Yesterday I drove to Racine — and got lost on
the way, again — to spend the day with my in-laws. It's a little strange
visiting them without Stephanie, but there's no part of my life that isn't a
little strange without Stephanie.
So many times we drove to Racine to see
Stephanie's parents, or to Milwaukee to play bingo or see a museum or spend the
night at the Fairy Tale Palace. Some of the landmarks along Interstate-94 are
familiar to me — the little church, the outlet mall, the rest area, the hotel
we'd once stayed at, adjacent to a mall we never set foot in, and the gas
stations and fast-food dumps, etc. But the freeway is always under
construction, they've added new interchanges, and the exit that was on the left
is now on the right. It's too easy to get lost, without my Navigator Girl.
And all along the way, of course, the farm
country between Madison and Milwaukee has an endless supply of wingnut
Republican and religious billboards. My favorite today was, "Where are you
going, Heaven or Hell? Call 855-FOR-TRUTH." Nah, I'm going to Racine,
looking for the exit for County Road K.
* * * * * * * * * *
Stephanie was always a little worried before we'd
visit her parents. She wanted them to be proud of her, but she always felt that
there wasn't much to be proud of. Which is, of course, simply wrong — her
parents were always proud of Stephanie, and they still are. Stephanie had some
major insecurities, an aspect of her personality that I'll need to write about,
and I will, but that's not the topic for today. For now let's suffice to say,
Stephanie never realized how remarkable she was.
So she worried on the way to every visit, but on
the drive home after seeing her folks, she'd almost always tell me how much she
loved them. She'd found them frustrating when she was a kid, of course, but as
she'd grown up they'd somehow become smarter. "They're good parents,"
she said many times, "and good friends."
Steph's Mom, Karen Webb, has a delightful
no-nonsense attitude, common sense and good ideas galore, limited patience for
stupid people, and a sharp sense of humor. Steph's Dad, Jack Webb, is a bright
guy who knows a lot of things, a good storyteller, and has a quiet demeanor,
solid instincts, and a very kind heart. They're both quite intelligent, so it's
no mystery that their daughter was a genius.
They grew up in the same small town in Iowa, and
married in 1967, when he was 23 years old and she was 20. Steph came along
three years later, and she told me that she'd been planned as a deferment baby.
Under the Selective Service Act, young men Jack's age in 1970 faced military
conscription and the Vietnam War, and Jack was understandably not enthusiastic
about that concept. One way to legally avoid being drafted was being classified
3-A, meaning a paternity deferment. For men aged 18-26 who had a "bona fide
father-child relationship in their home," induction to the military was
deemed a hardship on their dependents, and thus young fathers were protected
from the military draft. And so it
was, quite intentionally, that Stephanie was born — July 8, 1970.
Jack went to college instead of to war, and earned
a degree in Chemistry — the same degree Stephanie earned many years later. He
worked in middle management at Johnson Wax (now S. C. Johnson & Son), the
makers of Glade, Pledge, Off!, Raid, and a zillion other household products,
until he was laid off in a corporate cost-cutting move while Stephanie was in
college. Jack has always reminded me of my father, in his personality and
demeanor, and my dad was also a chemist; he worked for Boeing in Seattle, and
was laid off in his 50s in a similar corporate cost-cutting move while I was a
kid.
Karen had been a stay-at-home Mom, but when Jack
lost his job she went back to work, in the office at a car wholesaler. Jack
took most of the money out of his savings account and started a travel agency,
a field where he had no experience except for having been sent on some business
trips for Johnson Wax. But he found a good opportunity, signed a contract with
American Express, and opened a travel agency in the outskirts of Milwaukee. He
learned the ropes quickly, ran his company well, and the business was a
success. That's impressive, to me. Going from middle-management and middle-age
to starting your own business doesn't sound like an easy challenge, but he
pulled it off.
Years later, as travel sites like Expedia and
Priceline came on-line, being a travel agent suddenly became less lucrative,
but Steph's pop sold his company at a good price, and he's been comfortably
retired since then. Karen retired too, a few years ago. They're not wealthy by
any means, but they're middle-class comfortable, and they own a nice
three-bedroom home on a quiet cul-de-sac in Racine.
That's where we spent the morning and afternoon,
talking about Stephanie, and for me that's a good way to spend a day. We ate
lunch at the same kitchen table where the four of us had eaten so many times in
the past, and my gaze kept falling on the empty chair where Stephanie usually
sat. But I didn't cry as much as I was expecting to. I took notes about the
things Karen and Jack said, to bolster my memory of events that occurred before
I was part of the family. Grabbing my spiral notebook and scribbling in it
while we talked probably seemed weird to them, but they never said so.
Jack and Karen both mentioned a recipe they're
planning to try from Cook's Country, which made me smile on Stephanie's
behalf. Cook's Country is a magazine of recipes and kitchen hints,
published by the same folks who do America's Test Kitchen on TV. We
(well, mostly Stephanie) loved that show, which led us to the magazine, and we've
been subscribing for years and years. Every time an issue came in the mail,
Steph would spend hours reading through it, and usually at least a few —
sometimes several — nice dinners resulted. Stephanie thought that recipes from
that magazine had a higher success rate than any of her cookbooks, and since
her mother is also a great cook, we gave her a subscription to Cook's
Country a few Christmases ago. Her Mom said thanks, of course, but I think
this was the first time she'd mentioned cooking something from the magazine,
and Stephanie would've taken that as proof that her mother's "thank you"
was more than perfunctory.
Her parents told delightful stories of Stephanie's
childhood days as an Indian Princess. It's a program like Campfire Girls, with
more of an emphasis on daddy-daughter bonding, and lots of dinners and
organized outings for little girls and their fathers — ice skating, sledding,
camping, etc. Steph was in the program from about age 6 to age 8. As part of
the Indian Princess program, the girls and their fathers made up native-sounding
names for themselves — Stephanie's name was Wild Flower, and her father's
native name was Grey Wolf. Their "tribe" was called the Erie Dearies,
for Lake Erie, which is one state away from Wisconsin. Of course, since Steph
had no native blood, all of this does ring alarms as cultural appropriation,
but hey, it was decades ago.
And again, like at her wake, I learned some
things I'd never known about Stephanie: In her teen years, she was active in
the Racine Theater Guild, performing in several plays, and even singing on
stage. There's photographic evidence, or I would've found it hard to believe.
She had mentioned that she performed in plays, but I had assumed they were
school plays, and this was outside of school. Just the idea of her singing on
stage is surprising; in all our years together, I heard her sing perhaps a
dozen times, and she was usually unwilling to sing loud enough for me to
listen. She could carry a tune quite nicely; she just never wanted to. At
least, not for me.
And — Mad Magazine, the venerable satirical
publication, home of movie spoofs and "The Lighter Side" and Spy Vs
Spy. I loved Mad when I was a kid, subscribed for years, but I haven't read
an issue of Mad since high school. Well, Stephanie subscribed to Mad
too, all through her high school years, and unlike me she kept every copy. So
now I have a big box of Stephanie's Mad Magazines from the 1980s. My
lady definitely had a mad sense of humor — she made me laugh just about every
day we were together, with the exception of the worst days in various
hospitals. But she never mentioned that she'd subscribed and collected Mad.
And — Phi Beta Kappa. I never went to college,
and I don't know squat about anything smarts-related, but I've heard of Phi
Beta Kappa. It is the oldest and most prestigious honor society in the U.S.A.,
and to be a member you're required to be really, really smart. Wikipedia tells
me that Phi Beta Kappa membership is usually offered only to the academically
highest-performing college seniors, and to a very small number of juniors. We
found a letter, welcoming Stephanie to Phi Beta Kappa during her junior year at
Michigan State. So — she was a member of a national honor society so famous
that even a dummy like me knows what it is. And she never told me. She was
always full of surprises, and even after she's gone the surprises continue.
I'm especially excited by all the Steph stuff
that Jack and Karen let me bring home. Steph was all grown up when we met, and
she didn't talk a lot about her childhood, so it'll be fun and enlightening to
go through these boxes of photos and mementos. There are pictures from the math
competitions that she won, the plays she was in, graduation photos from high
school and college, and lots of baby, infant, and toddler pictures. And of
course, all of her report cards; I looked at a few, and saw nothing but straight-A's.
How such a smart girl ended up with someone so not-smart remains an unsolved
mystery.
Thanks, Jack and Karen, for all these souvenirs
of Stephanie, and for a fun day in Racine, remembering her. Thanks for (as
Stephanie said) bringing a girl into this world and raising her to be a good
and happy woman, the woman who made my life worth living. Thanks for never
being the meddlesome or judgmental in-laws seen on TV sit-coms; but instead
always being supportive and helpful, often more so than we deserved or could
have expected. Heck, Jack and Karen gave us the car we've been driving the past
ten years, a now-dinged and dented Chevy that brought me to Racine yesterday.
Steph loved her parents, and I'm part of the family now, and glad to be, even
without Stephanie beside me. She's right — they're good parents and good
friends.