Homesick

I grew up in southern Minnesota. I grew up in a tiny little town on the border of central Iowa, with all the advantages that small-town life has to offer: a low crime rate, small schools, and the comfort of knowing that everyone in town will know every small detail of everyone’s personal life because there is nothing more exciting to occupy the time. It makes you feel really solid, this kind of childhood. What you’re lacking in adventure, you make up for in social awareness.

When I had a chance to leave, though, I left with urgency. I wanted to experience the world. I had the good fortune of having parents who supported unconditionally my adventures. They sent me to college, they sent me to Europe, and they helped me pack the truck that took me to my very first teaching job in the mountains of Colorado.

When I’m feeling nostalgic, I refer to the 8 years I spent in Colorado as the best years of my life. I could fill the pages of a novel proclaiming my affection for a little mountain town tucked away in the middle of the continental divide. When I talk about Colorado around here, I am met with calculated indifference. I sense that my adoration of Somewhere Else is taken as a criticism of Here. And I don’t mean to imply that Here is not wonderful. It’s just that my heart is Somewhere Else.

I mention this today because I am feeling particularly homesick this week. Many days can go by without me giving a thought to my time there, but every now and then Colorado sneaks up on me and I am awash with sentimentality and a verifiable ache in my chest. I miss the mountains. Or maybe I just miss the people. Whatever it is, I should probably be the keynote speaker at the school's graduation ceremony every year so I can deliver a message to all the kids who are ready to bust out of that place. I will tell them that they can roam far and wide into all the nooks and crannies of this world, but they will never replicate the perfect peace that can be found in the air around that town.

I came back to southern Minnesota eventually, and this is likely where we will reside indefinitely. Finances and Family and Circumstances tend to determine our fates these days. Coming back here evoked a certain nostalgia that reminded me of who I am at the root of myself. But when I use the term “coming home” my mind wanders back to a 3 bedroom rambler across from the school where nothing would grow in our lawn except rocks.

So on days like today, I find my husband (who gets it) and we sit on a chair with a drink in our hands and do the remember whens. Remember when we didn’t need air conditioning in the summer? Remember when there were no mosquitos? Or flies? Or gnats? Remember when the snow would always melt by noon? Remember when we used to eat Eggs Alpine at the Evergreen every Saturday morning? Remember how you used to beg Barb to make you a container of hollandaise just to take home?

 Remember when we used to ski/snowboard/hike/climb/bike/raft? Remember snaking the car up curving mountain roads with a rock wall on one side, a drop off on the other, and expecting an elk or bighorn sheep to be standing in the road around every corner? Remember the morning when I was late for school because a deer was sleeping on the porch against our front door and it wouldn’t move? Remember when the air was so clean and so crisp that you wanted to be outside just so you could breathe it? Remember? *Sigh* Me too.