ON LONG TRIPS, I’d fall asleep in the car only to wake up and realize we’d only driven thirty minutes to stop first at Bill Knapps. What I remember about the now-shuttered restaurant chain is their famous potatoes au gratin and coloring with crayons while I waited for my mom to signal she was ready to head back on the road.
I haven’t thought about this place in years but it was referenced in Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s writing about her Jewish childhood in the midwest, and I can’t help but notice the many points of overlap that feel quintessential in some way: camp memories, learning to play the guitar, the smell of deep fresh pine in the woods of Michigan, where the air just smells like cool heaven.
My mother was born in Watervliet, so the story goes. Grew up in Benton Harbor, married my dad at a gorgeous synagogue within walking distance of her childhood home. I visited a few years ago with my boyfriend, walking around the block a few times in the summer heat, a melted iced coffee in my hand, imagining the limits and possibilities of her life. I sometimes scroll through Zillow looking for summer cottages nearby, thinking that would be a place I could also call home.
Who knows.
I haven’t picked up my guitar in a long time but every once in a while, strumming a song or two on it also makes me feel like I’m home again—not in some place—in my soul’s home. My mom noticed how I obsessed over learning certain songs in eighth grade so she purchased a really nice guitar for me that year, but because I spent a lot of time hating her, I also had ambivalent feelings toward that guitar.
It’s stuck with me though after all these years. It’s in my closet, along with the stash of sheet music I lugged around with me, hoping I’d one day master “Angel of Montgomery” or “Father and Son” or “You’ve Got a Friend.” Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone...and the tears well up just like that. I think it all points to my summers at Jewish overnight camp in Wisconsin.
There’s no greater peace than sitting around a campfire and yet I’ve yet to learn how to build one on my own. I keep telling myself that at some point I’ll return to my aspirations as a nature girly and get to work on learning the skills that would make it make sense to sleep in the woods and build a fire and cook over it and wake up at dawn. One day, I keep telling myself. I’ll bring my guitar! We can sing around the fire forever.
What I once thought was our story — my family’s story, my mom’s story — is in some way a Jewish diaspora story I couldn’t see as clearly as I do now when I was growing up. I’m sure I was told at some point that Michiana wasn’t always a welcoming place for Jewish people but it also didn’t stick because I didn’t want to believe that such a world existed. I know better now, sadly.
And still, Jewish people found their way in the pine woods and dune towns of Indiana and Michigan, and I still trek northward in that direction, hoping to feel the essence of this collective presence in the region. We’re here, tucked into the American story, getting loud and writing books when we’re called to, but otherwise trying to figure out how to strike a match and light a peaceful fire, so it seems.
I haven’t thought about this place in years but it was referenced in Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s writing about her Jewish childhood in the midwest, and I can’t help but notice the many points of overlap that feel quintessential in some way: camp memories, learning to play the guitar, the smell of deep fresh pine in the woods of Michigan, where the air just smells like cool heaven.
My mother was born in Watervliet, so the story goes. Grew up in Benton Harbor, married my dad at a gorgeous synagogue within walking distance of her childhood home. I visited a few years ago with my boyfriend, walking around the block a few times in the summer heat, a melted iced coffee in my hand, imagining the limits and possibilities of her life. I sometimes scroll through Zillow looking for summer cottages nearby, thinking that would be a place I could also call home.
Who knows.
I haven’t picked up my guitar in a long time but every once in a while, strumming a song or two on it also makes me feel like I’m home again—not in some place—in my soul’s home. My mom noticed how I obsessed over learning certain songs in eighth grade so she purchased a really nice guitar for me that year, but because I spent a lot of time hating her, I also had ambivalent feelings toward that guitar.
It’s stuck with me though after all these years. It’s in my closet, along with the stash of sheet music I lugged around with me, hoping I’d one day master “Angel of Montgomery” or “Father and Son” or “You’ve Got a Friend.” Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone...and the tears well up just like that. I think it all points to my summers at Jewish overnight camp in Wisconsin.
There’s no greater peace than sitting around a campfire and yet I’ve yet to learn how to build one on my own. I keep telling myself that at some point I’ll return to my aspirations as a nature girly and get to work on learning the skills that would make it make sense to sleep in the woods and build a fire and cook over it and wake up at dawn. One day, I keep telling myself. I’ll bring my guitar! We can sing around the fire forever.
What I once thought was our story — my family’s story, my mom’s story — is in some way a Jewish diaspora story I couldn’t see as clearly as I do now when I was growing up. I’m sure I was told at some point that Michiana wasn’t always a welcoming place for Jewish people but it also didn’t stick because I didn’t want to believe that such a world existed. I know better now, sadly.
And still, Jewish people found their way in the pine woods and dune towns of Indiana and Michigan, and I still trek northward in that direction, hoping to feel the essence of this collective presence in the region. We’re here, tucked into the American story, getting loud and writing books when we’re called to, but otherwise trying to figure out how to strike a match and light a peaceful fire, so it seems.
