A Genealogy of Blood and Place

On humid summer nights, after the birds have flown into trees and folded their wings, the true natives of Northwest Ohio infiltrate the darkness.

They creep through the cracks in windows. They use stealth to prey on unprotected victims. They have a claim on this land that predates the Indian tribes whose names mark this place: Wyandot, Seneca, Maumee, Ottawa, Huron.

Theirs is a prehistoric possession, thawed out of the glacier that carved this region into a Great Black Swamp thousands of years ago. We who live here now are their birthright.

Their high-pitched song whines like the wheeze of a slumbering giant. The Great Black Swamp lives in the bloodlines of these delicate, hungry breeders.

When Northwest Ohio was The Great Black Swamp, the mosquitoes kept settlers and Indian tribes at bay. People who dared to enter the shadowy, wild cathedral paid for it with chills, uncontrollable shaking, malaria, condemned to wear wool in summer and inhale the soot of smudge pots at night.

Ditches were gouged into the sides of roads to drain the swampland and reveal rich, fertile soil. Rains still overflow these ditches that are deep enough to swallow a car and drown the passengers. Farms dot the flat horizon, but the clouds of mosquitoes cannot be tamed.

When I was a girl, on summer nights, the foggers would drive up and down the streets, and we would stop in the middle of our sweaty play and taste the peppery pesticides on our tongues.

And, still, the mosquitoes would come.

We would dab our bites with Witch Hazel, or scratch them into scars.

We are the prey of would-be mothers, so essential to their survival. On summer nights, female mosquitoes gather for their blood meal. These nutrients mean eggs and larva and the preservation of their dominion.

In their red swollen bellies is our second genealogy, the untraced lineage that can only belong to a particular place. We who inhabit The Great Black Swamp are blood brothers and sisters with those who inhabited these lands before us. Strong warriors—Little Turtle, Blue Jacket, Chief Bukongahelas, and the famed Tecumseh—who fought settlers and soldiers to maintain their hold on Ohio and its hunting grounds.

My people came to Ohio well after The Great Black Swamp was drained of its water, its great trees were chopped down, leaving a landscape so flat a person can see into the next county. They came well after there were cities and towns and the semblance of civilization. They came and lived where the bobcat once hunted, where black vipers slithered through muck, and beavers gnawed on sycamore branches. We live in a place the mosquitoes never surrendered.

Our blood comingles with the blood of our birthplace ancestors in the bellies of these determined mothers. A new generation waits to be formed, to grow, and keep ownership of our mutual home—a genealogy of blood and place.

I Know Why The Willow Weeps

A Weeping Willow’s shade is otherworldly.

Sweeping those famed branches aside feels like peering into a secret world of fairies and sprites. Breezes sway the long, languishing limbs, and reveal a perfect spot for mischief.

I remember the first and only time I stepped beneath the Weeping Willow in my grandparents’ front yard.

I could not have been more than ten-years-old. The tree had always been a curiosity—not symmetrical and firm like the maples that surrounded our house or prickly like the tall pines. This tree stood in perpetual lament.

I don’t remember playing on my grandparents’ property much. Mostly, we sat indoors and watched the colorful static of their television, listened to my mother and grandmother chatter about family gossip. My dad and grandfather flipped through fishing magazines and barely spoke but seemed to be having a conversation just the same. And, there, my brother and I would sit and wait for the opportunity to eat stale cookies with oats and raisins and a couple scoops of Neapolitan ice cream.

It was an autumn day. I remember this. I zipped up my red windbreaker and asked to play outside.

Theirs was a quiet neighborhood, every house filled with people they knew and trusted. My brother might’ve stayed inside or else came with me—I don’t know anymore.

Since his death, I lose him more and more in my memories. Perhaps because he is not alive to assert his presence, share the common history of our family. He lingers in the periphery, and my memory almost convinces me that I have always been an only child.

I breathed in that crisp autumn air and sighed away the stuffiness of my grandparents’ small front room. There was nothing more to do outside than inside. They had a large backyard but no trees or places to explore. The only difference was the stillness. I reveled in the quiet—the lack of voices and words and conversations that had no relevance to me.

I wandered my way to the front of the house, stopping once to examine a small toad hunting near where the downspout from the gutter emptied into the yard. Off it hopped when my childish fingers stroked its bumpy skin too much. I sighed and turned my attention back to the rest of the world. This is when I noticed the willow.

Its branches tickled the tops of the grass blades, and I thought it looked like an ugly tree. No one else had a Weeping Willow in their yard, yet here one stood alone and distinguishable. From my perspective, I could not see into the branches very well. My grandfather had allowed it to become overgrown and unruly.

When I brushed the hanging branches aside, I saw that it was not cool and dark like the shade of most trees. The willow’s shade was light, ethereal. I touched my palm to the trunk and listened to the crackle of the shed leaves beneath my tennis shoes. The fuzzy brown egg sacks of gypsy moths dotted the trunk. I did not know what they were at the time, but I took a stick and scrapped them away because I was a child and I was bored.

I squatted down and leaned my back against its trunk and sat that way until my parents came and told me it was time to go.

In a strange way, it felt like a holy experience—willows known for their curative and mystical properties. As a child, leaning against the slender trunk, I almost believed this tree was a special kind of living thing—one that understood loneliness and grief.

In the shade of that willow tree, I listened to the whisper of its leaves, to its secrets to mourning. This tree, rooted in the middle of a yard in the middle of a city, seemed resigned to its solitary existence.

The tree is not there anymore. The last time I drove by my grandparents’ old house—the tree was gone, as was my great-grandmother’s rose bush that had been grafted and replanted. I don’t know who lives there now, but I know each room of their house well. I remember each creak of the floorboards, the taste of the well water, and the musty smell of the basement where my grandfather worked on upholstery and played Dartball.

But, the willow is gone—probably too damaged from gypsy moths—or too distracting from the house’s “curb appeal.” And, so, is my brother who must have been with me under that tree. Though he was older, we tended to do most things together. But, he is gone, too—probably too damaged from his own years of weeping—a figure not unlike the willow, perpetually sad, heavy-hearted.

Looking back on that autumn afternoon, perhaps now I realize why that experience has stayed with me and why I cannot seem to find my brother there.

I do not know why every willow weeps, but I believe I know why that one did and always will.