Home, to Minnesota

I am a homebody; always have been. I hated going to summer camp – possibly because the only time I went the other girls were mean to me and I came home with lice (the indignity of it still rankles); hotel sheets creeped me out (still kind of do, just ask Justin) and I hated using strange bathrooms (I’ve mostly gotten over this). My idea of a good time was staying home to read my library books and I only reluctantly attended sleepovers, unless said event was with my cousin Steph, because her house felt as much like home as my own.

I grew up, less shy and more adventurous, but still so rooted to that southeast corner of South Dakota where my big messy family lives and works with varying degrees of harmony and general goodwill that I spent the summer after I graduated college and before I started graduate school at home, making slightly more than minimum wage at the small-town grocery store in the next town over. And I loved every second of it. But I also cried myself to sleep a lot, categorizing everything that would never be the same – watching the moon rise through my bedroom window, walking to grandma’s house for a visit, getting up at dawn to have a cup of coffee with dad. All these precious things, if not slipping through my fingers, would be changed as soon as I left for Creighton in the fall, because then I would be a grown up and my home, though perhaps not my heart, would be in Omaha.

The thing is, you see, that I had always imagined my life turning out differently than that. Before I went to college, my grandpa told me to bring back a nice Iowa farm boy with a half section of land. I laughed it off, of course, but I kept my eyes open, half expecting to find one. Because that’s what people did at Northwestern – they found their farm boy or football star or science nerd or whoever freshman year, got engaged their sophomore year and finished out the next two years in the married student housing. And no, I’m not exaggerating.

Thankfully, this is not how it went for me, friends. Though I can’t say exactly – my memory’s starting to fail with my advancing years -- I don’t think I had even one real date with a NW boy, though there was a close call or two. However, I did find a farm boy back home who pursued me rather relentlessly and for the few weeks I convinced myself I liked him as much as he liked me, I could see my life unfolding as I’d always expected: Planning meals to take out to the field, getting together with mom a couple times during the summer to can produce from the garden I’d planted, perhaps working a part-time job somewhere, but mostly tending my babies and my other responsibilities on the farm -- like the horses, of course.

And honestly, there are things that sound so lovely about that life even now, except the farmer. He was nice enough and all, but he was also all wrong. Completely wrong.

And so, like many humanities majors before me, I went to graduate school, because that’s what humanities majors do when their other prospects are limited.

(An aside: As much as I poke fun at my English major, I can’t say that I’d change it; I’d maybe do something in addition, but not instead, but how do you know that at 17 or 18 when you’re just figuring out who you are, let alone the direction of your life’s work?)

This meant Creighton because of the scholarship and stipend (I do have some business sense). My parents took me down to look at apartments one day in July. We left home at 6, pulled into town around 9:00 and before noon, we had the apartment secured and a sofa, loveseat, bed and mattress purchased at Mrs. B’s. We ate some lunch at Applebee’s and were back home well before 5 because that’s how my dad rolls. A few weeks later they moved me down for good and after they’d left, having helped me unpack the U-haul and assemble the Walmart furniture, I sat in the empty apartment, listened to Counting Crow’s August and Everything After and cried.

But then I took a nap and got on with it, because that’s how I roll.

And slowly, slowly the apartment started to feel like mine and Omaha, if not like home, exactly, something close. I met Justin in October and suddenly there were all these places that took on new significance. The Barnes and Noble in Crossroads where we first met up for coffee; Romeo’s, where we went on our first non-date date; The 13th Street Coffee Shop where we got hot cider once and walked around the Old Market not holding hands but wanting to; Delice, where we share a pot of tea on the occasional Saturday morning; Taco John’s; Friendly’s Used Books; Borders; the 90th Street Bag and Save where I once drove J to drink with a list-free shopping trip, and then, finally, a little brick house on Ohio Street with a retro black and white bathroom and peony bushes.


I knew in fairly short order after I met Justin that we would end up married and we did, a year and a half or so after we first met sharing a theory textbook in class. And my life, let me tell you, my life has turned out different and better and more than I ever could have imagined it to be.
That’s not to say I don’t still get homesick for South Dakota; I do. I miss the endless wind and the sky and my family so much so that sometimes it’s easier to stay away than it is to visit. I’ve even looked at possibilities for moving back, but there’s not as many Lutherans there as there are in Minnesota. And since J insists on being a Lutheran and since he’s called to church work, we’re moving north to a tiny apartment on main street with a balcony that overlooks the park and the bar. It’s pretty much perfect, especially since we got the cat pee smell out.

J’s been up there a month already, and I’m going this weekend and while there have been some nice perks to having the house to myself these past weeks (including, but not limited to, fixing cereal for supper pretty much every night, watching the occasional Lifetime movie and listening to country music without being shamed or mocked, buying almond butter – yes I know it’s expensive, honey -- without censure, and having no undershirts in the laundry to fold), I'm thrilled beyond words. Truly.

There are details to work out yet, a house to sell and such, but I’m not worried. I’m going home.


It's likely to be awhile before I get the kitchen in the new place up and running, but when I do, I promise you all sorts of good things like pizza and, at long last, turtle cookies. But in the meantime, make these. I've tried them, twice, and I plan to make them again in a side-by-side comparison with mom's Perfect Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies, which I've always loved and once used to impress J early in our courtship; only I put in twice the flour and they turned out very biscuit-like. God bless him, he ate them anyway.

But here I am getting carried away. Back to the NY Times recipe: Don't worry about the fancy chocolate disks; use whatever chocolate you like -- for me that's Ghirardelli 60 percent cocoa chocolate chips. Also, I used all-purpose flour, though I did weigh it.