at home in indiana

I love the idea of feeling at home in places you don't actually live. Sometimes it's the love of people surrounding you, sometimes it's the comfort of seeing something in a foreign land that reminds you of home, sometimes it's just the feeling of awe you get when you experience something completely new. There are a lot of places that feel like home to me. Some are just places I've visited but felt right... places that felt like some element of "me" was present everywhere - San Francisco with its combination of trendy art galleries, hippies, and gay men (because I'm pretty sure there's only one thing separating me from the gays... I'll leave that to your imagination); Chicago with its skyscrapers, toughness, lake effect weather, fabulous shopping, midwestern values, and rough history; the New England coast with its quaint seaside villages, hydrangeas so vibrant and colorful that they make me want to cry, and seafood that literally just leaps out of the ocean and onto your plate; Wells, England, a glorious little city with a perfect 12th century Anglican cathedral and home to some of my best musical memories as well as a number of late nights stumbling down cobblestone streets after closing down the local pub with my college friends; and Paris in general - so full of life and art and movement and culture, and so beautiful in black and white pictures. In an ideal world, I'd have a place to live in each of these places.

But then there's the world of places I've actually lived, even if only for a short time. My parents both grew up in Indiana. I was born there, but even though we only lived there until I was about 6 months old when we relocated (first to Arizona for 3 years and then to Atlanta) for my dad's job, it still feels like a place I belong. My dad's family still lives there, so a fair portion of my life has been dedicated to time in the car road tripping between Georgia and Indiana for weeks spent with grandparents during summer vacation and whirlwind family Christmas tours. When I was a kid, Indiana seemed far away and a little foreign - and I felt a little exotic being from somewhere else, being well-traveled even as a young kid, when almost everyone I knew in my small southern town was related to other people in that small southern town and had spent their entire lives there. My great friend and former teacher still tells a story about taking a group of us to elementary school honors chorus in another city involving an overnight stay, and I was the only kid who knew how to operate the key-card system to get into our hotel room. She thought that was so cool. I can thank Indiana for that. Something about Indiana was cool. As an adult, I realize that Indiana isn't exactly the most mindblowing or innovative of places, but there's something wholesome about miles of farmland dotted with silos and old slatted barns. There's something comforting about kids playing basketball until the street lights come on and main street areas that still maintain their historic movie theatres. Someone said to me that Indiana is really good at living life exactly 30 years behind the rest of the world. But I think that's exactly what makes Indiana feel like Home with a capital H to me.

I took a trip to hang out with my grandparents in July. My previous visit was almost two years ago for a (freezing, holy crap I may never feel my face again cold) Notre Dame football game accompanied by a quick 2 days in good ol' southern Indiana with my grandparents. I've missed the past two Christmases due to a set of unfortunate circumstances, so this summer was definitely time for a visit. My favorite thing about going to Indiana when it isn't holiday time is that I get unfiltered access to my grandparents. I love my whole family, no question, but I love having the opportunity to just sit and talk with my grandparents, when my grandmother doesn't feel the pressure of cooking a meal to feed all the kids and grandkids and great-grandkids. I just love hearing their perspectives, and I love that every time I spend time talking with them, I learn something new about them when they were young, something ridiculous my dad may have done as a kid, or an opinion or worldview that surprises me. It's good stuff. I also love how far removed I feel from the pressures of the real world when I'm there... surrounded by acres of corn and soybeans, watching the fog settled at the back of the fields in the early mornings, and actually seeing the stars and fireflies come out on warm summer nights. My grandparents definitely live in what feels like the middle of nowhere, but they also live close to a really cool historic town, Madison.

In the spirit of multi-dimensional blogging, I'd like to share some pictures I took on my recent trip. I should also throw this disclaimer out there: I love love LOVE taking pictures. I don't have any claims to "real photography," but I like exploring and trying to capture just a little bit of what I feel when I'm looking at something through a different perspective. To quote Woody Allen, "I have no idea what I'm doing. But incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm." That being said, let's commence with the pictures.

This is the field behind my grandparents' house.

The neighbors' pond:

This one-eared Mickey Mouse has been at a house down the road for as long as I can remember:

More fields.

A super cool old barn. I think it's an actual "historic place." 

Historic Downtown Madison: 

The Ohio Theatre, built in 1938. 

Record store. I know, right? 

Mundt's Chocolatier. Featured on the Food Network. :) 

Hinkle's. Since 1933.

hear me roar

They say we're all products of our upbringings - good or bad, those moments in time combine to turn us into some final version of ourselves, and as we grow up and move forward, everything that happens seems to create another layer. It sounds a little cheesy, but I see it almost like a working collage - pulling some pieces away, adding others, and continuously shaping that Total Self. I'm a visual person. When I talk abstract concepts, I always have some vision to go along with it. If I created a collage that visually embodied me, it would probably consist of scraps of sheet music and chord charts, vintage art nouveau posters, Van Gogh paintings, a Notre Dame football game ticket stub, Jane Austen novels, black and white photographs, and Pottery Barn catalogues, draped in watery hues of coastal blues and sunwashed grays. These things pretty well define me on an aesthetic level, and if I dig deep enough, I could probably find some layers that mean a whole lot more on a values level... things like simplistic beauty, a healthy level of witty sarcasm, a melody that makes you smile and ache at the same time... compassion, humor, intelligence, and grace. It's all there, and I'll probably cover all of that here in this blog in some way. But today, I think it's time to talk about strength.

I just spent five days hanging out with my mom. It was the first time in two years that we've really gotten to just hang out for more than a day or two, and it was really great. I've written about her before - and the two or three of you reading this probably know me well enough to know that I think she's pretty spectacular. There are many awesome things about her, but at the core of her collage would be the notion of strength - it's something that was ingrained in her from an early age, and it's something that she's taught me my entire life. And like the greatest teachers, she not only explained it and encouraged it, she also modeled it through her own behavior. And even though I'm far from perfect at embodying that quality all the time, it's something I've come to value about myself - the knowledge that a combination of experiences and abilities (and having great people around me) makes it possible for me to tackle just about anything without too much fear.

The idea that a woman can do things on her own, without "need" of a man, can be a little intimidating - even foreign - to some people. A few weeks ago, I set out to do a little home improvement. I wanted a back yard that felt relaxing and inspirational, like watching the sunset over a New England harbor or walking down a British street lined with flower-adorned shops or listening to the gentle humming and clanking in a French cafe at night. When you rent, you can't do a lot structurally... and when you have a very meager budget, you have to get creative. But I've always said creativity is one of my strong points. So I trotted a little bit of it out. I bought some pretty hanging baskets and pots, and I filled them with colorful flowers. I did a lot of weeding and a bit of mulching. And I found Adirondack chairs on sale for about $30 apiece. If you've ever bought a real Adirondack chair, you know the really good ones will run you upwards of $150. The catch to the $30 version? The wood is unfinished, and it comes in a box that isn't shaped remotely like a chair, like this:

Now despite my upbringing to be a fearless independent female just like my mommy, I try pretty hard not to be one of those scary feminists that gets offended by every little comment that would in some way imply that women and men are different - I mean, after all, women and men ARE different. It's genetic. Men are inherently better at some things (though not nearly as many as they'd like us to believe). Some women do need to stay at home and raise their families. It's not like I think role reversal is completely in order here. But I do have a tendency to get a little peeved by the implication that someone is incapable of doing something because of gender or age. And I know the little man at the hardware store didn't mean to offend me when he said, "Make sure you give these instructions to the person who puts this together for you," but he did. He couldn't have known that almost every major piece of furniture in my house came in a flat box from IKEA and that I'm like the best instruction-follower and furniture-putter-together-er in the history of the world. But he shouldn't have made the assumption that because I'm a girl and I look like a college sophomore, I was probably clueless and had no idea what he was talking about. If there's anything that makes me perform, it's the notion that I can't do something. So, with a chip on my shoulder, I came home and knocked these bad boys out in just a couple of hours. ALL BY MYSELF. 

So there, Mr. Underestimating-Hardware-Store-Man! I guess I showed you! There is real value in being able to accomplish something on your own, and I've learned to take a certain amount of pride in my abilities to do that. There's something freeing about being comfortable enough with yourself that you don't "need" other people around all the time... knowing that you can make it on your own talents, abilities, and will. But I do realize that this notion of independence and strength isn't without its flaws. There are times when you do actually need someone else - that's where those great people come in. (Even with a project like putting together furniture, sometimes you just need another arm or two to hold stuff). And I think that's what true strength is all about. It's not just being fiercely independent - it's also recognizing that there are times when you could use an extra hand, knowing that a bottle of wine is more fun with a witty friend, or understanding that sometimes God puts people in your life not because you are incapable of doing something on your own but because the end result will be so much sweeter thanks to that collaboration. I don't know if I'll ever have that kind of strength... but until then, let me know if you need help putting some furniture together. :)

So it isn't Boston, London, or Paris, but it makes me happy...