Midwestern Girl

"Today," I say, pausing to take a bite out of my corndog, "is everything I wanted it to be."

"You really are a Midwestern girl at heart, aren't you?"

"What the hell does that even mean?"

We're walking around the Minnesota State Fair. I'm happily eating a corndog and drinking lemonade, on my way to see the butter sculptures of Princess Kay of the Milky Way. I've been relentlessly, ridiculously cheerful the entire time we've been here, no small feat considering I've spent most of the past week really down.

"For all your love of big coastal cities, for as much as you talk about the West Coast in particular, you're just so damn Midwestern."

"Yeah. Again. What does that mean?"

We detour into the Horticulture building so I can talk to the beekeepers and see if I can identify the queen in the display hives. I charm the beekeepers with equal parts erudite questions about bees and hives and sheer, unadulterated enthusiasm. When we get to the crop art section of the building, I literally clap my hands and jump up and down when we see a picture of Nikola Tesla made out of grain.

"That's what I mean." He answers my question from half an hour earlier.

"Exuberance is the antithesis of Midwestern." I retort.

"Nah. That's not what I mean. I mean, well, a lot of things. Mainly that when you love something, it's unironic and intense and maybe just a little bit weird. And that you love, well, Midwestern things. Corndogs. Lemonade. The sound of Canadian geese migrating. Scott Fitzgerald. Winter."

"I honestly don't know if I've been complimented or insulted, but if you really want to see me love something, we should go get some cheese curds."

We go for cheese curds. We see the Butter Princesses. We talk and laugh and get stopped by an impromptu parade and listen to a marching band arrangement of Fireworks, which prompts a long, funny story. We marvel at the paddlefish in the DNR exhibit. We eventually say goodbye and he heads one way to his moped and I walk to the transit hub and board a bus home, ruminating on something Fitzgerald wrote in Gatsby (have I mentioned how it's my favorite book?). Nick Carraway, reflecting on the summer and Gatsby writes:

I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.

The quote's been rattling around my brain for most of the summer. Time during which my private writing has consisted of me muttering about being discontent, distracted, and dissatisfied. There was nothing concrete to complain about, just a vague sense that settling here in the Twin Cities was, well, settling. That I've never done anything or been anywhere. Prior to now I've never lived anywhere for longer than nine months without actively scheming to go somewhere new and try something different and (trust me, I know how batshit crazy this sounds) spending this much time without being dissatisfied is making me dissatisfied. I spend a lot of time wondering about Gatsby and Nick and Daisy's subtle unadaptabilty to Eastern life, and wonder if I would be the same.

The discontent is something that I only discuss with Kerry. I spend an entire Sunday afternoon spilling my guts about how I'm worried I'm settling and that I've never done anything. My every instinct is to bolt, to pull up my stakes and head off to Boston or Seattle. When my landlord slides my lease for the next year underneath my door, I run for a paper bag. Kerry reminds me, gently (in the way of really lovely friends) that perhaps I've spent too long pulling up my roots, that staying is the uncomfortable, difficult thing for me.

So it's more likely I'll learn something if I do. 

My 20s have been about bolting, about learning to leave bad relationships, bad jobs, bad cities. Those lessons have, literally, saved my life. However, they also made me terrified, well, of things being right. I spent most of my 20s unhappy, either as a result of other people (aforementioned bad relationships) or because I was slowly going crazy. Happiness still feels a bit like walking on ice at the end of March. I'm reasonably certain that it'll support me, but it every creak and groan leaves me anxiously counting the steps until I get to the shoreline. 

I get off my bus a few blocks from the Mississippi and take the long way home, thinking about what, if anything, it means that I loved the Fair unironically. That I look forward to fresh squeezed lemonade and long, lazy summer afternoons on the boat. That I can't wait for autumn and anticipate winter with the kind of eagerness that would horrify my fellow Minnesotans (still a little shell-shocked from three Polar Vortexes).

Maybe it means I would be subtly unsuited for life on the coasts. Perhaps it doesn't mean anything. But for the time being, I'm going to trust that it means that I should be content to be content, and learn to trust the ice under my feet. 

And eat more cheese curds. It definitely means eat more cheese curds.