Neenah, WI and Perception

I took a walk with my sidekick wife down the streets of Neenah, WI.  “Perception is a funny thing,” she remarked thoughtfully.  I agree.

Neenah, which almost sounds like my childhood neighbor’s nickname, seemed quite a beautiful town that night.  The wind was blowing softly and the May air carried a chill that felt almost like fall.  Would it have felt as electric on another night?  Probably not, but this will be my lasting memory.  Perhaps it was the wideness of the streets, the styles of houses, the age of trees, or maybe the “somewhat run down but not really” industrial feel of it… I’m not sure what it was exactly, but I was reminded of Lafayette and wondered what it would be like to live there.

I watched an episode of Sherlock on PBS and something about the introduction reminded me of watching television at my Grandmother Agnew’s house.  I remember watching Nick at Night.  I remember the uproar when we realized that they might cancel the Cosby Show for that (not as good) cartoon the Simpsons.  I remember Count Duckula, and David Letterman, and the thrilling knowledge that I was staying up too late.  Now there's no time of the evening that holds the same sort of magic.

I dreamed of highschool soccer in Lafayette again, and a friend and former teammate who died when he, his little brother, and his mother jumped off a parking garage on Purdue campus.  I learned a song about Comet Cleanser riding with them to a game during happier times, and have for years been somewhat haunted by my failure to win a youth league when his father sponsored the team in their name.  I remember my father choking up while relating a story about him that year, during the annual end-of-year soccer dinner at Jeff High School.  The Broncos… a team that had been my life growing up, a school whose halls I walked more than most students ever did, a building I almost felt a sense of ownership for, and a mascot and color scheme that still holds more sway in my dreams than the team I eventually played for years later when my father retired.  One moment you think you know it all, then your friends die and you play for your enemy.  In the end, it’s just a game, but sometimes it feels like life was stolen.

I never knew my Grandfather Agnew.  He died of a heart attack at the age of 50, long before I was born.  I hardly knew my Uncle Dan, though he gave me religion before dying a vagrant on the streets of San Diego - a brilliant mind dedicated to drugs and alcohol.  My living aunt and uncle don’t speak to one another.  My mother tries mending those fences, sometimes, when life and rejection don’t leave her buried in sadness.

I knew my Grandmother Agnew before she passed a handful of years ago, though some would say I never truly knew her.  To me she is cookie jars, television, and over-cooked meat.  To me she is laundromats, euchre, and a woman well-versed in the Heimlich maneuver that once saved my life as a child (I don’t eat butterscotch candies anymore).  To others she was a poor mother, irresponsible, selfish, weak willed, and needy.  To others she was about as bad an alcoholic as the world has ever seen.  To others her failings allowed a fractured family to further splinter.  To me, she is a long-recovered alcoholic, a staple of AA meetings, and an inspiration of how far back up the ladder of self-respect one can climb.

Yes, perception is a strange, transient, inconstant thing.   Are we best defined as a sum of our actions, an average, or a point in time?  Often, I wonder if it is not the latter.

To me, Martha Agnew is best defined as a woman whose last living word was “love.”  I hope to follow in that path.