Three Sidequests At Once

Finishing Three Sidequests within a week and a surprise

Sorry for the lateness this week. Florida was a rough time, but things are finally starting to work again. I’ll be updating the stack regularly and my offer stands. If you pay for a yearly subscription, I’ll send you books, and a drawing. Thanks all. We now resume regularly scheduled programming.

JP

Once Cincinatti was done, it was nearing November. Thinking about the impending winter, and holidays, I thought it was time to head north. I hadn’t seen my grandmother from Detroit in five plus years. The pandemic had robbed us of a chance to see each other as I lived right across the river. I was going to see her this time.

The right up from Cincinatti was wild. At Toledo I rode the hottest bus ever as I headed into Detroit. It was the first time I had seen toledo. It’s a nice place, but nothing too special to write home about. I then found myself heading up to Detroit.

I was home. And I wasn’t alone.

I walked in and saw my grandmother for the first time in five years. She was a touch smaller than I remember, but still in a lot of ways the same woman I remembered. We hung out, and I asked to stick around until January. She said yes, and that was cool. To my surprise, I wasn’t the only guest there.

I knew my dad had travelled there, but I didn’t expect to see him still there. It was a thrill to see my dad on this trip. I was wondering where fate had taken him, and he was here. It was great to catch up with him again. Happy reunions were shortlived.

Going into my room where I stayed, I found all the doors to put my clothes away. They were all taken up. My grandmother angrily blamed some things, but as I explored the house I saw something I’ve never seen before.

To call my Grandmother organized is an understatement. Even before this point, I never have been in a house that had everything in its place. When I dropped the backpack downstairs, I looked at the basement. There was the part my dad commandeered, but the truth is, the whole basement was completely enshrouded in stuff. I had three boxes of comics that were difficult to get to, because of the sheer amount of stuff. It was something unheard of for me.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out why it was this way. Nanna rarely went to the basement anymore. A couple of days in, I got her routine down. She was up, in the kitchen, getting her points on the slot machine. I wish I could say there was more, but not much more. I didn’t expect my grandmother to be so insular.

After a couple of days, I had to go across the border. At the time I was looking to get a bank account for the states so I could work a part time gig while I was there. My other grandmother was in Windsor.

I got dropped off at Downtown Detroit. Downtown Detroit was a hole when I lived in Detroit twenty years ago. That’s…no longer the case. It’s a nice place. Great might be an exaggeration, but Downtown Detroit is a far cry from what it was twenty years ago. Hats off to the city of Detroit for doing some changes that are positive.

Downtown Windsor on the other hand…wow. I have never seen it in the shape it’s in right now. I walked down Ouellette after going to the bank there, and witnessed police arresting people live and in living color. I got to see the arrest, the handcuffs and the forced pull into the vehicle. There were four cops there for one guy. That was a first. What was also a first was the emptiness and dirtiness of it. This was the kind of thing I expected in Detroit. Not in Canada.

Yet here we are.

My other grandmother was great to see too. Another big surprise was that my mom was there. I hadn’t seen my mom in a long time. We hadn’t been in touch for a long time. We talked about that and what happened. We also talked about my grandmother’s surgery. She had a growth that needed to be operated on, and she had a cousin from Germany coming in. So my grandmother wasn’t going to be in position for a bit to have visitors staying too often. It was an experience.

All my family are getting older. In some cases, I really got the impression this was one of my last chances. So with all that said, I’m glad I got to see all of my family and finish the sidequests now. I just had to make it through the winter.

Spoiler: I didn’t. But that’s another entry.