’s room. Holly would go in after her school day to do her homework in Laura’s room.

Laura’s room was silent. Minnie would sometimes sit on the bed to rub Laura’s back, caress her hair, pull it out of her eyes and off her forehead. When Evie came home from college she would sit long hours with Laura, listening quietly to music they both liked while reading or knitting. 

Those were the quietest months of their lives. There was nothing anyone could say so they sat with Laura as she slept her way through the grief that would alter her life. Holly, still in middle school, spent much of her summer at day camp. After camp, each day she’d go home to a friend’s less grief stricken home.

Until one August day when Minnie came home from work and Laura was on the sofa. She was clean, her hair still wet, and she was writing in a notebook with a purple pen. Purple had been her favorite color since second grade.

“Laura?”

Laura smiled tentatively. “Hi Mom. I’m up now.” 

Minnie lowered herself into the chair that faced the sofa. “I don’t know how to tell you how relieved I am to see you sitting up, Laura. It was hell to lose Xander and always will be. How are you now? Do you even know?”

Minnie could see the toll in Laura’s face, the grief in her daughter’s blue eyes. 

Laura spoke softly as she got back her words. “Xander and I talked all the time. One of the things we talked about was him running for a political office someday. Or finding a way to be a lawyer for poor people. Just something that could make the world more fair. So I am going to do that for him and for the two of us.” 

Laura continued, still with her soft voice. “I called the high school this morning. All my classes were incompletes, which I suppose you knew. But Arlene, the secretary, who knows me and knows what happened, said I can stop by tomorrow to get my missing assignments from some of the classes. They don’t have everything since it’s summer, but I can start to do that work. I want to do next year at home, not at school with all those kids. I can’t do that yet. Arlene looked it up and after I finish the incompletes, I’ll only need four more classes to graduate and then I could start college in January.”

Minnie was watching and listening to a new young woman. Her goofy daughter was gone. 

“I also called the Boys and Girls Club in Milwaukee and yeah, I can volunteer there in honor of Xander.” Her eyes welled but she kept talking. “The man I talked to knew Xander. He said it would be an honor to have me work with the kids.”

Laura let out a breath. “So I guess I’m back. I’ll never be a kid again. Thank you and dad and Holly and Evie for sitting with me. Not sure if you know this or not, but you guys saved my life. I really wanted to just stop my own life so I could be with Xander even though I’m sure that’s not how it works.” 

Minnie sat, listening. Holding her breath.

 “Xander once said this beautiful thing.” Laura stopped, closed her eyes, laughed a little to herself,  “I told him right then, when we were talking that it was beautiful and he said I shouldn’t tell a young male that he talks beautiful We laughed. But seriously, what he said was something like everyone has a path in life and the way to find it is to love people. Not just falling in love with a romantic partner but being active to help people. There’s always a path as long as we are alive and somehow, that path has to be love.” 

…

Minnie felt the solidity of the earth against her back. She took a deep breath, wiped her face with her t-shirt, took the last swallow of her drink, and stood up.

Laura had gone forward on the path of love she'd begun with Xander and she was still on it. She’d gone to law school and was now worked at a refugee camp in northern Africa. She helped people find nations to move to where they could start safer lives; she helped them do the paperwork and she lobbied officials all over the world. She said she found it easier to be with people who knew about grief. 

The path was always love. Kindness. Helping. Listening. Serving. Holding. Love.

…

Minnie walked on. 

Chapter 1 / Blue

Chapter 2 / Thistles in the Field

Chapter 3 / Rhythmic Walleyes

Chapter 4 / Reunion with Roy