MIDWESTERN ROSES ON THE FENCE
It may be actually true that you can never go home again.
Every time I go back to the Chicago Area. or even 'up' into the Wisconsin of my young adulthood, it looks very different... Cleaner, for one. Richer, for two. Many buildings I thought I knew, are gone. or refurbished to look more retrospective, that is, not how they originally looked, but "old" in a more genteel manner. trees, of course, are gone, or very much larger.
The rivers are still timelessly beautiful, but the banks that were so wild, are groomed. There are more boats and canoes and so on scooting around on them, as well. they used to be empty of traffic most of the year....and the car traffic is, well, actually traffic. which it had never been. not even during the so-called rush-hour, which wasn't many more cars than usual anyway. now there is an actual and seriously death-defying Rush Hour. serious stuff....
Remembering the old days is changed by time and space anyway. I find that I am terribly claustrophobic after a little over a week. I remember more bad days, in the Midwest, than I've ever had since, out here in California....and even more very dull days. deadening days. when the only escape was novels and a little TV and Radio. an occasional phone call of interest. now, people watch TV and movies and play on their computers at home a great deal more in the neighborhoods, to escape. the TV screen light flickers out most windows when I take a walk in the evening on the flat, narrow sidewalks and peer into the cozy Midwest houses. there are less kids playing outside all over the sidewalks and right into the streets, than there used to be. But, you know, that's true everywhere....
It's Flat there. seriously Flat. my dad, in hot-headed protest, once drove me to a little rise above a big, long dip into the scenery and announced, "See! There's a valley!" "Where?", I asked innocently....he was not amused....I don't do Flat well. It terrifies me. I feel trapped in Flat. I have no idea why. but ridges and hills and mountains are my comfort zone. preferably near, very near, ocean. get claustrophobic. quite seriously, in the long, low fields and flat cities of the Midwest, if I'm there for too long...like over two weeks. Some relief in the hills of Wisconsin...lots of lakes...that always helps...Lake Michigan especially...a vista without buildings and flat lands....
Every one is very nice and quite bright in the Midwest. with a great story to tell about their lives. every one. without exception. they are proud people. in spite of a lot of evidence to the contrary, they view a lot of the rest of the world, different than they, as "crazy". almost every single comment I make, about anything, when around my relatives and friends in the Midwest, is labeled "Crazy", closely followed by "Californian", since the two words are apparently synonyms. open-mindedness is touted as a Midwest trait, but I've yet to hear or see or sense such an animal as an "Open Mind' on the prairie trail, so far. There may be one or two. But, I doubt it. They are truly "good" people quite often. but, the ideas are parochial. not always in a bad way. but not worldly world-views either. and they are proud of that. I have no problem with that. just noticing...actually. that's rural everywhere. even pretty American, when you get down to it. Midwestern Folks are very American and patriotic. which is a good thing.
Racist remarks are scattered through conversations like rain drops. but nary a one is copped-to....not being racist is key to being a Midwesterner. Racist remarks are also keys to being a Midwesterner. They are not in any way connected. just ask your Uncle Louey...
Where I live now, no one would tell the racist jokes and comments I hear all the time in the Midwest. It just wouldn't happen. very different views of what constitutes respect of 'difference'. not right or wrong, in my book. just, very different....
The Foods of the Chicago Area and of rural Wisconsin are plentiful on my plate, and are very, very 'heavy' in animal fats. very. in huge amounts. I can usually get three meals our of any one I'm served, in any restaurant....only I can't actually eat all that bread and butter and cheese and sauce. I maybe wish I could, but, maybe not. my arteries simply throw up roadblocks and start screaming in fear. this is dense food stuff. not for the frail vegetarian. not at all...
my Aunt Lou once proudly prepared for me, a Seven-Layer-Salad, to accommodate my weird vege diet...two of the layers were meat, and ham and beef at that. she was surprised at that...I, somehow, was not...and assured her that all was well in the world. I ate around those two layers...she ate them for me...cheerfully....
food is often Comfort Food, big - time.....
In the summer, deep into the summer, I sense my imminent death. The Chicago Area, and indeed, Wisconsin: is a soup of heat all summer, day and night. There is no cooling from the Pacific in the evening, as there is where I live...it is just hot and humid. I truly cannot bear heat and humidity together. I again feel trapped. I don't do the out-of-doors, unless it's on the water...I canoe on the rivers. It's a relief. and much, much fun. I don't want to leave the river, where it is cool and kind...
air conditioning just doesn't do it for me. then I feel trapped inside for sure....
once, walking toward Lake Michigan, I simply walked into the lake with my sandals off. handed off my purse to my friend. just walked in and swam around and floated for about an hour. wouldn't come out. it was cool and lovely, with big white pillow clouds overhead in the blue. a guy paddled over and asked where I was from. California. he laughed and said: I've checked. no one swimming in the lake around here is from here. we're all from Europe or another state far away....made sense, somehow.....
the thunder storms are wonderful though...the lightning is glorious! the thunder is magnificent!...and tornado weather...the sky that dark yellow, that you really don't want to see but once in all your life.....
The winters are something else again...like the summer, this season lasts for well over four months, relentlessly....wind-chill-factor. the sheering of all your skin and into your bones of temperatures that are meant to freeze your very soul and do. with a fearsome wind that does not stop for any reason known to man....
there's the first lovely snow...sweet and clean and caressing...it starts to build up on the grass...on the sidewalks...on the streets....it's over!
you are now shoveling snow or snow-blowing snow or cursing snow for three more months at least, and probably more. and, from now on, it is rarely beautiful again.
it is hard, gray to brown to even back over a tiny bit of tired white and you are going to fall on it slipping and cursing even some more....you are going to be cold and unhappy. every year. forever.
notice how I've changed the tense from I to you. 'I' will not be there. You will be on your own! Lucky you!...
when it all begins to melt, it will be slush. then it will be ice. then slush. then ice. finally it will melt into a tarry mud. then it will be gone.
finally, it will be Spring....
OK. I'll admit it. Spring in the Midwest is splendid. there are Lilacs. and lots and lots of other blossoms. and spears of perennials poking out of the ground, ready to burst into their sweet little blossoms...and Lilacs. did I mention Lilacs?....there is nothing else more wonderful in the warm, wispy, sweet-smelling, grassy, growing, gentle, good, good Spring....than Lilacs....
for three weeks every one is very, very happy, tho occasionally there is a blizzard and more snow, for some reason...and it can rain. with a lot, a lot, of mud....
but...it is Spring! the rivers are winter-melt high and noisy with life and water tumbling...the canoe is broken-out and the river is taken-on...on its terms, of course....the sultry days go on and on and on....
and then it is Summer again.....
But! at the end of Summer is Fall! Three to five more weeks of flames of trees every wonderful color possible...golds. reds. scarlets. yellows. browns. oranges. lemons....and harvests of all the vegetables that will winter-over. and the smoke, where allowed or sometimes not, of the leaves that have fallen all set afire...and from the fireplaces, where allowed or sometimes not....
warm Indian summer sleepy times...exciting, crisp, happy-go-lucky cool breezy days...football weather....football... and pumpkins....and Hubbard Squashes...and Elderberries.... and napping in the canoe while it eddies sweetly in the gold sun....
and then it is Winter again.....
Now there is a reason to go back to the Midwest. My Boyfriend is from the Midwest. He's lived in the Chicago Area. he's been married there. so was I, for that matter... but it is a good thing, anyway, what we have. It's got the Midwest in it. and a History. and Love. a natural and true love... Who knows what will happen. The Midwest is in us. grass roots goin' down for miles....
this love is just like the Midwest, actually: comfortable. and not. exciting. and not...sometimes just like Spring and Fall...other times, I fear Flat. a Trap of my own making.
What I want to do is to give him more than Spring. more than Fall. more than anyone else ever has or can....
But he may not be able to leave the Midwest, all told... I want him to choose me and this coast I live upon, if possible... but he's a Midwesterner. He may not be able to leave there forever...well, we'll have to compromise: com meaning with. compromise meaning with a promise....
I think about why I left the Midwest in the first place. none of those reasons apply any more. maybe they never did. I mean, as one of my favorite sayings goes: If your love lives in Hong Kong, you learn how to swim....I can swim. I can.
I find, in the long run, that Love itself if much like the Midwest. Much is beautiful. Much is not. so then, yes, Life itself is much like the Midwest, also, I suppose. Takes the sting out of trying to make it seem like a place I don't want to be. That I've told myself, that I don't want to be there, as I have....I'm no longer sure that applies. Much that I've loved is there...much and many that and who I love will never leave there...but hope is there too. love is strong.
a Midwesterner learns to be strong in the face of the loss. to enjoy the short Spring and the short Fall and to stoically brave the cold and the humid heat of the rest of the year. year after year after year.... a Midwesterner learns to take love with a grain of salt. to let go with a grain of salt....Salt of the Earth.....
at heart. I was raised a Midwesterner. I can survive. I can endure. anything. anything at all....
So, the Midwest, and especially the Chicago area, is a bitter-sweet place for me....the rains and snows and flat landscapes and parochial thinking are all part of me. I am a hybrid in California...well, most Californians are, so I'm not exactly alone...
"sometimes I feel like I'm never going to make it home again...it's so far and out of sight".....
you know, in the Midwest, as in a woman's heart, there are places no one knows.....
maybe I will make it home again. maybe, home will come to me....
I hold no hopes for any future, really....the present is daunting enough of late!
But, if somehow, I could go back again. could reclaim the parts that were beautiful in the Midwest, I would want to do that....
I would want to go home again....
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