Host: Rob Prince (00:00)
In this episode of MI Michigan Story, Life in the Great Lakes State.
Adriana Sanchez (00:04)
And so they resorted to putting the grill downstairs. And their reasoning was because the downstairs basement had a direct stairway up to the door that leads outside. So they Exactly
Host: Rob Prince (00:19)
Kinda like a chimney.
Exactly. Right. Adriana Sanchez learns why basement grilling has not really caught on as a winter pastime in Michigan. Irene overstays her welcome, forcing Ed Zumouski and his wife to bottle up some amazing news until she finally leaves.
Ed Zumouski (00:38)
I’m praying silently, God please tell Irene to go home. Finally she leaves, and we’re alone with my parents. It felt great to share our exciting and our shocking news.
Host: Rob Prince (00:48)
And Kathy Seaver and her husband seek shelter in the only place they can find it, under their baby’s playpen.
Kathy Seaver (00:54)
So we run over and we run to the playpen and we pull it up and we flip it over, all the toys drop to the ground, and we pull it down and we squat under it.
Host: Rob Prince (01:08)
Family dynamics. Up next on MI Michigan Story, Life in the Great Lakes State, I’m Rob Prince.
Family dynamics are really interesting to me because you got this little tribe of people who are all trying to figure out what to do and how to do it, but it’s not really a democracy, and sometimes it can lead to some questionable decisions, as Adriana Sanchez found out. She shared this story with me at my home in Alto in April of 2024. Here’s Adriana. Tell me the story about the time that your parents decided to grill in the basement.
And before we begin this, how when did this happen?
Adriana Sanchez (01:59)
Okay, so this happened back in two thousand seven.
Host: Rob Prince (02:02)
Okay. Yeah.
Adriana Sanchez (02:03)
In Wyoming, Michigan.
Host: Rob Prince (02:05)
Okay. Yeah. And it was the winter, right? Yep. Obviously they otherwise they would be grilling in the backyard, I would hope. And why first of all, like, why was it so important that they grill that day that they were willing to do it in the basement rather than just wait for summer for do it outside?
Adriana Sanchez (02:26)
There
they had received meat, dear meat.
Host: Rob Prince (02:32)
so surprise me Okay, alright.
Adriana Sanchez (02:34)
Uncle used to h hunt a lot.
he would hunt and then he wouldn’t know what to do with a deer. So
Host: Rob Prince (02:40)
Like figure out beforehand, but it’ll
Adriana Sanchez (02:44)
that’s what I say. That’s what started the barbecue idea.
Host: Rob Prince (02:48)
Okay. So suddenly you have this unexpected meat. Yep. And like cooking it in a pan is not efficient for the amount of meat that you had. Exactly. But also grilling is pretty important in Mexican culture too, right? What’s the big deal about it?
Adriana Sanchez (03:02)
My parents like love grilling outside because it’s a way to say like, Hey, come over and kinda be reunited with like family members and have an excuse to come on over, especially if it’s not somebody’s birthday. Yeah. And just be like, Hey, come over, I’m grilling some meat and kinda like talk with people and just Okay. Just yeah, just get together and have a good time.
Host: Rob Prince (03:23)
So sort of the impetus for grilling in the basement was this surprise meet. Yes. And you wanted to socialize too?
Adriana Sanchez (03:30)
It was more like the surprise meat and then we needed people to eat the meat. Right. So we already in the house it was origin it’s it was originally my mom, my dad, my uncle who’s my mom’s brother, and my cousin who is my mom’s side as well. So it was a pretty big house already. We had a lot of people in there and me and my little sister, which it was she wasn’t even one, she was just born. Okay. Yeah. So she was a baby like months old and it was like winter of
I don’t know if you remember those winters where you had snow and it was like up to like halfway through the door. Do you remember those winters?
Host: Rob Prince (04:07)
You mean halfway through the door in terms of height? Yeah. Like he’s blowing through the door.
Adriana Sanchez (04:12)
The
the the snow level was like halfway up a door. Okay. Yeah, it was it was those winters where it was like super, super tough. there was just a lot of snow, was super cold. And I remember those for me in my head, they lasted a while.
Host: Rob Prince (04:27)
So what was the plan for cooking the venison? How are you gonna do it?
Adriana Sanchez (04:30)
So my uncle brought the venison. My mom started preparing like the the dishes on the side. My dad was in charge of the meat. They were gonna do it in the garage. There was a problem with something in the garage. I don’t remember the exact problem, but there was a reason we couldn’t do it in the garage at all. And there was no way we could do it outside because it was super cold. The fire wasn’t gonna stay up and everything. And so they resorted to putting the grill downstairs.
And their reasoning was because the downstairs basement had a direct stairway up to the door that leads outside. So they
Host: Rob Prince (05:09)
Kinda like a chimney.
Adriana Sanchez (05:10)
Exactly Exact
Host: Rob Prince (05:12)
Right. And this is charcoal grilling too.
Adriana Sanchez (05:15)
This
is charcoal grilling. Yes. Their idea was to leave the door open. But I remember I remember I was cold and I sometimes would close the door. I I I do I remember like telling my mom, like, why do you guys have the door open? It’s so cold in here, like going and shutting it. Mind you, I was like seven years old. Alright.
Host: Rob Prince (05:34)
Right.
Adriana Sanchez (05:35)
Yeah. They also invited some compadres over. So th they came over, they’re my dad’s friends and stuff. So
all kid all all us kids were like it’s so cold in the house ’cause that door led to the kitchen as well and the kitchen was super it was like super open concept with a living room and the dining room. So we were in the living room and all of that cold would go up to us. And we were freezing in there. but they they started grilling downstairs. It was pretty late at night when they started grilling. It was like eight. They did put a fan up. Yeah. so I mean they they thought about it as well. And
But there was things like people were coming up and down the stairs, people were opening, closing the door, people kept unplugging the fan because they were cold. All things that were like Lord
Yeah, so there was like there was a lot of things that they were doing to get the smoke out. also they tried to like cook all the meat at once so they didn’t have it open for like the longest time. But I mean it did cook a little slow. Mm-hmm. So I went to my mom and my and I told her like that my head had hurt. And I told her I like, Hey mom, like my head’s hurting. I don’t feel super good and she’s like, like maybe you’re just tired.
And she told me, she’s like, just go to sleep. we’re they were gonna finish cleaning up and everything. But I d and I slept with them. I used to sleep with them, because of the rooms and everything and it was just a little crowded. So I told them that and I n I went to bed that night and I did tell her that like my head had hurt and that I was feeling dizzy. Which red flag should have been signed.
Host: Rob Prince (07:25)
Right.
Adriana Sanchez (07:26)
You
should have did some signs, yeah. But and my my little sister, she was like a few months, she was in bed already. and so my parents cleaned up. I I didn’t hear them come in at all, but I do know that they did stay a little later because they still had family over and everything, but everything was done.
Comes around my parents are already in bed and I wake up at three in the morning. Puking my guts out.
Puking and puking.
Host: Rob Prince (07:58)
my god.
Adriana Sanchez (07:58)
And then I stopped. Uh-huh. And I and then I would and then my but my parents were already with me. Yeah. And at first they were like they I puked on the bed. I remember that. huh. And then I remember them grabbing towels. So I would puke on the towels, that way they would have to like
clean the bed and they thought maybe it was like the food at first. but my mom had also said that she was feeling a little bit bad too. And I guess I just kept puking for hours. It was How is even possible? It was at least like an hour. ‘Cause I know I would stop and then I would start again. and then I would stop and and then when I would stop my parents were like, Okay, I think it’s like over with and everything. They tried to give me an alcohol seltzer.
’cause we always do that from when people are puking just to like settle their stomachs. But like not even that would stay. And that’s when my dad was like, Something’s wrong. We need to go to the hospital. And so then my my mom, my dad, and me left to the hospital. That’s when like I know the sun was coming up. So it was it was really like early in the morning, I guess you could say. and my baby sister stayed with my cousin and he like would take care of her and everything. And we got to the hospital
And my dad just kept explaining the situation, what had happened, that they had grilled meat and that maybe it was a meat, and then they heard grilled.
Host: Rob Prince (09:20)
Yeah.
Adriana Sanchez (09:21)
Yes. So then I think that’s where they came into like we need to check your oxygen levels. They checked my oxygen levels, they were super low. My puking was because of the carbon monoxide that was in our house. Which is the silent color.
Host: Rob Prince (09:40)
Yeah.
And it’s I mean, were you hanging out in the basement at all?
Adriana Sanchez (09:44)
Really?
Host: Rob Prince (09:45)
So it was working its way up the house. Yeah. Even with the door, which made me think the door opened, maybe it was blowing it more through the house. Exactly.
Adriana Sanchez (09:53)
Exactly.
Host: Rob Prince (09:54)
So the living room where you were hanging out.
Adriana Sanchez (09:56)
Yeah. And then my parents’ room is right above the basement of where they were cooking it. And I know we had like ventilation and everything. And I know for sure I mean smoke goes up. But that might have caused it as well in the same room. Yeah. And the at the hospital they were great. They immediately got us into these like big tubes. like these big cylinder tubes where like your whole body’s in there and you don’t even have space to like roll around. You’re just like straight up.
And th they like start putting oxygen into your blood system. Yeah,
Host: Rob Prince (10:30)
I didn’t know these things even existed.
Adriana Sanchez (10:32)
I don’t I don’t know what they were called, I didn’t ask.
Host: Rob Prince (10:34)
You were in these like oxygen tube chambers. Yeah. But then at the same time, like there’s still people in the house, right?
Adriana Sanchez (10:41)
Yes. So then that’s where my dad comes in and they ask him, they’re like, Is there any still anybody in the house? And he’s like, Yes, my like eight month old baby is at the house and we have a few other people there, like former people there. And they’re like, You have to get them out immediately. Do you want us to send an ambulance, especially for the baby? And my dad’s like, it might be quicker for like for me to call them and have him just bring it bring the baby right away.
So they did. They got everybody out. everybody went to the hospital, reported to the hospital, they got their oxygen levels checked. they only put the baby in the oxygen
Host: Rob Prince (11:19)
Wow, how weird for your little sister though to be in a little like a few months old and has to hang out in that tube by herself. Yeah.
Adriana Sanchez (11:29)
Yeah.
And I didn’t understand the severity of carbon monoxide. I mean, I was a translator because I mean this
Host: Rob Prince (11:37)
wait, so all this is happening and you have to translate for your parents because they don’t really speak English?
Adriana Sanchez (11:41)
Yeah,
exactly. And there wasn’t many interpreters at at that time. Yeah.
Host: Rob Prince (11:45)
my gosh.
Adriana Sanchez (11:47)
And I tried to explain to them and I’m like carbon monoxide
Host: Rob Prince (11:51)
I don’t know that one at all.
Adriana Sanchez (11:53)
that’s not in my sight words at class
Host: Rob Prince (11:55)
Ha ha.
Adriana Sanchez (11:57)
But I’m guessing my cousins and everybody who lived on the bottom floor because all the other people that I mentioned to you who lived on the bottom floor in the basement where it was cooked didn’t suffer because they had their doors closed.
Host: Rob Prince (12:09)
okay.
Adriana Sanchez (12:10)
So because of me, because of my puking, I got my parents out the house.
Host: Rob Prince (12:14)
You saved the lives of multiple people.
Adriana Sanchez (12:17)
I
wear the cape probably.
Host: Rob Prince (12:21)
All right. Well this is a good time for a public service announcement about if you’re gonna grill, don’t do it in your basement.
Adriana Sanchez (12:27)
Exactly.
Or in an indoor in an enclosed space.
Host: Rob Prince (12:31)
Yeah, probably especially charcoal. I gotta think that’s pretty bad. But I think any type of grilling probably best to do in the garage next time.
Adriana Sanchez (12:40)
Yeah.
I mean even if the garage is cluttered, clean it. I
Host: Rob Prince (12:45)
Yeah.
Adriana Sanchez (12:47)
I thought it was cool ’cause I missed school. And I was in the hospital. That was fun. And then I came back the next day and everybody was like, Where are you? And I was like, They put me in a tube.
Yeah.
I got w I got to watch T V while you guys were in school. yeah, right. Yeah, ’cause they put a little TV screen on top of the tube. I didn’t get bored.
Host: Rob Prince (13:15)
Adriana Sanchez. She shared that story with me at my home in Alto in April of 2024. This is MI Michigan Story, Life in the Great Lakes State, the Family Dynamics episode. I’m Rob Prince. Would you like to see MI Michigan Story, Life in the Great Lakes State, live and in person, and maybe even share your own true story from Michigan with us? Well, lucky you, we’ve got all sorts of events planned around Michigan in the coming months.
We’ll be in Grand Rapids, Hastings, and Okamis in the next few months with other venues in the works. To stay fully in the loop, you can subscribe to our e-newsletter at myMichiganStory.com. That’s michiganstory.com. And you’ll get about one email a month filling you in on all the latest scheduled events and other MI Michigan Story news. Again, the website is MyMichiganStory.com with an I at the start.
Most families get approximately nine months to adjust to the idea that their family is going to be growing soon and make plans for it. The exception to that case is when families adopt, in which case the news that their family is going to grow can come as an amazing but very sudden shock. In fact, it can be such a shock that other events in your life that would normally be devastating can seem like no big deal, as Zed Zumouski discovered back in the nineteen eighties.
He shared this story at our december ninth open mic storytelling event at the Hastings Public Library. And before I play it, I want to forewarn you that he read this story, but I rather rudely interrupted him at various points with questions about it. So brace yourself because I burst in on his story unannounced at times. Alright, here’s Ed.
Ed Zumouski (15:06)
It was september thirtieth, nineteen eighty three. The story revolves around the arrival of our daughter Laura into our lives. The story really begins about three days earlier. The agency which handled the adoption of our son Andrew the previous year called. We need to see you. And soon, she said. And unfortunately I can’t tell you why. The appointment was made for the coming Friday.
And our anxious wait began. You might say, why were you so anxious about this appointment? Well, back in those days, an adoption wasn’t fully complete until one year after the placement. That’s when the judge signs the final papers, and new birth certificates become available and so forth. Well, our son came to us about ten months prior to this. So the adoption wasn’t really official yet. We wondered.
Has the birth mother found a reason to retract her decision? Is there some other legal issue going on here? Is our family going to get torn apart? So we tried our best to remain calm as the day of the appointment came upon us. So the time arrives for our appointment at Wayne County Catholic Social Services in Detroit. We dropped our son Andrew off at my parents’ house, and we make arrangements to have dinner with them later at their house.
So we drive to the agency in silence, and we arrive there about twenty minutes later. The social worker appears in the waiting room, ushers us into the office, and says, I’m sure you’re anxious to learn why we called you in here today. Well, I have some surprising and exciting news to share. Andrew has a baby sister, who was born on september twenty seventh, the day we called you.
And the birth mother wants you to adopt her. Wow. What a torrent of emotions fell on us. Joy, shock, relief, fear, love. We didn’t know what to say or feel or think at that moment. We already had a baby in our lives. Now here’s another one. Neither of us hesitated in our decision to say yes, but we started to wonder.
Aren’t you supposed to get nine months advanced notice for a baby? There’s more, said the social worker. There’s a twenty one day period in which the mother has the option to change her mind. I know this is going to be hard for you, but you can’t tell anybody about this news. It’s okay to tell your parents, but absolutely nobody else. It would be too painful for you to have to explain it later if something doesn’t go right.
Host: Rob Prince (17:55)
And how come they couldn’t tell you just even that it was good news? Why did they have to be so vague about the with the cult?
Ed Zumouski (18:03)
We never did get to ask that question. I don’t know, I don’t know. Shocked and thrilled and bursting to tell somebody about our exciting news, we head off to my parents for dinner. Well, unexpectedly, my mom had invited a family friend to join us for the meal. She doesn’t like to drive and she especially doesn’t like to drive at night. But for some strange reason, tonight was different.
She lingered after dinner. It seemed like she was never going to leave. My mom starts giving us these funny looks like when are you going home? Aren’t you going to take this baby to bed? I’m praying silently, God, please tell Irene to go home. Finally she leaves. And we’re alone with my parents. It felt great to share our exciting and our shocking news. After lots of hugs and tears of joy and amazement, we finally bundle up our son Andrew into the car, and we head for home.
By this time, it’s about nine thirty. After a twenty minute drive, we pull onto our street, and as we approach our driveway, we see that about ten of our neighbors are gathered around our house. This is strange, we say to each other, what the heck is going on? Upon getting out of the car, my neighbor Paul says your house has just been burglarized. We heard the glass break, we called the police, and we scared the intruders off.
But you probably shouldn’t go into the house until after the police get here. At this point, we’re pretty much numb. Yeah, our house had been burglarized, but it seemed pretty trivial compared to our other news of the day. What’s the big deal here, we thought. After the police came and cleared the scene, we filed the reports, we thanked our neighbors for their good work on our behalf, and we proceeded to put our son Andre to bed, and we tried to get some rest. The shock of having our house ransacked.
Really didn’t hit us until much later in the night.
Host: Rob Prince (20:04)
What did the burglars take?
Ed Zumouski (20:07)
Well, that’s an interesting story. Because they they broke through a window into the basement and some we k we re we figured the the the burglar had to be extremely thin because we had these little casement windows that are only about eight inches deep and all that they took, we had had a c coffee jar a coffee can rather on our our son’s dresser that we put pennies in. The thing was filled with pennies, probably had like
Probably weighed like twenty pounds. And probably was worth about twenty dollars. And they took that and they took a we had a crystal wine decanter, which we never used anyway, but somebody gave us as a wine as a wedding gift. They were welcome to they never they and they they they had s ransacked our bedroom and torn everything up, but they but nothing was missing other than that, that we know of anyway.
Host: Rob Prince (21:01)
And were they ever caught? No.
Ed Zumouski (21:02)
Well, no, nobody looks for burglars, so
Host: Rob Prince (21:05)
Okay. Wait, nobody looks in the eighties?
Ed Zumouski (21:09)
For burglars. Well yes, yeah.
Host: Rob Prince (21:19)
It’s pretty amazing you could come home to a a burglary. Yeah. Not even resolved and be like, whatever
Ed Zumouski (21:25)
Well I think our neighbors probably thought, gee, they don’t seem to be very upset by this, but but it was i you know i i i i it it the the burglary affected us a lot more later because then we like we found the burglar had left a jacket there. You know, it I know if it was warm in the house and decided it was But and it’s kinda creepy to find someone’s jacket in your house and know that they were looking through all your things. And it’s it’s a s if you’ve never
If you’ve ever been burglarized, you feel violated. You feel like you’re you know, you’ve been invaded somehow and it’s it’s a tough thing. But at the moment it nothing.
Host: Rob Prince (22:01)
Wow, that’s amazing.
Ed Zumouski (22:03)
We met our daughter Laura for the first time on November fourth, and on November eighteenth we finally got to bring her home. But there was one more glitch to her story. Two days before she came to us, she developed severe vomiting, and it turned out that she needed emergency surgery for pyloric stenosis. For the first two days after this surgery, she couldn’t be fed anything except for a few drops of water. It literally took over a month to
For her to make eye contact with us and to forgive us for this undeserved torment. But she was home with us for Thanksgiving almost a year to the day when our son Andrew became part of our family. So Thanksgiving has always had a special place in our hearts as our family day.
Host: Rob Prince (22:52)
And how are the kids doing now?
Ed Zumouski (22:55)
They’re both fine. Well, they they’re they’re interesting. Because your par your kids, even when you’re birth kids, they don’t turn out like you, but they’re they’re different from us. I mean, both of my kids are very artistic. I’m not artistic at all. our s our son is a musician and our daughter’s an artist. Wow. And so we always joke that we don’t expect either of them to support us in our old age, but
They they’re doing fine.
Host: Rob Prince (23:25)
Good. Okay, thank you very much, Ed. You’re welcome. Ed Zumowski. He shared that story at our December 9th Open Mic storytelling event at the Hastings Public Library. Thanks so much to Barbara Haywood from the Library for organizing that event there for us. We will be hosting Open Mics there at the Library in Hastings every month for the foreseeable future, although the dates will vary. Our next scheduled event will be March 26th at 6 p.m.
If you’d like to know more about that and our many other open mic events around Michigan, there’s more information at myMichiganStory dot com. That’s MIMichiganStory dot com.
It’s tough when you have your first child because you pretty much have no choice but to wing it sometimes. No book or seminar is going to prepare you for every possible parenting situation. As our next storyteller, Kathy Sieaver found out, she shared this story at our november twenty first, two thousand twenty five open mic storytelling event at the Lit in downtown Grand Rapids. Here’s Kathy.
Kathy Seaver (24:40)
This was in 1992, and I lived in Grand Rapids with my husband, and we were we had been married just over a year, and we had a child, so we had a baby, Jordan, and we lived in a duplex, and we lived on the first floor, and the second floor was the other unit. When you walk into the first room, it’s kind of the living room, and then the next room is a really large dining room.
And off of that dining room are two bedrooms. And then the back room is our kitchen. In the kitchen, we had a playpen set up. It was nighttime. And I needed to use the bathroom. The bathroom was right off the kitchen. So I go in. And during this time, we were renovating our bathroom. And one of
We had a drop ceiling, and one of the tiles on the drop ceiling was moved over. So it was just kind of open. So I’m sitting there and I see, you know, kind of out of my peripheral vis vision, something moving. And I look up and it’s a bat. This
bat comes out of the ceiling, flies out into the kitchen. I jump up
Host: Rob Prince (26:03)
Ha ha ha.
Kathy Seaver (26:05)
and I scream and I run into the
kitchen and my husband hears me scream. So he comes from the living room, the front room, and we run into each other. And my pants are still at my ankles.
Adriana Sanchez (26:19)
So
Kathy Seaver (26:21)
We this is, you know, we were young and this is the first time we had encountered a bat indoors. So we run over and we run to the playpen and we pull it up and we flip it over, all the toys drop to the ground and we pull it down and we squat under it.
My pants still at my ankles.
Host: Rob Prince (26:45)
Ha ha ha ha.
Kathy Seaver (26:47)
So we’re sitting there and we’re watching this bat fly around and our cat is we’re swatting at it. And my husband says, we can’t just stay here.
Ed Zumouski (27:05)
What?
Kathy Seaver (27:05)
Well, I’m staying here.
So my husband gets out from under the playpen and gets a tennis racket and a paper bag. And he gets the bat into the paper bag, takes it outside, and releases it. He did use the tennis racket to get it there, though. So anyway, the moral of the story is we both survived. Our that child is now 33. He survived too.
Host: Rob Prince (27:34)
Doesn’t have rabies or anything like that.
Kathy Seaver (27:36)
No. No, the his he was asleep, the bedroom door was closed. So that was a good thing.
Host: Rob Prince (27:41)
Alright,
so that explains why you could be afforded such cowardice.
Kathy Seaver (27:44)
And
and now I I keep my pants up most of the time.
Host: Rob Prince (27:49)
Good for you. Wow, thank you very much, Kathy. That’s wonderful. Kathy Seaver, she shared that story at our November 21, 2025 open mic storytelling event at the Lit in downtown Grand Rapids. Super special thank you to Penny Hawk and all of the great people down at the Lit for hosting us. We will be at the Lit the third Friday of every month at 7 o’clock PM.
If you haven’t seen that venue before, you definitely need to come down and check it out. It’s an amazing historical venue in downtown Grand Rapids. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of MI Michigan Story, Life in the Great Lakes State. Today’s episode was edited by myself, Rob Prince. MI Michigan Story is presented by WKAR in East Lansing, Michigan. Remember, I can’t tell MI Michigan story without your Michigan story, so submit your story today at MI MichiganStory.com.