This past weekend, my mom sent me a care package from our small town in northern Illinois. Aside from a few sweaters and some Trader Joe’s snacks (we have that here too, mom!), there was a bag of fall leaves.
“Freshly raked from the midwest,” she told me over the phone. The bag’s red, orange and yellow array certainly screamed Illinois autumn. How I wished to be back home at that moment. Los Angeles is exhilarating — don’t get me wrong! But nothing will ever compare to the nostalgia of a midwestern childhood. I spent my entire life dreaming of escaping my hometown, and now I miss it.
I owe the midwest an apology: I’m sorry for not loving you when I had you. Can I write you a letter to express my love?
Dear Heartland,
Do you remember? Water up to my ankles in Lake Bluff, a narrow ravine, as I was hating and scheming about you. There was a countdown in my head — two months, two weeks, two days until college. I thought I was ready to leave. California’s open arms, tanned and beaming and so long, beckoned me. I waded towards her embrace. I only lingered in you, in Lake Bluff, so that I could photograph the worms. Their wriggling bodies were crushed to stillness between damp logs and stones, struck down in a fit of wind and rain, as was the Midwest. As were you. An entire lifespan, right there, between two rocks. This will not be me, I thought. I will escape you.
I did! I did escape! But you must’ve cast a spell over me because all I want now is to go back. I am the struck one, like those logs and stones, recalling the precious things you gave me. Thickets of wild plums like you’d never see in California, patches of silphium and goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace-kissing tree stumps and abandoned sheds. You weren’t exactly golden but you were green, and green is growing up, so it has become my favorite. In the haze of Midwestern cornfields and discomfiting gas stations, I found a green fragment of kindness.
Your people are as fierce as the July heat lightning and as pensive as the January snowfields. Mutable, like the seasons, but content, like the lakes. Los Angeles is full of achievers. So many stars in so small a space, I wonder how they avoid claustrophobia. On days when the pressure is too much, I imagine myself back at your side. Your people might be static, but they are stable. They mow the lawn for their neighbors and prattle on about the foxes and deer. They like their lives small. They like their years colorful.
Friends, memory, adolescence, walk along this wooded path. Let this leafy atrium be our coliseum of connection. Everything reminds me of you when I am away. To the heartland, my heart,
I will always miss you.
Sincerely,
a girl who loves you.