Girl Out of Michigan

By Juli

So, I grew up really poor. I don’t know why I always start there, except that it had such a profound effect on why I make the decisions I do now. The seed of my childhood poverty has grown into this baobab that I can see from every window of my life. It has a presence, a vote, my ear. It is my private council. It tips the scales.

My mother was a single mom that had two kids by the time she was twenty. Not a Brady Bunch existence by any means. It was hard. My brother and I had it really rough. I was a deep little kid, so much deeper than I am now. I watched, and felt, and ached for something different. I loved my family, but I didn’t want to relive their lives in a different skin. I did not love my home state. I loved it so little, in fact, that it never occurred to me that you could love a hometown, a place, a mitten shaped clump of land. To me, Michigan was everything I didn’t want to be. It was reclusive, sedentary, passive. Michigan was a big bird with its head stuck in the sand. It was waiting to be saved, discovered, loved. Michigan was the last kid picked for the team. It was crying in a pillow, listening to late night talk shows, taking slow drags on a cigarette and watching The Price is Right and so wishing I could win. Spin the wheel. Land on the dollar. Michigan was the fat kid with the patchwork winter coat held together by diaper pins. Michigan was very me.

So I ran from it.

I left for a school I could not afford amongst people to whom I could not relate. I brought my problems with me. I brought Michigan with me. I graduated, somehow, with a degree in Anthropology. And I left there too, that silly school, and it hardly knew I was there. I fell in love with the East though. Its standoffish people who didn’t ask you how you were, where you could have real privacy in a sea of people. People who were always doing something, always passionate about something. People who didn’t punctuate every joy and sorrow with food or smoke or alcohol. People who seemed so much more alive. Different. Like I wanted to be. Anything but that girl I knew from Michigan.

So here I am. Fast forward almost twenty years. Still in the East, my love affair dimming. Two kids, a husband, two dogs, a cat. Some fish. I have a happy life. A lucky life.

But I miss Michigan.

I long for real hugs. Kind strangers. Chatting in the grocery line. Warm smiles and loud, infectious laughter. You won’t find that so much here. So many caterpillars in the pillar. Ready to bump you down if you get in the way. I hated what I perceived as lack of motivation in the people around me growing up. I see now it was selflessness. It was love thy neighbor. It was turn the other cheek. It was living in the moment. It was no, you go first.

Michigan is laughed at. Dumped on. Used up and tossed away. Forgotten. And it continues, slow and steady. It doesn't hold a grudge. It has a strong will and a pure heart. I believe it will find the happy ending. The fresh beginning. How can you not love streets in grids, funny accents, soft people with big hearts, tall trees, and people who still remember watching and listening is so much more important than talking. That what you are is more important than what you do or have. That how you live trumps where you do it.

I am so sorry I misjudged. I didn’t know better.

If I knew in my heart that I could go back and be who I’ve become, enjoy what I have, and not slip into what I once was, I would consider it. If I knew I could shield my children from the heartaches I grew up with, maybe. But I’m scared. The place is a slow burn, a big oaf, a gentle giant that has good intentions but might accidentally sit on you. It’s the frumpy mitten on the little kid. I’m the little kid, and look at my palm, there, I live right there. I am Michigan. I miss it. I root for it. I want it to win the prize, cross the finish line, get the car behind curtain number three. Because I’ve been gone a long time, but there’s never going to be a way to take the Michigan out of me.

And so I sit out here, and I watch. And I wait until the time is right. And it may never be right. There’s no rushing what will be. It will be. You learn that early on when you’re from Michigan.