Lisa, November 12, 2007

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After lunch, we took a walk in the old German graveyard, and for the first time all day, Sam dropped her sullen act.

"Look Mom, this one died when she was a baby."

She grabbed my hand and pointed to a gravestone.

Margaretha Schwab. Born June 3, 1842. Died August 12, 1842.

"1842," I said. "This was practically the frontier back then. A lot of infant mortality."

"That means babies dying, right?"

"That's right."

We walked toward another gravestone, her hand still in mine.

Hanna Schwab. That must be the mother. Born 1823, Leipzig. Died 1867. Here. That would be...

"Sam, what's sixty-seven minus twenty-three?"

"Forty-four."

My age. When Hanna died. How many more children did you have, Hanna, after losing Margaretha at...

"What's 42 minus 23?"

"Oh god, Mom. Nineteen." She looked at the stone. "You're figuring out how old she was..."

"Yeah."

"The gravestones are so gross," said Sam. "Somebody should clean them."

"Those are lichens," I said. "They grow on the old limestone. The calcium neutralizes the acid rain. It's a good place for them to grow."

"So they shouldn't clean them?"

"I would leave them just the way they are. Graveyards are good for nature."

We strolled quietly among the stones, still hand in hand. Keydel. Otterbein. Baum. Walsch. In England, they teach nature courses in graveyards. Rocks and weathering. Human populations. Biodiversity.

"Mom," said Sam, "are you a Wiccan?"

"I don't think so," I said. "I'm not very religious."

Who needs a nature center? You could hire the buses, set up day tours. Would that work here?

"Grandpa's an Episcopalian," said Sam. "And Dad says he's a half-assed Taoist—"

"Is that so?" I said.

"—and Grandma Shepanski is a Catholic, and that leaves you."

An old truck rumbled by on County E. There must still be a few working farms around here. The driver probably wouldn’t dream of stopping at the old church, now that it's been converted to a little café. What would he make of a busload of eco-tourists? Those old guys have a different relationship with the land—harsh. Hateful, sometimes. But intimate.

Sam tugged at my hand. "Mom! I'm asking you a question! What religion are you?"

"I'm not much of anything," I said. "Are you doing a report for school?"

"No," she said. "I'm just curious. I read a book on religions of the world."

I suppose this place could make you feel religious. Very quiet and peaceful. But then as soon as you think about it—as soon as you focus on the quiet—you can hear the highway. No buzz of transcendence. Just the distant angry roar. What is it? Ten miles away?

"You worship nature, don't you Mom?"

"I don't know about worship. I fight for it sometimes."

The wind shifted a little, and for a moment it filled my ears, masking the sound of the highway. The bleak November wind that Hanna Schwab would have heard, the season after baby Margaretha died, while her husband cleared the land, not primeval forest, but a forest a century or two old, grown unchecked since the European microbes had decimated the native population. You and your husband didn't need to fight the Indians, did you Hanna? Smallpox had done that already.

Sam let go of my hand, and ran off to study something—a few yards away. Under that bush—what is it?

I hope you had a daughter, Hanna. One that lived.

Samantha, November 12, 2007

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Parents can get so crazy, they don't even know what they're doing sometimes, they don't listen to anyone, if they don't have a job, that's the worst. Just think about it, I mean if you're a like a kid you've got school to go to, but if you're a Mom and you don't have a job and your last job paid you like a whole year's salary just to go away, then there's no place you have to go where you have to act normal, so you can just stay home and be as crazy as you want and only your kid can see you. I asked my Mom, so when are you going to start looking for a job, and she said she had been working seven days a week at the center since before I was born, she was even signing papers with one hand and holding me on her breast with the other, Mom! I said, but she wouldn't stop, she was still in the hospital, she said, waiting for her milk to come, that's how devoted she had been to the center, and what she needed now was to get in touch with other things in her life, and I'm like okay, whatever, go be a yoga mom, I didn't really say that out loud. So then this morning I'm eating my breakfast like normal and she comes in and makes a big deal of cutting the grapefruit for me and then she starts carving out the little pieces with this weird little knife I'd never seen before, and I'm like Mom, what are you doing, I just dig it out with the spoon, and she said this was the way her mother did it for her, couldn't she do something nice for her daughter once in a while, and then she sprinked brown sugar on both halves of the grapefruit, smashing the clumps with her fingers which is so totally gross and she put each half on a little plate and set a spoon beside it like it was some kind of fancy dish from a chef show on TV, and then handed one of the dishes to me with like a total crazy person's smile. And I'm like, I can't eat that I don't eat sugar, and she said, what do you mean you don't eat sugar, don't you eat candy with your friends, and I'm like no, Mom, no I don't and she said fine, and threw both halves of the grapefruit in the garbage one after another, and walked out of the kitchen. So I put the stupid little plates and the stupid little knife in the dishwasher and I ate my toast and read a few more pages of my book, and then she came back in the kitchen with the phone in her hand and said she had just called my school and told them I wouldn't be coming in today, and I'm like what do you mean, my group is doing a presentation today, and she said, it's okay, I've got it all taken care of, but I'm like Mom! we're doing the rivers of North America, and ours is the Red River, the only one that flows north, but she said it's about time I let some of the other kids do the work, because today we're going for a drive in the country, just the two of us.