Did you grow up with some peculiar family tradition that you disliked or misjudged or worst of all took for granted, only to decades later realize that you would trade your entire goddamn fortune or even part of your body to go back and have one more taste of that old tradition because you now see that the family ritual that seemed like it was thwarting other more interesting events was itself the treasure and the things you thought were treasure were the dross? And in this case I want to tell you about how that tradition held my family together one terrible summer for my sister which I see now clear as day but didn’t always.
This came up because I was talking to my brother the other day and we were asking each other where would you go if you could go back in time anywhere you wanted, and independent of each other or rather at the same time I should say we both said we’d go down to Cedar City, Utah, to the front room of our grandparents’ home, long rectangle that it was with brown-green carpet and brown-green sofa, the TV maybe twenty-five feet from where Grandpa sat in his wood rocking chair on the opposite end, and we’d be gathered around: Grandma and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, my sister Shauna, my brother Brian, and I. And Brian said he’d give ten thousand dollars to go back to that time and I said no way, I’d give a million and he said I’d give my left arm and I said I’d give my right arm and a million dollars and no one said anything after that.
As kids, we’d go down around the 4th of July to our grandparents’ house in Cedar City, which was five hours south of Salt Lake City along the freeway when the speed limit was 55, so the trip necessitated staying over a few nights and we’d have that experience of traveling with anticipation and arriving and staying over a few days and learning about our grandparents in the way you do when you are around someone at bedtime and sun-up and through all the uninteresting parts of the day. And that’s when my sister and brother and I would see that no matter what time we got up in the morning to take a leak that Grandpa was already up and working on the farm and Grandma was already up and breakfast was made, and it was impossible to wake up before they did. And that’s when we’d ride along to Coronet with Grandma in her huge magenta sedan to pickup some paper napkins and cups for that night’s barbeque, or we’d go with her to Lynn’s to get a watermelon, or some such as a way to kill time. Or after a meal we’d take the leftover eggshells and cantaloupe rinds and put them in a bucket on the porch for Grandpa to feed the pigs the next morning or Grandma would have us in the backyard weeding for a minute or trimming the hedge or picking vegetables although truth be told we were lazy and didn’t help her much or we’d accompany her on her long walks around the track because she asked us to.
But the point is here that my brother and sister and I craved the times when we were alone at our grandparents’ house and not in trouble or required to follow orders, and we’d play cards on our own like Uno or Skip-Bo, we’d play board games like Sorry or Trouble for hours, or turn down the TV quiet so no one could hear and watch a baseball game, or we’d walk around the college campus next door and look for aluminum cans to recycle for cash or buy Lemonheads in the vending machine or play around the outdoor Shakespeare stage that was empty in daytime or play in this little stream nearby and damn it up with smooth rocks. Or we’d look forward to the times when we had things planned in the evening with our parents like going up to the cabin and shooting rifles, that way our parents were around instead of visiting their old high school friends and such in town as they did in the daytime, and we felt like our parents were sort of intermediaries with our grandparents to help us relate to them.
And at a quarter-to-ten every night Grandpa would tell us to get our pajamas on and by ten o’clock we had usually been chewed out once or twice to obey and right at ten, as instructed, Brian, Shauna, and I would sit in the front room on the sofa, with Grandma and Grandpa and Mom and Dad on four chairs, and Grandpa would turn on the big TV by hand to the local KSL evening news. Channel 5. Which was never something we did at home. And around the time the weatherman came on to tell us something we didn’t care about, Grandma would get up, go to the basement, bring up a bucket of homemade ice cream, then serve it up to us in little white plastic bowls and the ice cream was always pralines-and-cream, very buttery, and nutty, and at this moment my brother and sister and I would repent in our hearts and eat the ice cream with gratitude and we thought the ice cream itself was a pretty good tradition. And we’d eat the ice cream slowly because when the ice cream was done it was time for bed. But at the time there didn’t seem anything special about watching the news together, and like I said, at the time I’m afraid to say we would have rather just gone up to our room alone and played cards or something instead of watching the news as a family.
But the thing we loved most of all in Cedar City was going roller skating and Mom or Dad would drive us over to the rink for a couple hours around six, and we loved it, we loved it. Shauna, who looked older than she was, always had some guy who wanted to hold hands with her during the couples-only skates, while Brian and I had to sit out these slow romantic interludes but we’d race around the rink as much as we could otherwise and even though we weren’t very good we were brave and low to the ground and we didn’t mind falling, which is how you learn to rollerskate. And one summer night when Shauna was fifteen and Brian and I were younger, when Mom came to pick us up from the rink Shauna asked to stay until ten and Mom said she could but took me and Brian home.
That night when it was time for the news, Mom went to pick up Shauna at the rink, and no one was worried, in fact it just meant more ice cream for the rest and then we went to bed as usual and still Shauna and Mom were not home. The next morning it was clear something had changed but we didn’t know what, Shauna was late for breakfast, and it seemed like whenever Brian and I came into the room it was quiet and when we left there was talking. And then we knew for sure something was weird because later a police car parked outside and Shauna went out with Mom and Dad for a while and Grandma and Grandpa were so stern we didn’t dare even ask. And Shauna took like three showers that day. Later that night at dinner Brian and I were talking about the soccer tournament back home that was coming up and how his team the Owls were favored and my team the Cobras were pretty good in a younger division. And Mom and Dad were sort of talking about one of them driving me and Brian home and the other one staying down in Cedar City for a while with Shauna and then Grandpa laid his huge hand on the table.
And when Grandpa talked he’d use his big right index finger to sort of keep the pace of the conversation, and he’d draw an invisible circle on the table over and over, and his hand was so big from farming I felt bad for the table and it seemed like if Grandpa wanted to he could carve right into the wood with his finger. And he told a story of being in sheep camp one winter in Nevada in the 1930s and how the earth was froze over with ice, well below zero, and the truck wouldn’t start and how he and the other two sheepherders, who were Mexicans, were low on provisions and it was too cold to take out a horse and how they kept taking turns talking about one man walking out of there and getting help and coming back for the other two, but time and time again they decided against it and stayed together night after night, gradually eating less and less and then nothing, but having plenty of fire they kept on a large sheet of metal atop the snow, and waiting it out together until the thaw and how the only thing that kept their spirits up was a big water pot, and they’d continually fill it will snow to boil for water and then remove it and let it cool a bit and use a big ladle to take a scoop and pass it around and share water from the same scoop again and again and how the heat of the fire and the pot atop the metal sheet naturally melted the snow and ice round about and under so that over time the area where they stood adjacent the fire was two feet then three feet then four feet down below the level of the frost-covered earth and one of the Mexicans announced that they had made a caldera.
So Grandpa said we’d do like the sheepherders had and stay together and there wouldn’t be any soccer tournaments any time soon and Brian and I started crying and complaining and then our Dad banished us to our rooms, and no ice cream that night he said. And he explained that Shauna would be sleeping in a bedroom in the basement for a while instead of in the other upstairs bedroom next to me and Brian and Brian and I were thrilled we didn’t have to watch the evening news or be around our family during a tense time.
But at a quarter-to Grandpa came up the stairs and said we would get into our pajamas and be in the front room by ten and he looked bigger and more serious than ever so we obeyed. When we went in the front room it didn’t seem like anyone wanted to be there, Shauna kept trying to leave, and then my Mom was trying to leave, and even Grandma was trying to negotiate with Grandpa that maybe it was best to skip the news tonight but he looked around and held up his big right index finger like a magnet and kept us in our places.
Right before the news started, Grandpa stood and addressed me and Brian and said that our sister had been attacked the night before in the parking lot or somewhere near the parking lot at the rink while waiting for a ride home, and the police were trying to figure it out, and it was no one’s fault except for the derelict who did it, and that the adults in the room would work with Shauna to give her whatever help she needed, but that meanwhile we would keep watching the news together as a family like normal, like always, and not have everyone scurry into their corners. And then we watched the news and the weather and Grandma brought the ice cream and Shauna got to eat as much as she wanted and no one said anything more.
And night after night we’d come together and turn on the news and take the news in together, as a family, and from time to time Grandpa would tell us that the police were still looking for the derelict but it didn’t look promising, and meanwhile everyone was here to support Shauna in whatever she needed. And after the weather, more ice cream, and bed.
And a week went by, and another soccer tournament missed, and two birthdays and the grand opening of Seven Falls, a new waterslide in Draper, and then we missed the Fathers & Sons outing in our Mormon congregation back home and whatever hopes Brian and I had of riding our BMX bikes or hanging out with our friends at the mall faded, and Brian and I felt like prisoners in Cedar City and more than once we asked if Mom or Dad could just take us home and leave Shauna behind with the other and Grandpa would have none of it.
I know that Brian and I weren’t much help to Shauna or even any help but there must have been a lot of conversations among the others or maybe not even conversations, just space to have conversations, and I’ll have to make it a point that the next time I see Shauna in person without others around I’ll ask her directly what did or didn’t help that summer as far as who saying what or not saying anything. And I’m old enough and strong enough to hear her if she needs to tell me that I was no help at all.
And as July became August and we had been told we were staying until school started again we sat around that loose circle in the front room watching the news, and if any objections arose Grandpa would just raise his finger. They never found the criminal and the police, I was later told, kept apologizing, and Shauna thank God never got pregnant, and Saturday, two days before school, we finally got into the family station wagon all of us—Mom and Dad, Shauna, Brian, and I—and drove on the interstate back to our home. That was the year Shauna started high school and it was a weird year for her she has said many times since but the thing is life somehow went on for her, for all of us, so much so when we see each other now we never even talk about it anymore.
And now, some twenty years after Grandma and Grandpa have passed on to their rest, when Shauna and Brian and I and our families get together with our parents around the 4th of July and have a barbecue, we know we are carrying on the tradition, even though there’s no home-made ice cream anymore, and our kids prefer the ice cream sandwiches or popsicles anyway, and our parents are close to all three of their kids but closest to Shauna, and they look at her still like Jesus looking upon a revenant, and she can do no wrong by them, which is more than fair.
I’m almost fifty now, closer to the one end of life than the other, and when I get into bed and shut my eyes I know I have only a minute before I fall asleep and that I get to pick what scene to watch, and oftener now I pick that scene in the front room in Cedar City, that scene of the seven of us and news and ice cream, and the moment just before Grandma comes in with the ice cream, just before … and I think too about Grandpa’s big hand on the kitchen table, and his giant finger drawing invisible lines in the table, and how he gathered us that summer and held us in place, and now that I think about it, it was as if for those fifty-five nights that one summer, by the force of our tradition, and by the force of our shared weight and habits, and through the power and strength of Grandpa’s finger and the magical ice cream of Grandma, it was like we had all together worn or warmed a big hole in the earth, the size of the front room, and we had all been there together, and the front room with the news and the ice cream was like a caldera in my mind, a natural gathering spot or resting spot, so that when I had a choice of what to think upon, it was like my mind’s energies were waters and the caldera was the natural low place, the natural gathering place, and so it was easy for my attention to end up there in the front room that summer, the summer that was no doubt the worst summer Shauna ever had, and that too, I will ask Shauna next time I see her, would she trade away that summer for all she had learned then and since and I don’t know what she’ll say, but I know my answer.