I followed Interstate 80 into Des Moines, and a single word started to ripple through my mind: surreal. Because of 5 o’clock traffic, Apple Maps routed me not to the interstate exit for my host’s home but to an exit I would have used to go to my parents’ house. An exit that didn’t exist when I lived here. I turned onto Meredith Drive and found myself marking the landmarks of my commutes to school, to church, to Target. I found myself remembering rhythms I didn’t realize I still knew.

Oh, this town’s for the record now

The intersection got a Target

And they’re calling it downtown

(Noah Kahan, “New Perspective”)

Again and again, I found myself navigating by muscle memory. I recognized street names as important before I could recall why. 60th turns into 128th, linking my high school campus to Caribou Coffee. 50th turns into 104th, linking my summer employers’ locations to one another. Katherine referred to the Friedrichs Coffee on 22nd and University; I referred to it as the Friedrichs Coffee on 86th and University. We were both right: 86th turns into 22nd at University. She oriented herself like a West Des Moines native, and I oriented myself like someone who grew up in Urbandale.

I thought I would be fine

But four years down the line

With ev’ry word it’s very clear

I don’t belong

I don’t cuss, I don’t drawl

So how can I call this home?

(Jason Robert Brown, Parade, “How Can I Call This Home?”)

As I chatted with friends and planned trips to favorite haunts, I started speaking the language of that place with the ease of a local: sometimes. My sentences swapped HyVee for Meijer and swapped East Village for Eastown: but not always in the right stories. Grand Rapids bled into Des Moines, and Des Moines bled into Grand Rapids. When you visit a city you once called home, a part of you settles even as another part slides out of place.

I remembered you older and taller

But you’re younger and smaller

So who’s gonna call her and say

That you’re here at last?

(“Older and Taller,” Regina Spektor)

That Sunday I joined a friend and her family at the church I attended while growing up. The community had changed, and yet it had not. I sat in Becky’s row, surrounded by people worshiping in ASL, and resumed those familiar, delightful, decade-old patterns of worshiping alongside people who speak that language. I was awkwardly monolingual, catching bits and pieces of communication and poetry beyond my grasp. But even if I did not, do not fully understand, I remembered how good it was to be in that company again.

Can you take me back when we were just kids

Who weren’t scared of gettin’ older?

(“Old Friends,” Ben Rector)

On the morning of the Fourth of July, I sat at my high school friend’s kitchen table—in her own condo, her own home where her own dog circled around us. We talked about our lives, our struggles, our worries, what had and hadn’t changed since we were sixteen. When our other friend joined us, we were still the same people we were back when we loved planning Lord of the Rings marathons and our prom outfits together. And we were also bigger than those people now. We had gone to college and gone past college; we had worked jobs we had and hadn’t loved; we had made new friends and kept some of the old; we had experienced our hopes sometimes wilting into daydreams, and sometimes growing into reality.

Slowly, our paint chips away

But we will find the strength

And the nerve it takes

To repaint and repaint and repaint every day

(“North,” Sleeping at Last)

I’ve grown up; so, too, have my friends; so, too, has my city. “My city” has, for so much of my life, had a fractured definition—something that was true but markedly incomplete. But the older I become, the more comfortable I become with a kaleidoscopic understanding of home. “Home,” “my city,” “my place” is a mark of identification and belonging—not possession, and certainly not control. Whether or not we give them permission, people and places will grow and change without us. When we claim them as ours, as people and places we choose to treasure, we also place ourselves in the position of watcher. Sometimes we participate in a shift, and sometimes one surprises us. But we cannot stay locked in time, expecting people and places to stay the same even when we haven’t. That wouldn’t make them feel like home at all.

3 Comments

  1. Noah Keene

    Loved it! Related too as someone who was away from home for a long time. Great job, Courtney!

    Reply
  2. Lynette VandeKieft

    Wonderfully reflective and contemplative. I have been away from “home” in the LA area for over 40 years, and every time I go back, more of it has faded away as the new moved it out of the way. Yet, one thing remains: Loved ones.

    Reply
  3. Ansley Kelly

    Love the song lyrics throughout–a creative way to punctuate the narrative. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply

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