A cross post in Normal entries

My daughter and her boyfriend brought Chinese dumplings over last night for dinner. They were both sunburnt from attending a wedding on the beach. My daughter was a bit hungover still. She is trying very hard to be a Michigander and frequently says how much more (fill in the blank with a positive attribute) the people are here than Oregon. There are a few reasons I don’t put up any defense; 1) she’s my daughter and I love her 2) I need to find a way to make this alright too. But, she’s from Portland, a City, granted not a big city, but not nearly as beat down as Lansing or as rural as everything around Lansing. In a city it’s a good skill to be suspect of everyone. The less people living on top of one another the kinder they can afford to be.

When she’s pissed off she talks about the shit she gets from some folks for being an Oregonian and things like “Looking out over the Lakes is like looking out over an ocean” to which, in her head, she responds “No, looking out over an ocean is like looking out over an ocean, you have no idea how wild and unforgiving my Pacific is”.

There really isn’t anything quite like the great lakes, but, yeah, it’s not really much like the Pacific, or at least not like her pacific. I’ve been here a year and still haven’t been to the one place around here that is a power spot, one of my three favorite in the western hemisphere; Pictured Rocks. Along the Lake Superior shoreline, east of Manistee is a protected national lake shore. The mineral rich land is exposed, stratum of copper, azure, sandy golds, and deep reds, in thin stratum layered down the cliffs into the crystal clear waters of lake superior. Yes, it’s not the Pacific, not the way the pacific rages near Depoe Bay or crashes against the mussel heavy rocks along cannon beach, but it isn’t like any other lake either. Superior rages. So we talked about things and stuff and I miss her and love her and I’m glad the boyfriend’s seemingly singular skill is a social one. I’m trying really hard to like him again. It was easy the first time, he tries hard to be likable. That time he hadn’t thrown a tantrum and left my daughter, a single mom, penniless, with a lease and a child and taken the dogs and said the sort of things that can’t be unsaid, forgiven perhaps, but hard to forget. Most of my conversations with my daughter have been without her boyfriend, some have been about him. I accept him because she does; doesn’t make him less of a douche nozzle, a comfortable easy to get along with douche nozzle. To be fair a douche bag is pretty useless without a nozzle.

The grandwhelp is in Oregon to visit. The seahag insisted he come out to see her, but she was out of town for the weekend, so his surrogate father took him to the real pacific to fish and kayak. Looking out over the Pacific is just like looking out of the ocean. It’s not a very tame ocean in Oregon. Ok, be nice to another, you don’t know who’s packing. And I’m spent.