a bit of a katie girl.

i really like kathleen norris. “dakota: a spiritual geography” is one of those books i wish i had written. that i think i could have written, if i had significantly better writing skills and a bit more introspection. in “dakota” kathleen norris writes of her family’s homestead: “(it is) my spiritual geography, the place where i’ve wrestled my story out of the circumstances of landscape and inheritance”.

my dad and i were talking about kathleen norris when i was home this weekend. we were also talking about our spiritual geography. my spiritual geography. about the fact that (on his side) i am a sixth generation resident of the prairies of southern minnesota. i know that in our increasingly mobile world, this is more and more rare. very few people have that kind of tie to a specific location. we have to create our own geography.

its like those advertisements for the phone company that combine the names of major cities to explain to you the places that call most often. for me its owaolaftwincitiesmetro. next year it will be washiolaftonna. or maybe twinonnawash. depending.

i guess the point of all of this is that the older i get, the more i realize that home isn’t really home anymore. at least not how i originally envisioned it. like so many other things in my life, it is never going to be again what it once was. your geography changes. and even the places you think haven’t changed, actually have. because they now mean something completely different. so while blast softserve is still on the corner of rose and north oak, and still serves my favorite cookie dough ice cream treats, i saw it with new eyes when my brother and i went there last week. same teal shutters and walk up window. different heart.

i was attempting to explain all of this to my best friend a. over dinner in northfield on friday evening and how much it used to bother me. how i used to look at the ice cream shop, owatonna high school and the steele county free fairgrounds and wish i could go back. that i could do it all over again and somehow fix things. prevent a broken heart. walk away sooner. live my life without being afraid of losing him. i used to look at these places, see these places, and only feel hurt and betrayal. the only thing i took away from home was how much i had missed. how much time i had wasted. the same with st. olaf. frankly, i decided to move to washington d.c. because i was terrified of missing my own life. which is what being at home used to make me feel like.

but as i told a., this trip was different. my lame-ass analogy went something like this: do you know how your foot feels when its asleep? numb, but when you try to move forward at all by putting pressure on it, it hurts like hell? that is what my life felt like, my whole body. i felt trapped by this searing pain every time i tried to move forward. because everywhere i looked i saw who i was. and i thought that was who i was supposed to be. but this time visiting home was different.

for the first time it felt like mine again. my own home. not the home of something and someone i’d rather forget. and while i don’t believe in signs, when i was driving up to st. olaf to visit some old friends, i heard the song. you know the one. that song we’ve all claimed as our own that resurrects the skeletons in the closet and makes a scarred wound feel like its bleeding again. mine happened to come on 89.3 the current just as i was pulling onto i-35. and i listened to it. for the first time. in two years. from start to finish. and there were no tears and no hurt. memories, certainly. like the time i recorded myself singing it on his cell phone. but as i remembered that it felt so distant from my life right now. more like a movie that i had watched once than a person i had ever been.

a couple months ago, when i was being super angst-y about staying in d.c. or moving home to minnesota, my brother (wise beyond his years at eighteen) said roughly the following to me: “i know that it took a lot of courage for you to move to washington d.c. and i know why you did it. but you’ve done what you went out there to do. don’t you think the really courageous thing to do now would be to move home and start the new life you’ve created here, where you belong, with your family?”

yes, russ. i suppose you’re right. and as much as moving to washington d.c. has complicated my personal geography, it has somehow managed to simplify it as well. home is home. d.c. is d.c. and i am myself in both places. finally.

xoxo.
ellie

In first grade I shoved a rock up my nose. It got stuck. In fourth grade every girl in Grandview, Missouri, got the bright idea to shave only the back of their heads. It was some kind of rebellious fashion statement, and one I rarely admit to doing. In sixth grade I started my period and insisted that it wasn’t normal. I was so persistent that my mother had to take me to the doctor. I refused to believe that my mother, a nurse, knew what she was talking about. In seventh grade I received my first kiss. Ken Willert was the one to give it to me. My friends and I were at Mitch Karsten’s birthday party, girls on one side of the room and boys on the other. The kiss was strategically planned, not romantic or spontaneous in any way, and I refused to kiss him until I found my Dr. Pepper Chap Stick. I had to make sure my lips were soft after all. Two years ago I dated a guy named Ben. I was bored, and he was cute, until he turned in to a stalker. I had mentioned that I liked Batman, and one day I came home to find him in my apartment in nothing but a child sized Batman cape. I sent him home. Three weeks ago,I accidentally found out that the father of my son is having a baby. This was quite a shock to me because he had been trying to get back together with me for months. He would tell me how sorry he was for things that happened in the past, tell me he loves me, and wants nothing more than to have his family back. I knew that even though there were still feelings on both people’s parts, I couldn’t ever go back to that relationship. I didn’t want to be with the father of my child, but he should damn well be miserable and pine over me. I figured that he deserved it after everything that he had done. I spent the rest of the night throwing myself a pity party and avoiding his text messages and calls. Unfortunately when I was ready to talk the only thing that could come out of my mouth, after some alcoholic beverages, was, “I hope your baby has five legs.”

I thought about how immature that phrase was for about a week, and then I realized something. It is ok to do things I regret. I’m not saying I should go out and purposely do things that are stupid, but all of my experiences have taught me something. For example, I now know that rocks do not belong in body cavities, that being a woman is a normal biological thing, and I have learned that clippers should only be used on members of the male species. Spontaneous kisses that hold feeling and meaning are the best, and I no longer worry about having Chap Stick. I figure I am a little old for Dr. Pepper flavor and so have now matured to Tropical Punch Kool-Aid. Dating someone because I am bored never goes anywhere and is a waste of time. Maturing enough to consider someone else’s feelings is something that I am glad to have learned. I can now just tell someone that it isn’t working out rather than hoping that he gets my subtle cues and disappears. Even though I still do not like the idea of my son’s father having another child, a baby with five legs just wouldn’t be a good thing.

Learning to let things go is not an easy task, and I have not mastered it by any means. I am positive that I will have more moments that I am not proud of, and I welcome them. I figure it is how I handle myself during and after them that shapes who I am. I can only hope that as I age and mature that I live a life without regret and have many stories to tell.

i’d like to thank this week’s contributer for such an incredible essay! for more information on the katie girl project or how to submit a piece, click here.