Peering through the cracks...

Tonight, when making dinner, I had an intense moment of déjà vu.

Tired after my gym workout, and freshly showered, and more than a little hungry, I meandered into the kitchen, with the intent of frying up an egg and making a fruit smoothie. And before I could go about whipping up this sustenance, I was transported back to the last time I came from the gym and made such a meal.

Silently, contemplatively, I cracked an egg on the edge of the frying pan. Then I moved to the blender, and tossed in some fruit, some yogurt--before I could pour in some juice,  Mr. Melissa came up behind me and kissed my neck. 

Resentfully I shrugged him off.

"Don't you love me anymore?" he asked, as he sometimes did. Before, I would feel guilty. But not anymore. 

His words cracked my facade as easily as I had just cracked the egg now sizzling in the pan.
 
"You know what?" I said quietly, realizing, as I did, that I was Over It. Over Everything. "Just...you know what, Mr. Melissa? I know that you and _____ are having a thing. So don't try that 'don't you love me anymore' crap."

With those words, I cracked through the crust of civility, of half-truths and whole-lies and diplomatic acceptance and avoidance that has formed over my marriage in the last three years. I drilled through that crust and got to the truth, which was maybe a lot less ugly than I feared, and definitely more freeing.

I never got around to eating my egg that night.

Eventually, tiredly, I tossed it into the garbage, too wrung-out to even feel the slightest bit of hunger anymore. I hadn't planned to confront Mr. Melissa that night, but pretending and keeping quiet have never been strong points of mine, and it was twisting me up inside. But what was also keeping me up at night was a truth I hadn't expected to uncover: in accepting that my marriage would eventually end, I realized that I will be free to return home. And the thought of that elated me--it still does--beyond belief. That truth--or at least the possibility of it--left me weeping with joy more than a few times. In a few years, I am going to have the chance to move home, to Indiana or at least the Midwest.

It's sad to know that my marriage has failed. It's sad to know that this marriage--begun hastily, but with hope and love--is for the next one or three or five years being kept alive on the life support of kindness and friendship and history and cooperation and acceptance. But I've been around the block enough times to know that the fact that I am not more sad, or at all jealous or enraged or vengeful, indicates a lot about my own feelings, and the role that I have played in steering our marriage to this place.

All of this is sad. And the old born-again Christian me would be appalled by my blase attitude toward the institution of marriage, and the 29-year-old desperate not to be an old maid me would be appalled that I am eventually walking away from what I once couldn't wait to have. It's twelve kinds of fucked-up. This world that I built up--I cracked open almost impulsively last month.

But through the cracks shine some rays of hope.


 

The Meridian Through the Circle

In my recent Internet explorations, I came across something that I may have to mark up to THE Internets Find of the Year: HistoricIndianapolis.com.

For a Hoosier exile, for a person who continuously pines for the Midwest in general and the Circle City in particular, who recalls with perhaps a little bit of drooling the too-few days she spent meandering the residential areas of Indy, poking around the somewhat-busy streets of downtown, driving near 38th Street and wondering how in the world certain areas "go downhill", who looked at countless buildings and houses and wondered about their heritage and history, this website is a godsend. The best thing going, really,a website that plunges into the history of the city, into newspapers and phone directories and god only knows what else, to bring to the masses really priceless information.

Last night, on HistoricIndianapolis, I came across the Crown Jewel, as far as I'm concerned, of this website:

A very very old postcard of Meridian Street, "North Meridian Street at Night", postmarked 1916.

The coloring of this postcard, the illumination of the full moon, literally made my heart clench a little in my chest. There's something viscerally alive, something real about this image--I swear I can imagine the slight breeze that might be rustling through those trees. I bet the moon really lit the place up--I can only conjecture, but I reckon light pollution wasn't quite the problem then that it is now. I can just imagine how quiet the streets probably were. It's something of a far cry from the teeming dirt of Middle Western City of Booth Tarkington's <i>The Magnificent Ambersons</i>, but I'd like to think Mr. Tarkington would approve of this rendering.

Meridian Street is still there...and frankly, it doesn't look that much different, especially north of 38th Street. The street seems narrower now than it was in this postcard, but I wonder if it's because the imposing, leafy trees in my memory--the ones that seemed to crowd so close to the street--were the same ones as the ones in these pictures, only much much bigger. Who knows? There's so much that I will never know about this city. So much of it that I never had the chance to get to know and love. HistoricIndianapolis helps my ignorance, just a little, and yet...it enables the Circle City to dig a little bit deeper into my heart.

No matter how much I change, no matter how much Indianapolis changes--and god, of course it does, it's supposed to--I will always have my memories. And now I will always have this idealized rendering of my equally idealized city.

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.

Dispatches from the Midwest, Issue 8

 Wednesday, 5 March: Evening

The friend that I am staying with, Danielle, is possibly one of the few females I know who is actually more geeky than I am. She’s such a hardcore geek, she’s actually a gamer. While I am not nearly as committed as she and her friends are, I do miss having companions such as her…so when she tells me that I’ll actually be staying over during Weekly Game Night, I’m absurdly gleeful. And request a rousing round of Cards Against Humanity, of course.

When I finally get back to their place that evening, Danielle and Robbie are sitting down to dinner with one of their gamer friends. Two more soon arrive, and I spend a few minutes trying to explain why I’m spending two week of hard-earned vacation time traveling around the Midwest.

“It’s so beautiful!” I enthuse. “And fascinating! The landscape…”

“It’s boring,” says Friend #1.

“Yeah,” agrees Friend #2. “A barn…another barn…”

Of course, this gets me started on the barns. All of the barns. Particularly the broken-down ones. I’ve nurtured an enduring fascination for them since I first moved to the Midwest. Barns everywhere! Of every age and condition! I have always been in awe of how they endure, decade after decade, despite their encroaching decay. I’ve always  thought there is something noble and dignified in how they are still standing, all these years later. And anyway, why don’t the landowners and farmers tear down the old structures? Is leaving these barns standing a conscious decision? Is there a deep and possibly proud and profound reason why they leave them up?”

I’ve reached the end of my soliloquy about barns (and how often can one say a sentence like that) and I’m quite impressed with my own perceptivity. And then…I encounter a prime example of the unsentimental Midwestern practicality that I secretly adore:

“Well…” Friend #1 says. “What’s easier…tearing down a barn, or not tearing down a barn?”

I snort with laughter, because it’s so sensible and laissez-faire, but because I’m me, of course I look more into the seemingly dismissive statement. And let’s think about it: really, when you’re a farmer, tending thousands of acres of land and trying to hold your own in the Big Agribusiness Industry, do you really have a lot of spare time to be spent worrying about clearing out some old barn? Really, it’s the same as any beleaguered office, where we allow files to accumulate year after year.

And yes, I totally just compared a farmer to an office worker.

Much, much later, after we consume several bottles of wine between us, I pour myself into bed. I have to be up at the ass-crack of dawn to make tracks for Central Michigan, but I am loathe to abandon a game of Cards Against Humanity which gives gems such as this:

Dispatches from the Midwest, Issue 7

Wednesday, 5 March 2014: Daytime

In Thanksgiving of 2011, my Aunt Carla died rather suddenly. She was the second of my grandparents’ children to pass away, and with her death, only my mother remained. I was 31 by that point, and had long lived far away from my family and from the Midwest, and so I was beginning to appreciate the precariousness of my family. The older generations were dying out. So as my eldest sister cooked the turkey and my middle sister yelled as loudly as she could at our near-deaf grandparents, I joined my mother out on the screen porch. As she smoked away, I talked to her, hammered her with questions, tapping away on my iPad as she recalled everything from the address of her first home to the foods she used to hate to eat. She endured and answered these questions for a surprisingly lengthy period of time, before finally saying with her slightly-amused, slightly-sad smile, “I’m tired of this.” So I put away my iPad, and she and I went back inside. All in all, I was rather satisfied—I had gotten a chance to ask her about her memories of her childhood, her family, her life, and she had given me a lot to go with. And there was still plenty of time to ask her more questions.

December 16, 2013: Time’s up.

No more chances to ask her anything. All I have are the things that she told me, and whatever information my family cobbles together in conversations. But I have my fancies, and I have my ability to conjecture and imagine. And I have Optimus Prime, too, and a pretty solid GPS. So we head out, and north on the 19, through little towns called Cicero and Atlanta. Soon we enter into Tipton County, and I cannot help but to get a little shiver. This is not only where my mother is from, but my grandfather, too. As far as I am concerned, this whole county is his old stomping grounds.

Soon I see the Tipton Water Tower, clearly visible over the flat, barren fields, and then the beautiful courthouse tower. And then, I’m in downtown Tipton, Indiana, where my mother and grandfather both grew up. I’m not crying, dammit, I’m not crying. It's just one more tiny-ass Indiana town, but goddamn it, it's mine. It's perfect.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t planned my day down to the T. First I go to the Jim Dandy Restaurant and chow down a behemoth Hoosier specialty, a pork tenderloin sandwich.

 As I do, I eavesdrop on the conversation of a few local men—farmers, late 50s perhaps or even older, predictably overweight. They could have gone to elementary school with Mom, I think to myself, but of course, say nothing.

After lunch, I follow my GPS to 425 North Independence Street. I make sure I have the right location, and park Optimus Prime, and trudge through the grey slush to the house up close. There it is—the old white house with the porch out front and the little old “carriage house” at back. There’s still a porch swing out front, just like Mom remembered, but this one is a modern contraption, and portable. This is it: her childhood home.

From there, I make my way to the town library, where I spend a couple of hours, and then I move on to the Heritage Center, which is an eye-opener. It’s a cramped building, filled to the brim with not only the usual historical documents but also a huge assortment of various odds-and-ends: generic objects like dresses and dishes and farm equipment and medals that were probably just ordinary or treasured belongings of Tipton residents over the last 150 years, but now are revered as part of the material history of one humble Midwestern county. I fucking loved every minute of it.

There’s a big-ass cemetery out behind the Heritage Center, and I can tell that many of my grandmother’s family—including her beloved mother, the much-renowned Stella Massey—are buried there. I get the data for the plot locations and trudge my way out to what I interpret to be their approximate burial plot…

…but forty minutes later, I concede defeat. The temperature is dropping, and all of a sudden, it’s snowing, and what the hell, it wasn’t supposed to snow today! Wearily, I throw in the towel, and soon after, Optimus Prime and I are on our way back to Noblesville.

It was a good day—sad yet comforting, rewarding, full of the usual sentiment. And a valuable lesson learned: when locating old family graves, know where you are going. And try to avoid looking for them at the end of one of the harshest winters in memory.

It's okay. I'll be back. Sooner rather than later.

Dispatches from the Midwest, Issue 6

Tuesday, 4 March: Afternoon and Evening

Shortly after I moved to California and became a librarian, I was flipping through a PW magazine one day, and something caught my eye: an article on small bookstore chains. It wasn’t the article itself that caught my eye, but rather the picture. To most, it was simply a picture of a bookstore. But to me, I knew it immediately as a seating area of my favorite bookstore, Half-Price Books in Indianapolis. I had spent many happy afternoons there, and although it had been a good long while since I had browsed there, I never forgot.

I still don’t forget. Every time I am in Indy, I go there, to the Half-Price Book Store on 86^th and Ditch. This trip was no exception, and on my way up to see Danielle and Robbie in Noblesville, I stopped in at my old stomping grounds. The layout is different, but the atmosphere the same…as is my propensity to spend more  than I ought!

From Indy, I head north to Anderson, to the Library there. This the Library that my friend Danielle has worked at since we graduated. She’s now the Digital Services Coordinator there, and it looks as though she’s engaged and happy in her work. And then, on the way home after work, as we stop at the liquor store, Danielle mentions she won’t be drinking.

“Why, did Robbie knock you up again?” I ask absently as I search for the cheapest wine labels.

“Yup,” she admits sheepishly, and I squeal with delight.

At their house in Noblesville, a suburb (oh! Suburbs! My secret dirty love for you) Robbie and Danielle and I catch up, and I watch as they play with their son Jace, and then give him a bath and put him to bed before marching down for a dinner of pizza. It’s a quiet, Middle-American evening, and of course I cannot help but to wonder about roads not taken. And that pondering doesn't stop when I go to sign on to the WiFi and see Middle America's quiet acknowledgment of the modern suburban way of life:

So many WiFi networks! Too many WiFi networks!

Too many roads not taken.

At least Middle America still has an honest sense of absurdity.

Dispatches from the Midwest, Issue 5

Tuesday, 4 March 2014: Morning

I’m up early, for once, as I’m leaving Bloomington today. While I wait for Duncle to finish getting ready, I spend a few quiet moments sitting in his armchair, gazing out at the late winter morning, just taking the chance to relish the white-gold morning sunlight shining through the trees.

It’s exquisitely beautiful, and I hate to leave it, and so to comfort myself, I try to remind myself that if I lived here, I would take all of  this for granted.

I know this, because I did, after all.

Before I make tracks for central Indiana, I spend a few hours with Michael, poking around bookstores and the Game Preserve and Pygmalions and the “Christian coffee shop” and debate the nature of corruption in politics and the concept of privacy in post 9/11 society. We grab lunch at Yats (oh chili cheese crawfish etoufee, I miss you so!) and swing by Tracks so I can get one last good-bye from Duncle. And then I drop off Michael, and it’s time for Optimus Prime and me to leave town.

It’s impossible not to cry a little as I start the drive north on the 37. Each time I leave Bloomington, I’m a little older, and the memories are a little more faded—yet still, no less beloved and important. I think of Michael and Anna, and Duncle and Jo, and so many friends that will never be together again, and my heart twists and I cry a little more. And then, into my brain pops a quote that I saw on one of Anna’s books: “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

And then, fittingly, the best part of the day, and perhaps the trip, happens next. The Snow Patrol song “Run” starts playing on the car stereo, and I smile a little wryly when the song gets to the lyric “You’ve been the only thing that’s right, in all I’ve done…” Right after Michael and I broke up, I used to quote that line to myself, because it felt like that, that loving Michael and being with him was the one decent, beautiful, and right thing I had done in an otherwise unremarkable life. But I smile now, because I know that’s no longer true—if it ever even was. There’s been plenty that I’ve done right by this point in my life, and that’s something that I can hold onto for comfort as I leave Bloomington behind, once again.

Dispatches from the Midwest, Issue 4

Monday, 3 March 2014: Morning

It has finally finished snowing, and it looks very much like a late-winter wonderland outside. I spend rather a lot of time lingering by the windows, looking out at Aunt Jo’s birdfeeders, just enjoying the scarlet cardinals standing out so brilliantly against the snow. I’m not a very religious person these days, but I can’t help but to think that cardinals are what God gave to us to remind us of color during the winter.

When I’m not looking at the birdfeeders, I’m marveling at the fact that there are animal tracks in the snow. Real, honest-to-god wildlife! (I’m also becoming keenly aware that I’m a pathetic city-slicker.) Try as I might, I can’t figure out what one particularly intriguing set of tracks is. The  best I can come up with is some six-legged animal being chased by a creature of unknown origin...

Monday, 3 March 2014: Late afternoon and evening:

When Duncle’s mother (my grandmother) Lady Sue passed away, he inherited a huge trunk of various mementoes and memorabilia of hers—decades of correspondence, photos, and other odds and ends. He says that he and I had looked through it before, but I don’t remember. I was a younger person then, and took much—like mothers who were still alive, and the assumption that I would always be close by—for granted. So, as the winter dusk settles, Duncle and I pry open the trunk and spend several hours looking over letters and photos and newspapers and journals and even war ration books! Before she met my grandfather, she had a rather lively existence. It sounds like her dad ran off when she was young, and she eventually became a nightclub performer (she was an accomplished pianist)—in short, perhaps a bit of a gadabout.

I suppose Lady Sue was a bit notorious as an obsessive packrat, but as I peruse through her logs of nightclubs she performed at, places she traveled, people she met—I don’t think it’s at all ridiculous. I didn’t know her very well in life, but now that she’s gone, and so much of our family history with her, I’ll take these little scraps of her life where I can get them.

                                                                                                            

                    

Dispatches from Midwest, Issue 3

Sunday, 2 March: Morning

In the wee hours, after I finally fall asleep, the weather finally comes. Even in my slumber, I’m dimly aware of the semi-frozen rain as it hits the window. I’ve been in the desert long enough now not to take the sound of precipitation for granted, and so spend most of the early morning in a half-sleep, listening first to The Weather and second to the sounds of Mr. Indiana, Anna, and Wesley quietly puttering around. I’m reluctant to awaken, because when I do, that will commence the final hours I spend with them. Duncle will come to pick me up later, and while I’m excited to see him, I still hate leaving.

Sunday, 2 March: Afternoon and Evening

Miraculously, the weather holds, and the Big Snowfall of Doom holds off. Nonetheless, we decide that I should leave Optimus Prime at Mr. Indiana’s place and submit to Duncle chauffeuring me around. Just after one, he shows up, and after a brief good-bye—how painfully sudden our parting, after two leisurely days together—Duncle and I are on our way.

It’s been two years since we’ve seen each other, but immediately, we fall into our usual pattern of casual banter, peppered with caustic jabs, foul language, and the occasional rather deep observation. Duncle is one of my favorite people alive, and it’s completely crazy to me that he’s now ten years older—he seems never to age. Perhaps those who retain a young mindset are like that.

Twenty minutes later, we arrive at his and Jo’s home—they live on North Mount Gilead Road, and really, is there anything more Midwestern-sounding than this? on twelve acres of land, at the edge of a wooded ravine. In the summer time, you can’t see through the forest, as it’s leafy and green, but now at the end of winter, there’s not a green thing or leaf to be seen. Jo—a wiry, energetic older woman who’s in much better shape than I am, agrees to hike with me to the bottom of the ravine, and so we bundle up and set off.

The verdict? Ravines are much easier to look down into than to climb down into.

By the time we come back to the ravine, the snow is beginning to fall more heavily, and it’s therefore a perfect time to retire to the warmth and coziness of the house. Jo, perhaps sensing my ever-lasting fixation on this view, obligingly settles at the dining table so that I can gaze out at the view for the duration of our catching-up, which goes on through the late afternoon and the early evening.

She and Duncle and I simply talk, about everything from books to cholesterol to grief. After that, we have a simple but delicious dinner of cod and asparagus and baked potatoes, and a fragrant apple crumble for dessert.

That night, surrounded by family who know and love me, I sleep better than I have in a long time.

“The ones that know you so well are the ones that can swallow you whole…” –Dar Williams

Dispatches from Midwest, Issue 2

Saturday, 1 March: Daytime

Less than 36 hours into my vacation, and I’ve already made my way back to a Library. Mr. Indiana and I strap Wesley into the back seat of Optimus Prime (my flagging confidence in this vehicle is not exactly helped by Wes’s delighted exclamation “This is the biggest car in the world!”).

Me and Optimus Prime, AKA the Biggest Car in the World

We head to Monroe County Public Library for a celebration of Dr. Seuss’s bday. Well, Mr. Indiana and Wes are bound for Seuss-land; I indulge in a rather more boring activity of perusing the Indiana Room and fantasizing over the imaginary dream life of being a Local History Librarian.

At one point, I wander next door to my Darling Uncle’s record store, Tracks, which sells not only cds and records, but college apparel. It’s a tradition for me to drop a few bucks on various IU gear, and today was no exception. When I was at the cash register, paying, a woman walked in, leading along her dog on a leash. The sales clerk glanced up and said words, magical words, that I hadn’t heard in eight years:

“I’m sorry ma’am, but you can’t bring your dog in here.”

Saturday, 1 March: Night

It’s been an epically brutal winter all throughout the Midwest, and all day people have talking about the latest winter storm which is supposed to hit right about now. But it’s two o’clock in the morning, and so far the only weather we've had are clouds, which gleam eerily as the lights of Bloomington shine against them.

My body is still on California time, despite  the two hefty glasses of wine I have consumed, and I cannot fall asleep. So I sit on the couch and gaze out the back window into the night, pondering the bare trees silhouetted against the weirdly-illuminated sky, waiting for The Weather to come, waiting for sleep to come, waiting for my bewildered version of grief to pass. It’s a strange, even stupid thing to think, but I can’t help but to wonder, Did my mother look out into the Indiana winter nights and see something similar?

The rest of the house is asleep, or so I think, but as it turns out, Mr. Indiana hears me puttering about and comes downstairs to join me. Perhaps he soon regrets it, as I attempt to launch into a tearful attempt to articulate my thoughts. He listens—he’s great at listening, he always has been—but commiserating? Not so much his strong point, as evidenced when he soon digresses into one of his highly-intelligent but not-totally-relevant tangents.

It’s okay. Some sorrows can’t be explained, and can’t be shared.

Dispatches from Midwest, Issue 1

Friday, 28 February: Afternoon

A day before I flew out, my aunt called from Indiana with dire predictions of snow and doom and imminent death if I didn't upgrade to a rental car with four-wheel-drive. And so, the dudes at the Enterprise Desk were able to come up to trumps and upgrade me, after me agreeing to a painful fee and the unstated promise that oh my god of course you won’t die in an icy car crash.

All good and well, except for the fact that apparently, all four-wheel-drives are approximately as big as Optimus Motherfucking Prime. Case in point: my vehicle for the next two weeks is a Nissan Pathfinder.

My usual vehicle is a Toyota Corolla. Yeah, this is gonna be fun.

Friday, 28 February: Evening and Night

After pulling into the parking space in front of Mr. Indiana’s Bloomington townhouse and enduring some gentle ribbing about my rental Optimus Prime (“I know you said you gained some weight, but this is ridiculous!”), I quickly get settled, give a huge hug to Mr. Indiana’s girlfriend, the awesome Anna. Of course she’s awesome! By default, any woman that welcomes her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend into her home with open arms, and understands loyalty and friendship, is awesome! She and I immediately begin to discuss the sinus infection from hell that kept her from grad school for years and bond the CT scans from her horrible sinus illness. It’s the start of an epic friendship.

Over a dinner of veggie burgers and homemade potato chips (oh my god, Mr. Indiana, why did I ever leave you) and increasing amounts of wine being consumed, I catch up with them both and tease little Wesley, who’s not so little anymore, and marvel at how so many years can pass and never take away the feeling of Home.

For many reasons, Anna is great for Wesley. She’s a librarian, and has instated family storytime every night. Bless this woman's heart, she doesn't hesitate for a second to include me in this ritual. This gives me a chance to cuddle up with Wesley and deliver an exuberant and slightly drunken narration of Dragons Love Tacos as Anna snaps lots of photos and immediately post them. And Mr. Indiana and  I are stricken momentarily speechless with laughter by our old friend Dea’s response on Facebook:

“Is this…real life?”

 Dea was/is an old comrade of ours.  She KNOWS the skeletons in our closet, and her memory is a long one. She is a fellow survivor of our college years, a witness to the Catastrophic Breakup of 2006...she caught the fallout, along with many of our friends. And so I can and do laugh with love, and relief, and gratitude, that I can be here now, enjoying this time, reveling in relationships new and old, taking pride in--and rejoicing in gratitude for--my freakish ability to forgive and be forgiven, and learn, and thrive. 

It's a perfect first evening Back Home in Indiana. 

Whose woods these are...

"The country lay bare and entirely leafless around him, and he thought he had never seen so far and so intimately into the insides of things as on that winter day when Nature was deep in her annual slumber and seemed to have kicked the clothes off. Copses, dells, quarries, and all hidden places, which had been mysterious mines for exploration in leafy summer, now exposed themselves and their secrets pathetically...he was glad that he liked the country undecorated, hard, and stripped of its finery He had got down to the bare bones of it, and they were fine and strong and simple."
-Excerpt from The Wind and the Willows

When Mole ventures out into the Wild Woods on a winter's day, the woods is presumably set in England. Yet today, when I read the description of the winter-blighted forest, I thought, that could be Indiana. 

The southern part of the state especially is a very wooded place--not the vast, flat fields one might imagine, but rather densely forested hills occasionally broken up by an obliging field or encroaching farm. In spring and even more in summer, these forests seem impenetrable--but when I drove along the highways and backroads in the late fall and in the depths of winter, I was always captivated by how starkly different these scenes were. Previously imposing clusters of trees and bushes now seemed so much more sparse; forests seemed to reveal themselves for miles--stretches of snow with patches of brown, soggy earth poking through; feeble shrubs picked bare; grey and greatly diminished trees, all of it stretching on and on and on for miles and seeming to be so open and honest about its contents and life.

Sometimes I feel like my spirit is like an Indiana forest in midwinter.