Gone and Back Again

When I first moved to Chicago, my parents were thrilled with how easily I adjusted to the new environment. Raised in a small town, the constant motion of city life felt foreign to me -- foreign and exhilarating. Although I was teary when my parents left me in my first dorm room at North Park University, I quickly adapted to the college and the city. After my first week of classes, I took the bus to Foster beach with my new friends. Later that day, we rode the Brown Line downtown to the Jazz Festival at Grant Park, and proceeded to walk to Navy Pier just in time to catch the Labor Day Weekend firework show. That night, we took the last train back to North Park at two in the morning. My transformation from country bumpkin to urbanite was swift and almost effortless.

In May, I graduated from college. During the last semester, I decided the best move for my life in the long run was to swallow my pride and go back home. I'm living with my parents in the tiny town I grew up in, but things could be a lot worse. I could be homeless or living in a whorehouse. I could be working three waitress jobs just to pay rent. I could have years of student loans so far ahead of me that I couldn't see the end. Actually, living with my parents is not bad at all. They pay for my food, my utilities. There's no rent. Everything I make goes into my checking or savings account. I get my own room (full of high school dreams) and my own bathroom. It's way nicer than the sub-standard Chicago flat I lived in at school. Plus, I know that the hair in the shower drain belonged to me and not to some skuzzy girl who shares the community bathroom on the dorm floor.

Plus, I really like my parents.

However, there are drawbacks. My parents' house is beautiful and comfortably situated on a picturesque lake, but the town is less than interesting. After four years of living in Chicago -- and a lifetime of dreaming of the day I could get the heck out of this nowhere place -- moving back to Upper Michigan is like poor Lisa Douglas being dragged from Manhattan to Green Acres. I went from loving my life in the most diverse neighborhood in the city of Chicago to a rural ghetto where the most "ethnic" restaurant is Italian.

Everything seems to have emptied while I was away. There are fewer cars in parking lots. Abandoned houses hunch heavily, forlorn and deflated without life inside. The middle school is closed -- kindergarten through 12th grade is all on one campus now. Next to Riverside Pizzeria, the charred remains of the old bowling alley lie, waiting to be buried and for the rest of the town meet its fate.

A quaint, country town is not what I find when I examine the area. I see broken down houses, and my mother, a teacher, tells me stories of neglected children whose parents survive on unemployment, Welfare, or booze. Not that all people who are unemployed or need assistance are negligent or lazy -- I do not intend to perpetuate that stereotype. However, the reality of small town living is not all sunshine and daisies. There are problems, too.

Growing up, most of my dissatisfaction stemmed from boredom. Although I played in the woods plenty, I never embraced the small town life. My family was transplanted here, not naturally "Yoopers." We didn't hunt or have relatives around town like everyone else. We didn’t own an ATV. Though we did live miles away from town. As a little girl, I sung Belle’s words “There must be more than this provincial life!” with conviction. I dreamt of attending a high school with a swim team and a theater program (even a choir would do). I definitely never thought I'd come back for more than a visit. But, here I am, reintroduced to the surroundings I haunted not so long ago, and rediscovering my hometown with a worldly eye.