Grief Seasoned with Gratitude: A Return to Beavertown
Considering what can be found beneath the moss
Moss draped heavy and green across the roof of the last cabin on Reservoir Road, its walkway a squelching path of mud and more moss leading to the porch. As I stepped into the rustic and remote cottage, last visited by my late mother in 2021, I felt her presence in every arranged detail: her toiletries in the “bathroom,” her books organized by subject in the small bedroom (a librarian even in her absence), and every bed made.
While the building next door is said to echo with the ghostly music of Davy Jones, the Monkee, who often jammed there with his biographer, our modest ancestral home held no such ghosts. Instead, we encountered the lingering presence of departed caretakers, alive in our memories.
As nice as my mom had left it, one could tell that no one had stepped foot in the place for years. I immediately found the vacuum and got to work. I wondered why I didn’t find any spiderwebs, but then my son Truman pointed out the wolf spider, a titanic creature that hunts at night, devouring insects and other spiders. Even though this arachnid functioned as our watchdog guardian in the woods during the many years we were gone, we still ushered the long-limbed monster outside.
In this kitchen, I discovered my mom’s spices and my grandmother’s mid-century cooking implements. My brother Oliver pointed out to me that we have pictures of me receiving my first Pennsylvania bath from my grandmother in the very basin that sat on the kitchen counter.
Headquarters for my exploration of the natural world, replete with frogs, snakes, and sometimes deer and even bear, the cabin and its grounds were mystical places for me growing up, one where my grandmother and I spent many summers in the 1970s. She had bought it in the 1950s for $1,500, attracted by the creek, my playground, that runs through the middle of the property. Though a similar investment in the S&P 500 in 1955 would now be worth over $6 million, my grandma sought no profit. She simply desired a summer escape from Detroit, a place to live beside her sister Eunice, who owned the house next door, and her brother Anson, just two doors down.
Grandma’s sisters Lucille and Lila lived elsewhere in Beavertown. All three of the sisters were widowed when I knew them. They loved my mom, Grandma’s youngest, and then they eventually passed that love on to me, often in the form of home-cooked meals with ingredients provided by farmers whom they knew by name, and warnings about the dangers of the forest out back. I still feel the influence of these women who partially raised me, historical throwbacks who I realize now had lived through the advent of the car, the airplane, stainless steel, and the zipper.
Speaking of ancient inventions, even in 2025, the cabin still doesn’t have running water. We were once told that our place in the woods is too close to the creek, and that we therefore didn’t qualify for a septic tank. A new generation of borough administrators is not so sure, so someday we may install a shower and a sink in the “bathroom” that my mom left space for in the “new” cabin when she had the previous structure (built in 1900 or so) torn down, replacing it with a solid structure in 2000 or so. The original outhouse stands, or at least leans, itself now approaching 100 years old.
We gathered with cousins and an adopted sister Saturday to remember my mom in one of her favorite places, a place where she had spent so many quiet hours reading with her mother, reading with us, and then, in recent decades, reading alone. Truman brought home some novels from her library. My mom would have loved this, and she would also have been tickled that all of us could finally accept her invitation, even if the gathering took place after she was gone.
After four days there, my brother Oliver and I left the cabin Monday morning with so many questions. How will two Californian brothers use and maintain a cabin in Snyder County, Pennsylvania? Can we entice any of my Grandma Vera’s other grandchildren (there are nine of us) or great-grandchildren (there are about 14 of them) to take it over? None of these 23 people live in Pennsylvania. Mostly, we want the cabin, its third of an acre, and its fast-running creek, to be loved.
As the novels my mom left behind remind us, it is difficult to sustain love in the world. In her book All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks writes, “To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bonds.” When it comes to the cabin, its need for restoration, improvement, and visitors to tell new stories, I look forward to seeing who among us is up to the task.
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Best,
Dr. Andy
Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
Musical Instruments. Played in what is now Germany in the Paleolithic era anywhere from 53,000 to 45,000 years ago, what is the category of the earliest known identifiable musical instruments?
Davis Schools. Which Davis junior high school is named after one of the first African American women to be published in the United States and the most popular Black poet before Paul Laurence Dunbar? Name the junior high school.
Pop Culture – Music. What Puerto Rican rapper and singer became the first non-English language American artist to be Spotify's most streamed artist of the year, doing so three consecutive times in 2020–2022?
P.P.S. Also, Poetry Night returns to Davis on July 3 with a Wide-Open Mic! Plan to join us at 7 PM at the Natsoulas Gallery.
An enjoyable nostalgia, clear pictures of the site and the persons.