Furry FeetNotes: The Ocean at the End of Sunset Drive
Life, death, and childhood memories wrapped in a Neil Gaiman Story
My Gramma died this week.
Death should never be entirely unexpected, particularly at 97 years old. Most folks my age don’t have a living grandparent. It was a blessing to have her with us for so long. Yet, not matter how our expectations rise of fall, death brings inevitable sadness.
After hearing of her passing, I did two things.
Reminisced by pulling down old photographs to find pictures of her and me when I was a kid. I don’t have any said photographs. I grew up in a day when cameras were not ubiquitous attachments to our phones. Not too many pictures of me as a kid, really. I did find a few of me at her house. I’ve shared one with this essay.
Reread The Ocean at the End of the Lane. This is my favorite Neil Gaiman story and one of my favorite stories of all time. I describe it as a coming-of-age fairy tale for middle-aged men. It was a fitting read this week.
Certain stories are tied to life events. Ocean is my default story for when I’m feeling nostalgic and melancholy, which certainly happens when hearing about the death of one’s grandmother. Or of anyone. The tale has much to do with memories. The difference being that Gaiman’s story is about a man who is remembering a childhood trauma related to monsters (and whatever the monsters might reference). I didn’t have any childhood monsters, really. No real ones that I can remember. My reminiscing was more about frogs and turtles.
Mostly turtles.
My Gramma lived on Sunset Lane in a red cedar, A-frame house at the edge of Bristol Lake in South-Central Michigan. Their house was cavernous in the memory of a small human. When I look at that location now on Google maps, their house is quite small when compared to the massive homes in that area, 50 years later. But whatever the size, this house was summer paradise for 7-year-old boys. There were trees to climb and fish to catch, and an entire lake filled with frogs and turtles to explore. There was a dock and a raft, and, with a lifejacket and supervision, I could swim for hours. I was the captain of explorer ships with massive sails in the morning, and a pirate scoundrel in the afternoon. As a kid, it was my favorite place on earth.
Bristol Lake was full of turtles.
My mission was to catch them all, pre-Pokemon. They are mostly painted turtles, with bright red and yellow heads. Catching a turtle requires incredible patience and some sleight of hand. Stand still at the right spot in the water, hands moving with the current, so you look like seaweed. When the turtle comes up for air, it’s a fast grab before they slide off into the deep water. Turtles are fast in the water. Patience would pay off. I wasn’t efficient. But I would eventually grab a slow one.
My uncle took me in the boat to catch turtles once. That was thrilling. Once we spotted heads sticking out of the water, he cranked the engine. We moved at what felt like a million miles an hour. My job was to hold the net. We caught some big turtles that day. I greeted them, probably named them, and we let them go.
Frogs were easier to catch, as they are slow and bumbling things, compared to turtles.
I was unable to find a picture of me with my Gramma. I did find a picture of me at her house with this frog.
My Grampa intimidated me as a little kid. He had a tattoo. I didn’t know anyone with a tattoo. But one day he took me to a neighbor's house, because the neighbor had trapped a snapping turtle. It was a monster — spiked, angry, and prehistoric. I didn't know turtles hissed. My Grampa put a stick in its face, and the beast promptly snapped the stick in half. Terrifying.
I was there for the cleaning.
The neighbor waved an enormous, sharp, metal hook in the dinosaur’s face, and he took the bait. The hook went through its skull, and the neighbor hung him up to carve the edible parts. I watched with horrified fascination. We had turtle for dinner that night. It tasted like chicken.
Those summers were magical — and where most of my Gramma memories live. I was the first of a dozen (at least — I honestly don’t know the final number) grandchildren. I knew my Gramma loved me. She baked me cookies and gave me hugs, and I got to do fun things at her house that I couldn’t do anywhere else. She always seemed like a strong and brave woman to me, as a kid. Growing older, I learned why that perception was true. Her first husband and the father of four of her children (including my Mom) died unexpectedly. She was a single mom in the 50s, a time when single parenthood was a stigma and not a badge.
My Gramma was indeed a strong and brave woman.
“Nothing’s ever the same. Be it a second later or a hundred years. It’s always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.”
Lettie Hempstock’s Grandmother in “The Ocean at the End of the Lane”
As we grow older, and the wild winds of change ramp up to hurricane levels.
You move away.
Gramma and Grampa move away.
Repeat the process a few more times.
New families are born.
Life tosses us around some more.
Places lose their significance.
And childhood memories grow feint and distant because the roar of the present is just too loud.
Time took me from those days at Bristol Lake. The number of other grandchildren increased. We all moved. My relationship with my Grandparents became more distant. Never poor, mind you. They simply lived their lives, and I lived mine in various and very different parts of the world. Ships in the night, and all that.
You can’t go back.
My Gramma was always a strong, brave woman. To the end. It’s who she was.
I will always remember her ringing the dinner bell (yes there was a literal dinner bell) on the deck of an A-frame home on Sunset Lane at Bristol Lake, calling me from my turtle hunts to eat macaroni cheese. The good kind, not from a box.
That was nearly half a century ago. Life moves on in 50 years. And it does so with or without us.
Thanks for hanging with my reminiscent rambling this week. I commend The Ocean at the End of the Lane, if you enjoy stories that are both strange and poignant.
Here are some quotes from the story that stuck with me after my reread this week:
Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.
Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.
“I’m going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”
I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy.
Rest in Jesus, Gramma.
Remember that you are doing better than you think.
You have more potential than you know.
B.
This is my every Sunday-ish newsletter containing bits and bobs of what I’m reading, writing, watching, thinking, and experimenting with this week. Every month I also send my complete notes from a book I’ve read, so you can decide if you want to read it too! Like the old version of Cliff’s Notes. But more Hobbit-like. Furry feetnotes.
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I am a consultant, coach, and trainer with Growability® Consulting, specializing in non-profit and cross-cultural business and leadership. Check out the Growability® Podcast at all your favorite podcast places.Start writing today. Use the button below to create your Substack and connect your publication with Furry FeetNotes.
A thoughtful, touching tribute to a special lady and that special place in our childhood hearts where our grandparents are extra special.
This was solid. One of your best.