Adventures Through Middle America

The Midwest has been idealized for as long as I can remember. I half expected to see cowboys riding through corn fields, fending off enemies long forgotten by the civilized world. No cowboys, only the peculiar kind of people into which cowboys have evolved. The more I travel across the country, regardless my destination or the states I pass through, I see it takes a certain type of hardy heart. A heart noble and dignified like our Hollywood heroes, but humble like the collective world today cannot be. Eccentric, lively enough to live off of the small things that come their way, immune to what outsiders claim they are missing. Each town I’ve passed through shares certain characteristics- busted up farms but well-loved fields, shattered windows and peeking faces, horses rolling in the grass and nothing but swirling dust to mark the passage of cars. I’ve driven through herds of modest houses surrounding exceptionally elaborate churches, flocking to the center of the small but beating heart each town becomes. Let’s not forget the curious personality of wind turbines, waving lazily hello and goodbye. Iowa sunsets, sinking below the horizon of a sea of corn fields. And constant painterly frames, dots of humanity blended with the unending, show off sky.

The names of places were some of my favorite parts. Any American-ish word could be found- there were towns of Freedom, Redemption…I’m sure if I kept driving I would’ve found Salvation. I loved Mt. Horeb. This particular pocket of America held trolls. Everywhere. Huge wooden troll sculptures, troll houses, troll businesses, troll dedicated streets. As a lover of strawberries, I also enjoyed Strawberry Point, Iowa. The town’s claim-to-fame strawberry sculpture did resemble more of a moldy strawberry what with years of rust, but that is the key to any small town’s charm. They are old and rough around the edges, but not forgotten. I approached them looking for this kind of beauty.

Equally fascinating were the people on the road. Regardless of whether or not I had to use the restroom, I said I did and embarked into curious rest stops and gas stations. As a writer, I seek out the world. I don’t have time to wait for it to seek out me. I was given a piece of advice that has shaped my outlook. I was told to do everything that came my way. Even if I’ve done it a million times, like going to the grocery store. Because who knows what could happen? At the end of my life, I’ll be able to say that everything that should have happened happened. So I watched as a homeless woman with tattered shorts and split end hair flirted with an employee at a Subway. I saw a Chinese man making awkward small talk with a man carrying an easily visible gun in his pocket. I almost laughed as a young boy ran giggling through a convenience store, screaming “Ahoy!!!” to anyone who would listen. I had never heard of a bidet toilet, and listened in shock as a woman with three children tried to teach them. One of them shouted delightedly “It’s like a shower!” Imagine my shock before I learned that she was in fact not dipping her head in the toilet!

What are us city people missing? I have to wonder, as I prepare to move to another city. It will be interesting to see if I grow louder as my friends in the Midwest grow gentler. Humanity does live in distinct different ways—they may overlap, but each clearly marks who we are in a different way. Cities, mountains, oceans, wide plains, small towns. As I prepare to embrace the city side of me, I must remember the part of me affected by my travels through these lands. May the cowboy live on.

Caps Off!

The graduation caps have been thrown, and high school graduates all over the country watch as real life crashes down with them. But the moment before they hit the ground, the time to reflect and project what’s to come, that is this summer. It is not just a summer, defined by the sun in the sky and the taste of the air. It is our last summer with ourselves as we are now. Who knows who we could be by next year’s grumbling lawn mowers, tempting pool sides, giggling children and clingy sunshine?

What did I honestly have planned? A huge book list, a haircut, a couple movies. Yes, as teenagers (rich teenagers at that) planned for summers abroad, extravagant excursions with friends, clubbing at places in my city I’ve never even heard of, I was happy to settle cozily into distant dreams. What I didn’t realize was that this summer has too different an ending to have the same sort of beginning as my summers before. When I got a call that a condo in the luxurious Vail, Colorado had opened up by way of a family friend, I could do nothing but stumble out the first surprised “Yes?” in my new life of taking opportunities.

So I threw some friends in the car, and we left the unnecessary clutter of graduation parties and irritating high school memories gathering in our periphery. With nothing in our way, rid of everything that used to define us. I’ll admit, at first we didn’t say much. And I hardly drove into the sunset. Something you should all know about my car—it is as stereotypical beater as you get. Semis passed me on the highway, my car huffing and puffing like a kid with asthma and an old man with a wheeze. It didn’t escape my notice that my inability to get up a hill seemed highly symbolic. Everything seems symbolic right after graduating. At the least it made philosophical conversations tough.

But we made it, albeit very slowly. And we ran through each room in the condo screaming and taking pictures, just as any giggly graduate girls should. Then we walked into Vail Village, a place very much of dreams. Not many people were there—we did frequent it in what my dad calls “mud season” when skiing is not longer available and most vacationers have not yet awakened to the summer possibilities. But kicking up my own dust and walking through those lovely streets was enough for me. Vail could pass for a European village—that or a land right out of a snow globe, just waiting for the shake of glitter. A man played a saxophone from his window. White Christmas bulbs spiraled out from the center of an outdoor ballroom. Fountains still flowed and windows still offered exquisite trinkets. This palace of a place was all our own.
We sat by the pool in the day, floated under the star-speckled sky at night. We then retreated to cupcakes and cinema in our condo, our conversations never ending. We ventured into the equally charming town of Edwards for brunch and books—a combination I surprisingly had never tried before. And we played tennis. Myself being the only one of all of us with tennis experience, I of course was the one to sprain my arm. Symbolism aside, we were happy.

When it was time to go, it finally hit me. Had I just done something worthy of the books I would’ve read, the dreams I would’ve aspired to? Had I joined the throngs of teenagers saying yes to the life that was just beginning? And now I wonder, if this was the sweet sweet beginning, how will I like the end? The graduation cap is a little lower, reality a little closer to hitting me with a thud. But I think saying “yes?” or maybe someday soon “YES!” is the best way to prepare for when it arrives.

Moving into your dreams

As a child my family visited San Francisco, and I can’t remember anything but the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a foggy day, a misty magical day I could call myself a part of. Nothing had ever felt so majestic, and I had never felt so sure. I willed myself to return. I listened repeatedly to the song “I left my heart in San Francisco” that squeaked out of an airport snow globe grabbed at the very last minute. I hadn’t quite left my heart there, but a number of my dreams, free to roll about in those thick clouds and burn bright against the day like the red of the wires.

    My heart now has a reservation. This fall I’ll be reunited with those dreams, stuffed in the dorm room of a university in the middle of San Francisco. Part of me is ecstatic—I want to scream to myself as a little girl “You did it!!! You made it back!!!” Ever since my campus visit last spring, I’ve pictured myself in a million different ways. I imagine myself running up the 142 steps to get to the hilltop campus, late to class (yes, even this is idealized in my mind). I can’t wait to sleep on the huge green lawn, awakening to foggy skies and a thousand colorful rooftops. I dream of jumping on the bus to the Bay and walking slowly in the ocean-licked sand. Located in a historic hippie neighborhood of the city, my friends joke I’ll return to Colorado with waist long hair and far too many bandanas for my own good.

    Memories of the city and perceptions of college have always been fantasies and idealistic images of myself, usually as the hippie-adventurer-city dweller-California girl. We all picture ourselves in a different way, in the peak of all we could be in the future. But parts of my upcoming experience are as foggy as my first day on the bridge. There are neighborhoods of reasoning through which I am just now embarking. Maybe my hair will grow longer. No doubt the city will become my home and my footprints will mark the beaches. But I am also preparing to move away from the home I have always known. I must not only give attention to the hellos, but the good byes. Not just the beginnings, but the endings. And this is the place, after my hair growing and sleeping on lawns and excursions into my dreams, from which I will launch my life.

    Middle school is middle school. High school is high school. They’re pretty much mass delivered. They are the first struggle for identity—to see how well we can fend for ourselves and grow within the confines of sticky classrooms and packed cafeterias amongst people who try to make us forget who we are. So we emerge from both with slightly shaky legs and wide smiles and the world we have known patting us on the back. Then what? Colleges with clean classrooms and vast campuses and enough room for a million dreams to float in the air. A city of new cuisine and new mentalities that thrive. People that don’t challenge who you are, but ask who you are and truly want to know.

So what I now search for is what to tell them. More than what clothes to bring and what bedspread to choose, more so even than selecting a major and classes, I am packing in my suitcase memories and in my heart pieces of who I am. My advice is to remember your dreams as a child, and to believe in yourself as you did then. Find your own San Francisco, the place where the person you become will truly begin life. Find whichever bridge will get you there. Your dreams are more than a song or a snow globe. Maybe it’s already the cheesy hippie in me talking, but your heart reservation is waiting somewhere. Wish me luck in fulfilling mine.    

May 25, 2014