missing minnesota

Here's what I'll remember about September 22, 2008: it is a day that found me nearly crying when I watched an old man pick up a small painted turtle that was headed into traffic and instead release it, gently, into the Grand River. And it is a day that found me nearly crying while I washed dishes and listened to The National. It is a day that finds me missing Minnesota.

These days are hard because they divide me into two people: the one who stares off into space and thinks back to life in that vaguely Cape Coddish house, and the one who is left living in present tense, trying to pretend that she is entirely focused in the present.

I tried not to write on these days during the last year--because I was already writing long e-mails on those days anyway, because anyone who talked to me on the phone knew exactly what sort of winter it was. I tried not to because I was focused on blogging about the good things, the small happys, and getting out of my head and spending some time thinking about the good stuff that was Madison: curry and weekends off and poetry publications.

So with a few notable exceptions, I don't have many posts on last year's days like this. I know they happened, of course--and I know that I got used to feeling as if an elephant was sitting on my chest, that being the prevailing simile of those months--but I wish I did.

And these days are hard because they find me in mourning: mourning a time that no longer exists, which must be one of the most self-defeating exercises out there. I don't want be one of those people who, when asked was the best days of her life were, will cite the near-year when I lived in a falling-apart house with four other people and a neurotic spaniel, the near-year of wine and ridiculous nights and poems and dinner parties. Everything about that time was a giant mess: we were students and instructors, we were nearly adults and still immature; we had some responsibility and could still get away with throwing parties on Sunday nights. Everything was so quintessentially, fucking grad school during that time, and I loved it.

That's what that year was. I know it's impossibly romanticized, and those of you who were there with me will notice my tendency to overlook all the piles of shit that were also that year. But it was a time in my life that I could say I was surrounded, literally, with friends who shared a common purpose with me, and I loved that. It was what I missed in undergrad, and it was what I found in Minnesota. And leaving it behind--or perhaps, more accurately, watching us all move on--has proved to be the singular most difficult thing I have ever done.

And so some days I miss everything about Minnesota. I miss my friends. I miss knowing a small town intimately. I miss walking into stores and restaurants and recognizing people from the restaurant, or from classes, or from campus. I miss knowing exactly where to get exactly what I want to eat: sesame tofu, or the perfect patty melt.

I miss my bar.

I miss the way my friends used to walk into our house like they owned it, and I miss coming home to find them sprawled on various pieces of furniture. I miss waking up in the morning and straining to hear if the shower is running and I get another ten minutes to doze, or if I should get up right then and jump into it. I miss the Whiskey Song, and I miss grocery shopping at Cub.

I miss feeling as if I belong. I always remember one of very my favorite times there as walking over to campus before a class, listening to a current favorite song on my iPod. That's it: walking. But I knew where I was going, and what I was going to do later that night (most likely some variation on the wine-dinner party outline from above), and for a few moments, the small things would make sense. And if the small things made sense, I could usually quit worrying about the big stuff for a couple of hours.

When I lived in Madison, I missed the teaching. The worst thing about the first post-grad year is feeling as if you've been ripped from an artistic community and thrown back into the rest of the world, and to some extent, that was true in Madison. I met some amazing people in Madison, but I missed teaching every single day, and I missed feeling as if what I did with my days mattered to anyone. And so I can recognize that I am at least happier in GRR than I ever was in Madison. A large portion of things have, for lack of a gentler term, been fixed.

But I still miss Minnesota, and especially that last year in it, for the simple reason that I identified on the bus today. I miss the structure: knowing that I was there to do one thing and then doing it. I miss looking at my life in those terms: here is your degree, here is the path to it, maybe do some stuff along the way, don't worry so much about the future, because right now your job is just to be here for a few years. It helps, being back on the academic calendar, but I find myself still lost some days. How does anyone acclimate to a life blown wide open, one not dictated by a time that you should have a degree in hand? And why do I find it so difficult to adjust to this sort of life, which millions of people find perfectly normal?

Is this just what happens over the course of a lifetime? You get older, you get to do a couple different things. You get a little perspective. You calm down. You go for the job; you get the job, the house, the marriage, and then the kids arrive. And it feels completely normal that your very best friends don't live in the same city or state as you.

Instead, you pull out the photo albums every once in a while, maybe with a beer in hand, and you spend some time thinking about versions of yourself: the one on the pages, the one you are now, the one you want to be. And it doesn't hurt like it used to. And you are stronger for it all--for having lived it, and for having left it. And you count yourself lucky that you have had a life that let you move around, that let you find these people in the first place, because at least they are out there somewhere. Probably even thinking of you when they drink Jameson or hear "Fake Empire."

That's a good answer. Maybe the only one. But you know, some days it still sort of sucks.