Six years ago this month, I was adjusting to arriving in France. It’s a tenuous transition, the onslaught of new meal times and plumbing and building shapes and language. I think this newness is what people often find exciting about travel, but I found myself falling into the same thought with each new introduction: I can’t wait until this feels routine to me.
More than any new cafe or field trip, I was looking forward to the moment when I woke up already expecting an apple pastry for breakfast, when the view of the purple mountains in the distance felt like an old friend. And while I never really felt at home there, I still caught whiffs of that routine in the Septembers to follow, like a puddle on a fall day bringing images of the walk to the tram. There’s something intimate about dropping into a place and sleeping in the same bed for four months. Whatever your experience there, you form a bond with the places that were yours.
And this is why I won’t abide Ohio slander.
I am so staunchly defensive of every state and every place and every nook and cranny that people hate. Of course, declaring your love for Ohio as a resident of Michigan is a bit like swearing allegiance to an enemy force, but I can’t help it. Sure, Ohio is a treasure trove of gorgeous theatre and parks, some of the best public libraries in the country, and little frogs that chirp in your backyard, but most importantly, it’s where I’m from. It’s the place that formed me.
There are plenty of places I don’t love—I wouldn’t live in certain states, I don’t much like big cities, and while I’ve never been to the moon, I imagine I’d find it a bit lacking in oxygen. But anyone who dares insult these places in front of me is going to get an earful. We’ve all heard the punchline before: “Oh, you’re traveling to [insert middle American state here]? Good luck finding something to do!” But I don’t believe any of these places can ever really be boring or bleak or completely devoid of wonder when they are filled with experiences. Everywhere that has ever been called home by someone is beautiful.
I recently discovered, much to my glee, that the poet Mary Oliver was from Ohio and wrote not one but two poems about it. Oliver is beloved not just because of her breathtaking landscapes, but because she understood this relationship between a space and the person standing within it. You’re never just in a park–you bring yourself and the emotions that carry you to the park. “The River Styx, Ohio” is a foreboding, unsettled reflection on wasteland and aging, but even these negative feelings are still a way of making the space matter.
I am not a poet, but I think the gift of poetry is that it allows you to express a part of yourself as simply and sincerely as you can. In light of this, I was moved to write a poem about the place I called home, and I encourage you to do the same.
Ohio
I will love what others won’t
The chunky jam on dense spelt toast
The bending whistling rods of wheat
Like friends soft standing in your wake
Like midnight strolls on moon-slick streets.
The weekday mornings swaddled close
Bring bright wet snow on static coats
The radio’s buzzing calls the rain
And routine days stretch loose and mild
And I will love you in your plain.
The breeze is full where birds have swum
I exhale from want-coated lungs
Come sit with me where grasses sway
We’ll murmur slow that days won’t end
That nothing ever goes away.
The sun is slipping through the cracks
Of grocery carts lined back to back
The rosen cloud piles plume above
They do not see your tender brush
(But I will look, and I will love).
Hannah McNulty graduated from Calvin in 2021 and stuck around Grand Rapids, against all odds. She has spent her last few years singing in choir, teaching herself to love reading again, and trying to learn every fiber art simultaneously. She currently works at Eerdmans Publishing, where you can find her burying her nose in old paperwork and forcing anyone within earshot to listen to her bad puns.
