Dispatches from the Midwest, Issue 10

Saturday, 8 March 2014

Towards late morning, it’s time for me to leave my friends in Mount Pleasant and head south (relatively speaking, anyway) to Ohio. I do so with some reluctance—the two days of pointless lazing about that I have done have been badly needed…and it feels like I could use a few more. But despite my friends’ best efforts (we all hypothesize that it’s quite possible that if they sat me down in front of the TV and put The Avengers on an endless loop, I would willingly submit to perpetual captivity), I pack up Optimus Prime and soon set off.

It’s a long, long, long drive down, even with the beauty of the grey clouds hugging close to the Middle American landscape. Still, I don’t mind; with one hand on the wheel and one hand extending my camera phone out, I just keep clicking, hoping that somehow I manage to capture a few good images of the snow-covered fields, the stalwart trees, the occasional barn. I remember an ex of mine who was born in Michigan once told me that this was “God’s country”, and while I have a pesky lack of belief, I do see this, over and over again. The beauty of this region is diminished not one whit by its simplicity, and there is a richness that goes beyond the fertility of the soil, and has something very much to do with the people.

In the late summer of 1985, my grandparents, my mother, my sisters, and I all got into a couple of cars and drove south from Cincinnati, Ohio to Florida. My grandparents had retired and decided to move to Florida, and because my mother was dependent upon them, we all moved, too. Since that time, I never, not once, went back to Ohio.

Last year, my cousin’s husband, who is kinda  a big fuckin’ deal in the military (at least I like to think so) got transferred to an airforce base just outside of Dayton. So they packed up their kids and moved again, and so it was that my cousin Lynne found  herself, once more, in the state of her birth and all of her childhood. And so it is, now, that I find myself driving down to visit Lynne and her family, finally, in the state of my birth. 

She’s waiting for me, Lynne is, in her house just outside of Dayton, and her arms are open and she’s ready to welcome me and  and be my family and give me thethe comfort of her company, whether or not she realizes the pricelessness of it.

It’s good to be home.