Bates Street

This is my grandmother's former house in Grand Rapids, MI. She bought it shortly after WWII when she had to leave Minnesota on the death of her husband and the loss of her farm. Mother's mother was a strong and stern woman although not with her grandchildren, and she was pleased to let me stay in her house, occasionally during my freshman year in college when I worked second shift at the nearby hospital, and for my whole sophomore year. I slept in the tiniest of rooms at the back, until my Uncle Henry, the first son after three daughters, the bachelor, the one who lived with Grandma, the one perhaps she was hardest on (and her children included an apostate Bowdoin professor and a near-radical in New Jersey!), until Henry gave in temporarily to his devils and was institutionalized. His room (see the window to the right of the door) was slightly larger than the cubby off the kitchen, maybe 6 feet by 10, and was the location of my own dark nights and eventual break with the tradition of those who loved me.

Henry eventually got a little better and moved to Maine in the 80s, to Richmond in a halfway house, under the sponsorship of his brother in Brunswick. It didn't last very long, and he ended up at Togus VA Medical Center, in a locked ward, and finally in a pond, drowned. On my travels through Maine I would often drive past Togus, and think of his death and funeral and grave, but it took this trip back to Grand Rapids, to see the old house and to understand that maybe we both thought of Maine as a place of refuge, both of us escaping devils, his old Satan, mine a few corporate imps. I'm very sorry that not even Maine could heal him.