Bethany Suckrow » Michigan

Fall’s First Batch Of Applesauce.

Bethany — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 12:00:23 +0000

Heaven will smell like hot apples cooking on a fall day. This is the scent of our favorite season, mingled with smells of shepherd’s pie and pumpkin spice anything. Oh, and the creaking sound of the furnace as it remembers how to heat the house again. The light is dim in the house each morning, the sun rising later and later while we wait for Swiss Miss and cereal before school. We stand on the vent in the kitchen, the heat billowing our robes and warming our slippers.

This is my childhood. This is the month of my birth. This is how I remember life at home.

We try to replicate it now, apples in a pot on the stove, their perfume rising to bless our memories.

[Image.]

Labor Day and Letting Go.

Bethany — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 12:00:41 +0000

Our family has spent every Labor Day for the past ten years at my aunt’s cottage in northern Michigan. It sits at the end of a dirt road and on the edge of Manake Lake, where cell service and internet and television are completely, blissfully unnecessary. Last year I didn’t make it up there, but this time around, I knew I couldn’t miss it. I knew my soul needed it.

I spent four days alternating between laying in the hammock with a good book, swimming, eating, laughing with 20 family members – parents, siblings, spouses, uncles, aunts, cousins, dogs. I’m sunburnt, but for every sting of red skin I smile a little at the memories made, the yard full of tents and RVs, the hugs and talks and jokes and boats and bonfires and meals and tears and the last rays of summer enjoyed before autumn is upon us.

I think in removing myself from the internet and work and obligation, I finally gave myself permission to feel. I even gave myself permission not to write. It would have been lovely to get up before everyone else and sit on the porch swing and let the words pour out of me so that I can have a stockpile of blog posts and articles, but I let myself sleep instead.

It has been a strange, busy, stressful, frustrating season, one that I have been desperate to get past and also desperate to learn from. I don’t think I understand my life any better than I did a week ago, but I did realize that clarity and peace aren’t always achieved in words, even though I am a writer. No, despite my desperation to achieve, succeed, survive, overcome, conquer whatever I face, I am learning to accept that sometimes the hardest thing to do is also the most necessary.

This is the season for letting go.

[Photo of Manake Lake courtesy of my brother.]

Detour : St. Joseph, MI.

Bethany — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 16:58:00 +0000

On our way home from a family wedding this weekend [yay Whitney and Jon!] my husband and I took a detour and stopped in St. Joseph, Michigan. We spent our honeymoon there two years ago and wanted to revisit Silver Beach, which holds a lot of happy memories for us. Sunday was gorgeous : 78 degrees and sunny. The clouds rolled in as the sun was setting, giving us a spectacular lake view that we couldn’t help but capture with some snapshots. The first I took with my iPhone, the rest were taken by Matt with his Nikon D80.

When I was young I didn’t appreciate the natural beauty of Michigan. Then again, most of what I new of the state was southwest Michigan, which really isn’t that spectacular away from the lake. Now though, I love that on our way home to Chicago we can stop and drink in a late summer evening, complete with Silver Beach Pizza and a GIANT waffle cone of Kilwin’s pistachio ice cream :

The Rain.

Bethany — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 23:33:00 +0000

Driving home from Michigan yesterday I finally found an exit that took me to the lake shore. I’ve tried before and gotten lost in loops of highway exits and side roads as my GPS chirps in the background, “recalculating, recalculating…” This time I muted the thing, took an exit I haven’t taken before and discovered the road I remembered from our honeymoon to St. Joseph, Michigan. In my memory the water gleamed blue with sunshine as husband and I said good-bye to the only vacation we’ve taken since we married nearly two years ago.

I stopped and got out of the car, grateful to stretch my legs and let the breeze air out my shirt, drenched in sweat from a drive with no air-conditioning in 85 degree weather, and to reflect on my trip home and the road ahead of me – what I was returning to and what I was leaving behind.

The aquamarine waves lapped quietly, disappearing into a hazy sky. With the sun shining and calm winds, it was hard to fathom the ominous storm forecasted to strike the midwest. Supposedly I was headed straight into the thick of it, but from where I sat things looked peaceful and incapable of being disturbed. I wanted to sit there forever, the sun and I defiantly waiting for a sign from the darkening sky to prove the weatherman right or wrong. I know that meteorology is a science, but for how often they are wrong I wanted to believe that the storms wouldn’t come.

I sweltered the whole way home, watching the sky grow darker and gray, fraught with clouds. In the distance I could see the slant sheet of rain spill over the southwest.

At long last I pulled into the lot of my apartment, and the sky, heavy with thunder, broke open in a downpour.

I stepped from the car, lifted my hands open-palmed to the sky.

For once it felt good to let the cold drops wash over me, engulf me in its soaking breeze, let the rumble of thunder ripple from my spine to my toes.

What else am I to do but welcome it now?

[Photo.]

Be Bold and Mighty Forces Will Come to Your Aid

Bethany — Mon, 02 May 2011 21:10:00 +0000

How was your weekend, dear readers? My weekend was a flurry of travel and visits with family in my small Michigan hometown. I’m thankful that I live in Chicagoland where I can work and visit the wide-open arms of its sweeping skyline whenever I want, and that my rural roots are just across the lake. In 4.5 hours [I'm not speeding, I promise, Dad!] I’m able to make the trek home to say hello and spend time with my parents and two younger brothers.

250 miles seems so short when I compare it to being halfway across the world or when I think about how far-flung some of my other family has become. Yet, I sometimes wonder at how far one can get in less than a day’s time. We left on a sunny Friday morning, and before I knew it, it was Sunday afternoon and my grandmother and I were driving the curve back around Lake Michigan to Chicago where I found myself sitting at a friend’s bonfire eating brats and burgers as the sun slipped behind the trees. As with many Sunday nights after a weekend visit, How did I get here? was the singular thought floating around in my head as I crawl into bed.

I’ll be headed back this weekend just to spend time with my mom for Mother’s Day. As you go about your week, I encourage you to take a moment to give thanks for your mom, or any woman in your life that has nurtured you and encouraged your dreams. If she’s here with you, healthy or fighting for her life, be sure to give thanks for the time you have together. If she’s gone, my prayers are with you as you reflect on her legacy and wish that you could tell her thank you one more time. Write her a love letter, because you and I both know that the task of raising you, helping you grow, wasn’t always a picnic, but she put her brave face on and taught you how to live life in this world anyway…

[Post title taken from Basil King, not Goethe as Frances McDormand says in the above clip.]