I TOLD MY PARENTS I would not return home from Zanzibar until I was ready, but I never felt ready so I never returned, until the pandemic boomeranged me back to the places I lived before I decided I was brave enough to move.
On one visit home, my father sat me down at Marilyn’s for a late breakfast and encouraged me to consider marriage and dismiss the discouraging example my parents had set for a good one. I told him I would think about it, but I never gave it much thought after that. Marilyn’s is now a Korean chicken spot, and it’s really good.
Until I left home, I shared a room with my little sister. I remember the posters I purchased as decor via Scholastic—grand prehistoric dinosaur scenes in vivid colors. I seemed to have had a thing for archaeology when I was a teenager. I chose dinosaurs as the invite for my bat mitzvah party at Lou Malnati’s too, and I begged my parents to let me spend a summer in Cortez, Colorado on an archaeological dig at Crow Canyon.
There was a time when I believed I could make direct contact with spirits from the past and I fell in love with Native American cultures and got a volunteer gig at the local museum, cataloguing Indigenous objects in the back room. I was around 15 and I thought this work was noble, so I learned how to bead the four directions on my jean jacket and read “Black Elk Speaks,” and attended a pow-wow sponsored by the American Indian Center in Chicago but at some point in college, I got the message that obsessing over native cultures was not “appropriate” and so I stepped way back and held on to these questions and connections in distant admiration.
I know Skokie, but not all of its swamp history. I know Zanzibar, but not its secret politics. I know Chicago, but not every story, just my father’s, the Kedzie-Humboldt ones, and only a few! I know Michigan, but the Michigan of my mother and her siblings, nothing else. South Haven, blueberries, the lake. I know Cambridge, too, but only for a year, an intellectual interloper of a kind. I swore I ran into at least one time traveler there who wore a cliched trench coat! Maybe one day I’ll know New Mexico, something more about Abiquiu, something more about Tesuque.
I thought I knew something about Wisconsin, we’d driven there enough times as a kid, but I really only know the murk at the bottom of Lake Delton, the mud slime between my toes as I tried to learn how to swim and failed and nearly drown and kept trying but remained evermore in level red, the shallow end, where tiny tadpoles jumped around my waist, and I had to let my counselors drop iodine in my ears after every session and amber liquid leaked around my freckled shoulders and I, in general, would have rather read a book in the shade!
One time, a close friend who is no longer a friend for reasons I will never quite understand convinced me to go with her to Devil’s Lake. We scrambled up the steep path to the tippity top of these rugged rock bluffs and I was resentful with exhaustion and sweat by the time we got to top but also an eagle soared overhead and the silence was a gift. It made me mad that she had not spent a moment considering my comfort or capacity, but there I was congratulating myself for what felt like a grand achievement—a quiet moment with awe-inspiring nature.
This hike to the very top, and then the solo dip in the cool pool of the lake later that afternoon, was a corrective experience. Like I said, I’m a terrible swimmer and I don’t love water immersion but I remember floating on my back that summer day in the middle of the lake surrounded by rugged cliffs and understood why the HoChunk revered this body of water as sacred. I felt held by ancient spirits, cradled like a baby in its infinite arms.
On one visit home, my father sat me down at Marilyn’s for a late breakfast and encouraged me to consider marriage and dismiss the discouraging example my parents had set for a good one. I told him I would think about it, but I never gave it much thought after that. Marilyn’s is now a Korean chicken spot, and it’s really good.
Until I left home, I shared a room with my little sister. I remember the posters I purchased as decor via Scholastic—grand prehistoric dinosaur scenes in vivid colors. I seemed to have had a thing for archaeology when I was a teenager. I chose dinosaurs as the invite for my bat mitzvah party at Lou Malnati’s too, and I begged my parents to let me spend a summer in Cortez, Colorado on an archaeological dig at Crow Canyon.
There was a time when I believed I could make direct contact with spirits from the past and I fell in love with Native American cultures and got a volunteer gig at the local museum, cataloguing Indigenous objects in the back room. I was around 15 and I thought this work was noble, so I learned how to bead the four directions on my jean jacket and read “Black Elk Speaks,” and attended a pow-wow sponsored by the American Indian Center in Chicago but at some point in college, I got the message that obsessing over native cultures was not “appropriate” and so I stepped way back and held on to these questions and connections in distant admiration.
I know Skokie, but not all of its swamp history. I know Zanzibar, but not its secret politics. I know Chicago, but not every story, just my father’s, the Kedzie-Humboldt ones, and only a few! I know Michigan, but the Michigan of my mother and her siblings, nothing else. South Haven, blueberries, the lake. I know Cambridge, too, but only for a year, an intellectual interloper of a kind. I swore I ran into at least one time traveler there who wore a cliched trench coat! Maybe one day I’ll know New Mexico, something more about Abiquiu, something more about Tesuque.
I thought I knew something about Wisconsin, we’d driven there enough times as a kid, but I really only know the murk at the bottom of Lake Delton, the mud slime between my toes as I tried to learn how to swim and failed and nearly drown and kept trying but remained evermore in level red, the shallow end, where tiny tadpoles jumped around my waist, and I had to let my counselors drop iodine in my ears after every session and amber liquid leaked around my freckled shoulders and I, in general, would have rather read a book in the shade!
One time, a close friend who is no longer a friend for reasons I will never quite understand convinced me to go with her to Devil’s Lake. We scrambled up the steep path to the tippity top of these rugged rock bluffs and I was resentful with exhaustion and sweat by the time we got to top but also an eagle soared overhead and the silence was a gift. It made me mad that she had not spent a moment considering my comfort or capacity, but there I was congratulating myself for what felt like a grand achievement—a quiet moment with awe-inspiring nature.
This hike to the very top, and then the solo dip in the cool pool of the lake later that afternoon, was a corrective experience. Like I said, I’m a terrible swimmer and I don’t love water immersion but I remember floating on my back that summer day in the middle of the lake surrounded by rugged cliffs and understood why the HoChunk revered this body of water as sacred. I felt held by ancient spirits, cradled like a baby in its infinite arms.
