My great grandfather was a miner in Glasgow, back in the nineteenth century. At work one day, I don’t know, he got his back busted bad, and the whole family moved to Nova Scotia in the hope that he’d be able to find other work. A man with a Scottish accent so heavy my dad could never understand him.
They all used to live together in a house in Racine, Wisconsin: my dad, his older sister, their parents, their grandparents. In the bedtime stories my dad told me as a kid, there was nothing to my grandfather but his mysterious mining accident and inscrutable accent. As my dad would nod off, I would ask if we were related to Mary Queen of Scots, knowing close to nothing about the culture my dad came from. We spent vacations in Puerto Rico with my mom’s side of the family, and none of our relatives were left in Scotland anymore.
“No,” my dad would say. “Stewart’s a common last name. And Mary Queen of Scots was a Stuart with a ua, not a Stewart like us.”
The bedtime stories would end, and I would descend into a dreamworld. The mines would fade, and I would picture large castles and long hallways to walk down.
This week, my dad’s been in Glasgow again, that place where he might’ve grown up. He and my mom want to retire there in a couple of years. “Everyone is so nice here,” he told me over the phone. “There was a man in a pub and another guy asked to sit with him and then they were sharing beers! Everyone’s just so nice here.” I told him it sounds perfect for him. He wants to learn Gaelic, he went to the theatre and understood nothing but felt the cheer of the audience. I asked him if he visited the mines. He didn’t hear me, he had passed the phone back to my mom.
My dad’s friend Katie invited me to a benefit on a boat a couple of nights ago, along with several other friends from the church where he and Katie both sing. One of these friends asked me how my dad was liking Scotland. “Great,” I said. “He’s obsessed. He wants to learn Gaelic.” We talked about what a perfect pub bartender my dad would make in Glasgow as the Statue of Liberty passed on the water. I wondered what the mines are like now, if there’s a mine shaft still operating. If you can get in the elevator, if anyone still works there. How far down you can go, and whether you miss the sun as the distance between you and the natural light grows. It started to rain on the boat, and we drifted inside.
For the past few days I’ve been sick, limbs shaky and losing sensation, feverish but without fever. I called it quits on Wednesday evening and let my mom and Lillian convince me I needed help, which I sorely did. My aunt came down from Boston to take care of me. She took a 5 a.m. train and cooked our dinner for three nights. I’ve felt so ill, I’ve barely managed to leave the bedroom to get to the kitchen. I’ve woken up every morning with my back to the sun. The wish to be in nature that regularly gnaws at me has disappeared. My body has felt both everywhere and nowhere, wishing for nothing, sleeping little and losing its appetite.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, now, I’ve forced myself to be bedridden. Watching episodes of Modern Family and playing this game called Pocket Mine that Lillian plays whenever they need a break from stressors. In the game, your character is given a pick axe with only so many hits, and then sent into the mines. Deeper and deeper you go, retrieving everything, from coal to diamonds and topaz, until your hits run out.
Thanks to the openness of my bedridden days, I’ve gotten far in Pocket Mine. The fast pace of the game keeps me awake and lets me focus on what’s really important: being good at the mines, the only activity that feels like doing something while being nothing. I’ve upgraded my pick dozens of times, I’ve reached depths of over 200 meters, and I’ve made lots of Pocket Mine money selling my mine wares.
I’m no fool, I know what my brain craves is a book, but the words of the book I’m reading stick to that white paper like the cat litter on our bathroom tiles. I’ve gotten no traction in my book, but I’m a successful businessman in the mines. Might as well go where the money is. In the shower or right before bed, I close my eyes and I see my little character jumping from place to place as he plunges further down, hoping to make a little more money before his pick breaks.
And I find that I’m thinking, does my character have a family? They must be happy to see him every time he comes home. It’s not guaranteed we all make it back home from the mines. I’m thinking, does he have a partner and how do they get along. Does he have kids, and do they like him. Does he have grandkids, and can they understand what he says or does his accent obscure him entirely.
Or is he alone. Does he have no one to go home to after a hard day’s work. I wonder, does he have any pride in what he does, or is it just a way to pay the bills. Does he own a pub, somewhere in Glasgow. Does he speak fluent Gaelic like my father will someday. I wonder does he get a lot of free time.
His free time may just be the periods in which I’m not on my phone or when I run out of batteries and can’t go trekking in the mines. He shows me around his place of work, over and over again, with such generosity, and he never complains, and he never shows fear. I’m thinking, are there explosions that scare him in the mines. I wonder if he would say, or show distress when he’s close to a bomb. He never has.
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