Odyssey

Last week my aunt and uncle drove me back to the woods of northern Michigan where I spent many idyllic childhood summer days, first with my family and then, after my father’s death, with my grandparents. We used to drive four hours from the city starting at four in the morning. We would arrive at eight, the whole day ahead of us.

This time we drove at five and arrived at nine. It was the first time I’d been back since I moved out of Michigan for college and for good. I’d returned to Detroit (“downstate,” as we Michiganders call it), the place I was raised, many times. But northern Michigan, where my grandparents and ancestors were born, feels like my spiritual home. The pipelines overgrown with blackberry brambles, the red pines, the white pines, the salt licks for game, the deer blinds. The intersection of Sharon Road with Shively Road, my first and maiden name. The place my people come from.

I am writing a book about my father, who died when I was seven. Why have I waited decades to try to remember—and discover—the facts about his life? Why haven’t I returned Up North since I became an adult?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that on this trip my aunt and uncle gave me my father’s copy of The Odyssey, his name inscribed and notes peppered throughout. It’s the only book of his I own. A treasure. A relic even. I’m listening to it, as quietly and purposefully as a hunter listens as she waits for a porcupine to pop its head out of a hole in a tree before she shoots.

This is one thing the book says to me: Odysseus took decades to return to Ithaca from Troy. He was sidetracked and detoured, sirened and lured, tempted and tricked. Yet he never gave up hope. He finally made it home. So will I.