Roadtripping with Family

It has been almost two months since my last post. After my March, mostly solitary, camping trip through some southern states, the first three weeks of being home in Ann Arbor seem like a bit of a whirlwind as I look back on it now.

Two events that will be forever linked stand out from that three week blur: the total eclipse (which I watched with Jay’s cousin who came down from Wisconsin in search of the totality line - a memorable experience to be sure) and my son Conrad’s proposal to his (now) fiancé Maria.

*I couldn’t be happier that Maria will be joining our family!*

Conrad and Maria met in New York City when Conrad was still living there and she was on a visit from her native Peru. They have been together for almost three years, managing their long distance relationship with visits back and forth and lots of Zoom calls in between.

I knew they were pretty serious because I haven’t seen Conrad this happy since before he lost his dad, and I have delighted in getting to know Maria on her visits to Michigan. But I had no idea that Conrad was planning to pop the question during the three-minute totality window of the eclipse. Can a marriage proposal get any more romantic than that??

During the week after the eclipse and before Maria returned to Peru, I watched with pride from the sidelines as they giddily spread the news to friends and relatives everywhere. One of the perks of having Conrad still living with me is that I got to be a fly on the wall in those first days as they buzzed around discussing and making plans. With Maria as the interpreter, we were able to have a group Zoom with her parents in Peru (who speak very little English, next to my nonexistent Spanish) and toast the happy couple. It was an emotional meeting as we parents are now tasked with preparing for our only children to leave our parental nests and make a new life with each other. Jay would be so happy and proud.

My window into his daily life will change in July when Conrad finally ends his residence with me, almost two years to the day after moving back to Ann Arbor from New Jersey. All you parents out there will understand me when I say that I’m ready but not ready. It is definitely time, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be tears...

April/May Road Trip

After three weeks at home I took off on another road trip, modified from my preferred travel routine by the fact that I didn’t have my camper or Sadie with me this time. I definitely missed them, but it was best to leave both behind for this particular adventure. Being gone from home for three weeks in April and May after just returning from my March trip was not originally on my travel schedule, but one of the many perks of being retired is that, for the most part, I can pivot easily and make impulsive decisions about where to go and when and for how long.

Several months ago my three siblings and I made plans to go to southern Indiana in late April for a couple of days. The extended road trip plan emerged when I learned that my North Carolina brother Daniel and his wife Simona had rented a house for a week on Emerald Isle, where they have vacationed many times before. When they invited family to join them, I took a look at my calendar and it didn’t take very long to decide that the timing worked. So I made the pivot!

Conrad (once again) held down the fort at Ann Arbor and took care of Sadie and Casper while I played and frolicked with my sibs and in-laws and soaked up new experiences and vistas.

I always try to learn new things about myself or the world around me as I travel and go through life, so here are a few insights I acquired during this most recent trip.

Merom, Indiana

Merom holds a special place in the hearts of my siblings and me. We lived there from 1959 to 1967, during the early years of my father’s professional career and the formative years of my siblings and me. I was two when we arrived and ten when we left. My younger brother Daniel was born in nearby Sullivan, the county seat. Boasting a population of just under 200 in the 2020 census, Merom was originally an important stage coach stop for people getting ready to cross the Wabash River (of Wabash Cannonball fame) from Indiana into Illinois. The town has a long and proud history that the community has continued to nurture and maintain over the years.

*The most distinguishing feature of Merom is the presence of this conference center, originally built in 1893. My father worked at the center in the 1960’s when it was known as Merom Institute.*

While several of us have been back from time to time, either alone or with other family members, Daniel had not been back since we left in 1967. For him it was a special pilgrimage to where he literally began his life. For the rest of us it was a special time to spend together and see this special place through our collective eyes and memories.

The experience in Merom did not disappoint. We met a number of amazing people who have made it their mission to preserve the structural and financial integrity of the old college and conference center, which has historical significance to the development of the town. The townspeople couldn’t have been more welcoming to us once they figured out who we were and why we were there. As is to be expected in any small, closely-knit town in rural America (or in many neighborhoods in bigger cities), residents notice when newcomers start roaming the streets. In our case we arrived in mid-afternoon and immediately began driving around slowly, looking for landmarks and sharing memories. We parked at the bluff that looks over the Wabash River and into Illinois and then walked the entire town (as I said, it is very small). Questioning faces peered at us as they drove by, curtains flickered in windows, and we had a palpable feeling of being watched as we wandered around. We eventually made our way to the conference grounds where we had spent so much time as children and happened onto some volunteers from Indianapolis who had just spent that day working on the grounds as part of their annual weeklong commitment of support to help care for the property.

These volunteers were not familiar with the work that my father did in the early 1960’s there, but there were many parallels between their experiences with the town and ours, and we enjoyed sharing that part of the center’s historical legacy with them. Suffice it to say that we all felt a deep connection with each other even though we were all meeting for the first time. Our overlap with them that afternoon spilled over into the next morning when we all met and shared breakfast together at the only cafe in town, Meleah’s.

*This unique spiral staircase has been taking visitors up into the cupola at the top of the building since the original construction.*

After our lovely communal breakfast, the current director of the conference center gave us a full tour of the building and grounds. We had fun remembering the nooks and crannies we used to explore as children, and the areas of the building where our father worked for eight years.

From this experience I learned that you can indeed go home again. It had been over fifty years since Daniel had been back to the place he was born, and he identified a very tangible sense of belonging as he walked about and talked with residents. Most of the people we met had lived there for their entire lives, either in Merom itself or the surrounding area. Although my siblings and I have lived and travelled many different places over the years, all four of us felt at home as we walked the familiar streets and reminisced. Neither the intervening years nor the vast differences in many of our life experiences did anything to dampen the welcoming nature of this little town towards the returning pilgrims. Would the residents have been as welcoming to total strangers with no historical connection to the place? I can’t say, but I can say that the town has done a stellar job of preserving its civic pride, integrity, and openness to outsiders by inviting the world to visit every year during their annual Merom Bluff Chautauqua. Quite an accomplishment for a small, rural town in southern Indiana.

*What a beautiful sunset over the Wabash River looking into Illinois!*

Franks Sunrise Farm, Kentucky

For many of us who grew up in places far away from where our ancestors put down family roots, our connection with the relatives who remained there mostly revolved around the holidays. Thanksgiving. Religious holidays. Fourth of July. Significant birthdays or anniversaries. During the years we lived in Indiana my family couldn’t make all those gatherings in Ohio or western New York, so when we did it was very special. On my father’s side of the family everyone gathered at my grandparents’ farm in Ohio where my Lebold ancestors settled in the mid-1800’s. (If you are interested in more of the Lebold family breadcrumbs, you can click on the menu item Lebold Connections at the top of the webpage.)

*This picture of the old farmhouse was taken in 2022. It still looks pretty good after over 150 years! My grandfather and all of his children (including my father) were born in the house.*

When it was a working farm, and for a time after most of the acreage was sold to a land developer, my siblings, cousins and I would spend many hours exploring the property, riding the horses, playing games and building forts in the hayloft, gathering eggs in the henhouse, playing with the lambs in the sheep barn, fishing in the pond over the hill, tobogganing down that same hill, and generally hanging out in the idyllic rural setting that only a farm can provide.

But the cousins of my generation eventually grew up, got married, had children, built careers, moved away, and started living their own lives as adults. After the grandparents died in the 1990’s and the homestead was eventually sold, my parents’ generation tried to create other opportunities for us all to get together. Inevitably, as we all get older in our respective generations, the gatherings of the upper branches of the family tree tend to form around funerals and weddings rather than the more traditional annual holidays, which are now celebrated by the lower branch nuclear families and their children. I have a friend who talks of “vertical” and “horizontal” family structures. The horizontals in my case are me and my siblings and my first cousins, all of the same generation. The verticals would be the children and now grandchildren of my siblings (my nieces and nephews) and my first cousins (my first cousins once or twice removed - relationships start getting complicated at this point!). I was once part of a vertical structure made up of my grandparents, my parents and me with my sibs. But now, two tiers of that structure are gone, and the vertical family tree that extends from Jay and me will continue to adapt as Conrad and Maria forge their new life together.

I’ve been reflecting on all this lately in the context of having recently visited my relatives in Kentucky. Once we stopped having the regular gatherings at my grandparents’ farm in Ohio, I had significantly fewer opportunities to see them and so we fell out of touch for long stretches of time spanning the last 40 years or so. The bulk of that time I was living with Jay in Germany, then North Carolina, then Pennsylvania, then Massachusetts, and then Michigan, working and raising Conrad. Vacation time was spent with my siblings and parents, and Guthrie, Kentucky felt far away in the “wrong” direction from where I and my parents lived and worked. I had aunts and uncles and cousins in much closer geographic proximity to my parents and as the years passed it was easier to plan visits with different combinations of those relatives, although they were not all that frequent either. My generation of first cousins were busy within their own families, building careers, raising children, and dividing precious free time among their own siblings, children and parents.

Gathering with far-flung cousins outside of one’s own vertical family seemed like a luxury we couldn’t afford during those busy working and child-rearing years. The time and effort it took to plan and execute the occasional full-on, multi-generational horizontal and vertical family get-together at a location that was accessible to everyone discouraged the more skilled event planners among us from making it happen more than a few times. And so, not surprisingly, some of us fell out of touch with relatives who lived further away, and our relationships and feelings of closeness fell victim to the passage of time. It isn’t that there was no contact at all, but rather the contact was infrequent and sporadic and was most likely triggered by a cataclysmic event such as death or illness.

It’s easy to assume that people stay out of touch because they don’t want to be in touch, and I firmly believe that couldn’t be further from the truth. Apathy and ambivalence may play a small part, but I think many of us just get overwhelmed by the rigors of daily life, and don’t have the mental energy or physical fortitude to push ourselves together even when we would like to do so. The longer it goes on the harder it can be to make a visit actually happen. But when a face to face visit does finally happen it can be magical.

When my siblings and I were planning the trip to Indiana, we checked the map and discovered that Merom was only 3-4 hours from our Kentucky relatives. It didn’t take long to decide to shorten our stay in Merom so that we could include a trip to Kentucky. We got in touch, received the invitation we were hoping for, and adjusted our plans to spend two nights and a full day at Franks Sunrise Farm.

What I learned from the wonderful visit to Sunrise Farm is that when you have a shared family history that goes back over almost 70 years (in my case), those old memories and experiences are available as “glue” to keep you bound together through time, even during those crucial gaps when there has been largely silence. Although from previous experiences I already suspected that was true, it was nice to have the lesson reinforced once again.

Once together, it didn’t take long for our shared breadcrumbs to come to the surface. Profound love emerges even through the lenses of very different life paths and world views. My Aunt Jane, now in her 90’s, is the last of her generation of siblings that included my father, and she and my Uncle Al still live at the beautiful farm they built together so many years ago when, as young newlyweds, they purchased the property and started their family.

Although Tim explained what this is I couldn’t tell you today. It is impossible to appreciate how massive these pieces of farm equipment are until you are standing in its shadow or looking down from the cockpit.

My cousin Tim, who built his house right across the road from his parents, runs the daily farm operations, and his nephew Tommy, just 16, has expressed interest in learning the business. Tommy’s mom, Marie, lives just down the road and raises purebred Welsh Corgies when she isn’t checking in on her parents and supporting their needs. Her husband Mark works on the farm.

The family is very close-knit and takes care of each other, especially now as Jane and Al get increasingly frail. In the last few months there have been some scary health events. That said, their frailty has not stopped either one of them from living each day as a gift and keeping themselves busy and engaged. Al took us to his workroom where he spends much of his time making birdhouses from the scrap wood available around the property. He would still be out in the fields if his heart doctor would let him, so he consoles himself with the birdhouses. Al was more than willing to give some away to his eager nieces and nephews.

*Sister Carol and cousin Don. One of Al’s birdhouses hangs on the tree behind them.*

My cousin Don is the program and marketing director at a senior living facility, and lives not far away in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He visits Sunrise Farm every weekend. Tim’s wife Tamara, a neonatal intensive care nurse, helps make sure that Jane and Al have all the support they need to thrive and age in place for as long as possible.

It was a joy to visit and get reacquainted and just “hang out.” Our hosts could not have been more gracious, generous and kind. Everyone took time off work in order to spend time with us, and we got a full tour of the farming operation.

That’s my brother Sam waving to us from the top of the silo. He was the only one brave enough to get all the way to the top. Tim got a good chuckle at our reluctance to face our fears on that small thin ladder.

Tim freely shared his knowledge of all the ins and outs of farming in today’s world, and let us climb all over the big, expensive equipment. Our late night of playing pool in Tim and Tamara’s home was super fun despite the fact that none of the out of town visitors were able to win a single game (nor did I expect to…).

The conversations were engaging and meaningful and we parted with intention to stay in touch and not wait so long between visits. For those at Sunrise Farm who might read this, thank you from the bottom of my heart for making us feel so welcome and loved after the passage of so many years. And remember, Michigan is but a day’s drive from Kentucky! I hope to be back before too long.

Emerald Isle, North Carolina

The final two weeks of the May road trip was spent in North Carolina. My brother Daniel hitched a ride with me and we meandered our way back to Chapel Hill from Guthrie, Kentucky, which sits right on the border with Tennessee. We shopped for guitars along the way (well, one of us did - successfully, I might add) while in Nashville - is there a better place to score a new guitar? I don’t think so!

*Daniel tried out a bunch of instruments in this wonderful* *store* *we found in Nashville.*

Dan did his due diligence, and at the end of the day was thrilled to find a guitar he wanted to buy (with his sister strongly encouraging him). He and I have already begun planning jam sessions once both of us get up and running on our respective instruments.

(short banjo update - I bought a brand new, higher quality banjo for myself at the tail end of my March trip. I was in the mountains near Chattanooga, Tennessee and found the perfect store that had exactly what I was looking for. Since the purchase I have been practicing everyday and feel like I may be actually making some progress in my playing. Woohoo! I also signed up for the Midwest Banjo Camp in June and I am hoping that experience will cure me of my fear of jamming. After that I intend to participate regularly in the Ann Arbor Bluegrass jam sessions that meet a couple of times per month. - there, I put it out there, so now I have to follow through!!!)

The trip to Chapel Hill was memorable and fun, and we took the small roads through the mountains, stopping along the way to experience the local flavors and scenery of the places we found ourselves in. After a short week in Chapel Hill, we drove to Emerald Isle to spend a week of bliss on the ocean. Our four bedroom condo housed 7 people and one dog, so it was a bit crowded but totally worth it. We enjoyed ourselves hanging out, practicing our instruments, riding bikes along the beach, eating seafood, and exploring the towns and shops nearby. I’ve been there before, and in recent years we have stayed at the same condo so there is familiarity and predictability with the space and the logistics of being there with others. There is no agenda and we can do whatever we want, whether it is spending time alone or doing activities with others.

*This was my view from my beachside bedroom.*

I was lucky enough to have a bedroom on a second floor that overlooked the ocean and had a sliding door and deck, which meant that I could fall asleep listening to the ocean waves and also sit on the deck whenever I wanted to enjoy the view. There could be lots of activity downstairs in the common area, which included an open (but small) kitchen, dining and living area, and I could retreat to my own solitary retreat whenever I needed to.

What I learned from this year’s experience at Emerald Isle is that it is possible to have “alone time” even when surrounded by other people, but I also learned something else about myself that I wasn’t expecting. To my surprise, I discovered after we arrived in Emerald Isle, that I needed more alone time than I thought I would. Looking back on it from a distance, I think I’m no longer used to being around a lot of other people day and night for weeks at a time. I’ve turned into a more solitary person than I thought I was. Is this a function of losing Jay six years ago? Is it a function of getting older? Is it a function of being out of practice in managing my daily life around multiple others who are sharing the space? Is it something else? After three weeks of travelling and living with others, I found myself feeling restless and unsettled but couldn’t figure out why. Perhaps Conrad’s change in circumstances and the prospect of his moving on with his life soon was also playing a part.

Confused by what I was feeling, near the end of the week in Emerald Isle I realized that I needed some sort of solitary reset before returning home to my friends and family in Michigan. So I made another travel pivot in order to make that happen.

Mother’s Day in West Virginia

My last stop before returning to Michigan was in the heart of the West Virginia mountains near the New River Gorge. I stayed two nights at the lodge in the Pipestem Resort State Park. Being still in the preseason, it was not crowded even on Mother’s Day weekend. When I booked the place a couple of days earlier, weather reports predicted rain the entire day I planned to be there, so I figured that might be a good time to relax, reset, and work on my writing uninterrupted with a beautiful view of the Blue Ridge Mountains out my hotel window.

*John Denver* *definitely appreciated the natural beauty of this state.*

As it turned out, the day was gorgeous all day long, and so I made a date with myself and headed out to explore. Highlights:

Flea Market

Pence Springs Flea Market is large, local, and frequent. They meet every week all year long and it is very popular. I spent a couple of hours there wandering among the different booths. Some artisan, hand-made stuff, lots of junk, and many antique treasures from the early coal-mining days.

The economic struggles of this part of the country were apparent throughout the market, as well as the prevalence of extremely conservative politics. Whenever I opened my mouth I branded myself as an outsider, so thick were the rural West Virginia accents surrounding me. Despite the constant visual and audio reminders that I was not from there, I strangely did not feel out of place, and the folks I talked to were friendly and welcoming. Maybe the fact that I was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, was a factor and helped me feel I was one of them even though I clearly wasn’t. I made two small purchases: a metal sculpted butterfly for my backyard and some delicious, flavorful grilled chicken from a Jamaican vendor.

John Henry Memorial

On my way to the flea market I saw a sign that I couldn’t pass up. John Henry became a legend back in the late 1800’s when the railroads were being built across the country, and was made immortal in a song popularized by Johnny Cash. The tune is a standard in bluegrass and country circles, so I have been familiar with it and the story for many years. I enjoyed seeing this national memorial and learning more about the actual man, separate from the legend. Apparently he died near where the memorial is while competing with the steam powered drill during the construction of the Big Bend tunnel.

*The Big Bend tunnel is no longer in use, but stands behind the sculpture of John Henry, which was based on a local resident in the area whose relatives worked on the railroad.*

All those years hearing the song, I never knew where the famous event had taken place. And then there I was at the site! I love finding these unexpected breadcrumbs!

Hinton

Hinton, West Virginia, as a town, is on the national register of historic places. This means that it is remarkably well preserved and cared for. As I was there on a Sunday and a holiday to boot, not many shops were open, but I did find a very cute cafe where I had a delicious Mother’s Day brunch. I topped off my eggs benedict Mother’s Day special with a slice of homemade coconut cream pie, my own mother’s favorite, which seemed appropriate on this special day of remembrance.

In Hinton, the one store that was open was a quirky little shop called the Otter and Oak, which had a mix of imported and local items. There I discovered the amazing Art of Seth, a local West Virginia artist whose philosophy on life was both joyous and thought-provoking. Somehow, his poetry spoke to me just in the way that I needed.

Bonus End To The Day

To top off the day of exploring I ended where I began back at the Pipestem Resort State Park. At Conrad’s urging from afar (being the loving son he is he called me on Mother’s Day and we had a nice, long chat), I went on a guided horseback ride on the park’s many trails. I was the only customer at the time, so I had my 17 year old guide Kyle to myself. She was sweet and chatty, turning around in her saddle on the narrow path to talk to me as we rode along. An hour later I was feeling stiff in various leg muscles that don’t get used in that particular way very often, and had to steady myself when I disembarked and found my feet again. The ride was beautiful and peaceful and just what I needed at the end of the afternoon. Totally worth the next days’ muscle aches as I drove home!!

*What a perfect way to end a perfect day!*

Next Steps

I’m happy to be home for a few weeks. The summer stretching out before me as we finish out May and get ready to enter June promises to be busy and fun. Some camping and music festivals with my camper buddy Kim. Banjo camp in June. A trip to Missouri in July for a family gathering of Jay’s relatives. A trip to Cape Cod in August for some camping and exploring with various relatives. And a wedding in the fall. Plans are afoot, and I will be standing by to help and support the effort as best I can. Exciting times!!

I have not been posting blog articles often or even regularly, but will try to change that as I move forward on various projects over the next few months. I enjoy coming up with different topics and themes to write about, but seem to run into snags or distractions when my life becomes active and I don’t have large blocks of writing time at my disposal. I’m working on figuring out how to honor my various writing projects in the face of limited time to do so as I go about my daily life. As always, I’m a constant work in progress. It just isn’t possible to do everything I want to do every day, and I need to pick and choose my daily activities in a way that will allow me to see that I am making progress on all my goals when I step back and look at the bigger picture that spans weeks and months (and years…).

Stay tuned.