"Atta Girl"
The Girl Who Ate The Communion Loaf
My grandpa, Popa, started Loop Church in 1987 after my mom’s family moved from Gibson, Michigan to Chicago, Illinois. As a kid, I heard adults say things like “Dutch Christian Reformed,” and “CRC,” which meant nothing to me (and still doesn’t).
Until Popa retired my family went to Loop most Sundays, chronically late. After doing a cheap craft and reading a bible story, the children would march back into the room of plastic chairs that we called a “sanctuary,” just in time for communion. At communion, everyone would stand in a big circle and the bread would go around from one end and the wine from the other. I'd heard my mom and aunts complain after the service about the “hygiene” problem, particularly after the incident where a guy put his finger in his ear right before grabbing the loaf and ripping off his piece.
The best part of having the whole loaf go around, was sometimes your dad would give you a chunk of bread without crust, and the worst was stray bodily fluids.
At this point, I considered the loaf condemned by most of the congregation, except for this tangly-haired, brightly-dressed girl, McKayla. McKayla’s dad had been in charge of communion, thus granting her the post-service snack. She walked around taking chomps of the picked-over loaf while adults had coffee and “fellowship.” Other kids were
jealous of McKayla; their first taste of nepotism. I, however, had heard about the earwax and was perfectly fine.
Beersho
My mom and her older sister, Vera, used to babysit together when they were in high school and college. One boy could not remember Vera’s name and constantly made up nonsense words to call her, one of which was “Beersho.” My mom latched onto this, and now my younger cousins only know her as such.
Chess, With Different Rules
I was around 7 when I learned how to play chess. My little brother, Remke, and I were often left alone in the library on Saturdays while my dad worked or exercised. The library had an old, wooden chess set, and Remke and I played over and over again. This style of playing allowed you to try lots of strategies because the weight of winning one round lessened and lessened until we agreed on a new system.
We would find a big, wide book and set it vertically in the middle of the board. Then, we would each have two minutes to place our pieces (plus the extra queens) anywhere in the three rows closest to us. I think we started with the two original rows and tried four once, but three was the sweet spot. Early on, the obvious choice for each of us was to put your king in a corner, blockaded by pawns, but this would likely leave your other pieces vulnerable.
Sometimes, the desire to make a cool pattern of the pieces overruled the desire to be strategic. And other times, Remke and I would both go defensive, which made for longer and longer matches, and the fights afterwards even bigger. The loser typically stormed off and looked for our dad so we could leave, and the whole process repeated next Saturday.
My Mom’s Assistant
Before I was old enough for preschool, I used to go with my mom to showings when she was a realtor. I wore a pair of orange leather boots, with a red bow on the back, I had gotten for my 2nd or 3rd birthday. And my mom would ask questions about the properties that might be helpful to prospective buyers.
At one Condo, unprompted, I asked "When were these stairs replaced?" This was not a question my mom had asked before and like most stairs, those ones had never been replaced. But the owner replied, "What a great assistant you've got!"
The Cheese
In second or third grade, my teacher asked me if I was going on vacation anywhere for some break or a long weekend, and I told her I was going to Gary. She laughed and said “Gary?! For vacation?”
My grandma, Nana, had always wanted to own a cottage by the lake. And in 2005, when I was 2, Nana and Popa bought a cute one-bed, with a sizable front lawn, a couple of
blocks from Miller Beach. Gary is only about a 45-minute drive from Chicago, so after church on Easter, or just on a particularly nice Sunday, Popa would invite the congregation to the cottage. One Sunday, my friend Rahel, 4 at the time, had overheard this invitation and said “I want to go to The Cottage Cheese,” in a desperate effort to convince her parents to go.
Nana would say “TITL” when she got to sit on the porch, chat, and drink a glass of white wine at The Cheese with her sisters, meaning “This is the life.”
Nana was diagnosed with Bladder Cancer in March 2010 and lost the battle on December 10, two days after my mom’s 32nd birthday. After she passed, Nana's sister, Marybeth, painted, with watercolors, a picture of her walking down Miller Beach. And if you knew her, you would be sure there was sea glass in her pockets.
The Hiccup Rule
If you ever find yourself with the hiccups follow these simple rules:
1. Hold your breath
2. Draw a cow in the air
3. Don’t forget the spots!
Caiden told me about this hack in preschool, and I passed it along to Remke when he got to that age. “Don’t forget the spots!” was always the most important part.
Later I tried to conduct an experiment. I timed exactly how long it took me to draw the cow, and I would then hold my breath for that amount of time. Really to see if the cow was key to the process. But I didn’t think of this when I actually had the hiccups, so it remains inconclusive.
Fincher’s Pond
In Gibson, Michigan, the site of Popa’s first church in western Michigan, where he chose (or maybe didn’t choose) to raise a family, was an unusually backwater beach community. Unusual in that there was no easy access to the sandy beaches nearby, but instead a patch of woods and a narrow path to the huge sand dunes. Gibson was little more than an intersection, from what I can remember. This is where my mom and her three siblings grew up.
Mr. Fincher, who lived directly across from the parsonage of my grandparents, was a handyman. He carved out of his sandy property a pond, surrounded by the same woods. Mr. Fincher’s pond was a destination for my mom and her siblings. My uncles would fish there, catch frogs, swim and dive; a world away from home yet only across the street. So when Mr. Fincher was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and my parents were pregnant with me, I was given his name as a tribute to Mr. Fincher and his generous pond.
I’ve been told that I was instantly famous at Mr. Fincher’s memorial service at Gibson Christian Reformed Church. Everyone already knew who I was, and I was held and passed as a baby, by all of Mr. Fincher’s children.
Voting
In November 2008, before school, my dad and I walked to our local polling place, the Chicago Police Department on California Ave. We waited in a long line before my dad gave some people his name and confirmed our address and we were escorted to a booth. He pulled out his phone to look at a long list of names, the judges, each marked with a green check or a red ‘X’, and I thought “You’re allowed to be on your phone in here?” It was not a test, apparently.
Later that day, in kindergarten, we had a mock vote. All the kids lined up in the atrium and an eighth grader gave you a slip of paper and a golf pencil and you went into the coat closet and checked off one of two boxes. A few hours later, the junior high kids announced that Obama had won. He won the next election in school too, and Clinton the following one in seventh grade, when it was my class’ turn to count.
We had spent weeks watching political ads and looking at old electoral maps at school. I knew all the major political figures, the president pro tempore, the House majority leader, the Senate minority leader, etc. I was so excited to watch the election results
come in, and then it happened. I fell asleep on the couch and the next morning my parents were upset. The election wasn’t as fun when it mattered.
A Really Tall Ladder
When I was 4, I didn’t like going to bed and my mom didn’t understand until I explained that I was scared someone with a really tall ladder would climb into my brothers’ and my room through the window.
Mattress Slide
The house I grew up in was where a dump met a home. There was rarely a spot on the table to set your cereal bowl, or a path to the one bathroom free from laundry. My brothers and I often slept on sheetless mattresses and the floor of our room was always covered in junk.
After Remke grew out of his toddler bed we would rotate who got the top bunk, and who had to share the bottom bunk. As the oldest, Caiden had a long reign on the top bunk, until I was around 11 when I, as the only girl, got it.
But before this, when I was around 9 and Remke was 5, when we were bored, we would take Caiden's mattress off the top bunk and lean it vertically against the railing, making a slide. We would clear some space at the bottom and fill it with stuffed animals and pillows, to create a landing pad. The only problem with this activity was that the metal
bars at the top kind of hurt your feet, and Caiden would get really mad that his bed was moved.
Finnyus Copious
Since I can remember, all of my extended family has called me Finny, and my brothers and friends, Finn. All except my uncle Matt, who had at some point turned Finny into Phineas. But when I was 4 and just learning to spell, I had written it down as ‘Finnyus.’ And at some point, it developed into Finnyus Copious.
In fifth grade, Matt and Beersho came to one of my cross-country meets to cheer Remke and me on, in our respective races. This was fine until I reached the final stretch and heard my art teacher, Ms. Hammer, call out “Go Finnyus Copious!” and that was the fastest I had finished a race, just to escape the embarrassment.
“My Idea”
Whenever my dad encounters something he likes, or deems a good invention, he’ll say “That was my idea.” Say, you're backpacking. It’s a long hike to the next campsite, your legs hurt and you’re hungry, and you reach a waterfall. “That waterfall was my idea.”
When we were little, my brothers and I would turn this into a competition of who could have the better, or really bigger, idea. There’s a bridge that stretches from the third floor
of the Art Institute to the Great Lawn in Millenium Park. While we walked across it, my dad said his famous line: “This bridge? Yeah that was my idea.”
Then my brothers and I went back and forth, like we had many times before.
“The whole park was my idea.”
“Well Chicago was my idea.”
“America was my idea.”
“The world was mine.”
“The galaxy was my idea, actually.”
“Well I invented the whole universe.”
To which there is no reply, because nothing was bigger than the universe.
Now my dad’s most recent ideas include public transit, soft pretzels with mustard, tap-to-pay, and refrigerators with clear doors. And when he last visited I told him that Iced Blueberry Matcha was my idea, he replied, “Oh yeah? That’s a pretty good idea.”
Gun Lake
After my great grandpa, John Teune, came home from WWII he and my great grandma, Ruth, married and had six kids, the fourth being Nana. Grandpa Teune worked as a carpenter and in 1982, after all the kids had had their own kids, he built a little cottage on a small lake in Michigan called Gun Lake.
Gun Lake lent itself to every family gathering. Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving; every major holiday and long weekend. Though too small to house more than four people, sharing beds, this is where we gathered. Great aunts, great uncles, second cousins, their spouses; all the people I didn’t know, who knew me.
When I was little I would play with the original Lego Duplos on the carpeted porch in the back of the house. And whenever my tower got really tall, Grandpa Teune would say “Atta girl.”
Grandpa Teune slowly developed Alzheimer's. We had to start introducing ourselves every time we saw him, but there were always some things he remembered. And as a kid, I had a hard time understanding this and asked my mom “Does he know his ABCs?” He did. And he knew the major holidays, and that my great grandmother, Ruth, was his wife. His funeral in 2014 ended with a 21-gun salute. Three guys shot their guns into the air seven times. And while trying to sense the importance of the moment, I wondered if those bullets were going to hit anybody.
Remkus
I was 4 when Remke was born and I don’t remember much before that. But I do remember sitting on the floor in my grandparents living room while the adults went back and forth on names for him. They wanted something Dutch. They liked “Rem” as a nickname, but neither “Rembrandt” nor “Remco” felt right. My Grandpa emailed my
mom, and misspelled “Remkus” with an “E” instead of an “Us,” which my parents liked and went with.
As kids, Caiden and I would tease Rem, saying “well at least my name isn’t a typo.” Now, Popa will still call out “Remkus!,” to summon him for a game of spades.
The Protest of the Big Buildings
Between 2012 and 2018 two huge apartment buildings were built on the corner of Milwaukee and California. Before construction began, my family walked to get breakfast at the same corner when we encountered a huge crowd, blocking the busy street. There were maybe four people forming a barricade across the road, their hands cemented together in Home Depot buckets. My parents and brothers wanted to stay, but I walked home, afraid their arms were going to get cut off.
Now our favorite restaurant, Revolution Brewing, is closing, and the duplex two doors down was torn down to build more apartments. There are coffee shops and tap rooms and less kids running around. Those (probably handless) protesters were right.
Type 2 Fun
During my freshman year of college, my friend Abby and I had gotten sick of the same going-out routine and decided we needed an activity. We wanted to go roller skating. So we got on a coach bus a few blocks from our dorm and were dropped off in the middle of
sidewalk-less Staten Island. The “final stop” had come as a surprise to us so we split an Uber the rest of the way. By the time we got to the rink it was almost 1 am and the grumpy bouncer did not let us in without an argument. When he finally gave in, we had to duck under the railing before we could put our stuff in a broken locker and get our rentals. While skating, Abby and I spent very little time independent of the wall before someone yelled that they were closing, around 2:30.
We walked to the end of the street, to the bus stop, to see if any were coming and we were met with darkness and the occasional drunk driver. We had no choice but to cave to the $70 Uber home.
The next morning, I called my Dad and told him this story, when his girlfriend, Melissa, chimed in and said it sounded like some “type 2 fun;” fun only in retrospect.
This past summer, my brothers and I were driving with Matt and Beersho and we talked about eating rice drenched in soy sauce for most dinners and how funny it was, looking back. Remke told us one night, when he was around 4, he fell off the bed onto a pile of junk on the floor and when he went to sleep the next night he went straight to the same spot, forgoing the hassle of the bed entirely. And I thought about how much of the dysfunction of my childhood was its own type 2 fun.