Halfway Home

I hauled my wedding china up an outdoor iron staircase and into the second floor of a midtown Craftsman duplex on a broiling August day. It felt like being dropped on a new planet. If I’d ever seen heat make the air actually shimmer before, I hadn’t stayed outside long enough to remember it. And where the hell were all the lakes?

Growing up, my hometowns were like hopscotch. I was born in Minnesota to multi-generation Minnesotans, but then we moved to the Detroit suburbs, then to Pittsburgh, then back to Detroit, and finally back to Minnesota. After leaving for college, I spent the next five years outside Chicago, where I met a Michigander and well, reader, you know what comes next.

But then there was a job offer that couldn’t be passed up, and before I knew it, my fiancé was moving to Memphis. A year later, in the summer of 1999, I joined him. I was a newlywed. I was Mormon. I was 22 years old.

I worked from home for those first few years, and it took a while for me to find a way to fit. I’ve always been self-conscious about speaking around strangers, and it was the first place I’d ever lived where people knew I wasn’t a native from the moment I opened my mouth. It made me quieter. It made me listen more. As a lifelong writer, I started to understand this new language long before I could speak it fluently. Not just the y’alls and drawls, but the subtler differences in meaning. I learned that Yankees aren’t just a subset of New Englanders and that “be careful” was synonymous with “take care,” even though it sounded much more ominous to me.

After a year in that duplex, we bought a house and had kids, and I started to feel a little more settled in. I lost my Chicago job and wriggled into the legendary music scene as a booking agent, while also running a retail business and building a local mama community. But then I got divorced, closed my store, and everything shifted. It wasn’t the first time the metaphorical ground would move under me in this tectonic timebomb of a town. The next 15 years were spent in more homes, careers, and relationships than that newcomer newlywed ever expected. I know “change is a constant” is a cliché, but I feel like it maybe applies to my life a little bit extra. And yet the steadiest thing I’ve known, outside my own family, is Memphis.

This past June, I hit a somewhat shocking milestone. I crossed the point where I had lived in Memphis for more than half my life. When I realized the date was approaching, I did the math and put it on my calendar because, as a kid who went to elementary school in three different states and hadn’t ever been in any one place more than seven years, it was kind of a big deal.

What I feel for Memphis is a conscious, constant choice, even though being here isn’t, exactly. I’m lucky to co-parent with an actively involved father, and we realized pretty early on that, as long as our kids needed us both around on a regular basis, we’d stay near each other. That could have made me feel trapped, but instead it pushed me to root. I connect with Memphis in a way maybe only outsiders can, with a clear view of what makes it different and deep gratitude for how it’s welcomed me in. It is, as a viral video perfectly proclaimed, “the brutiful land in the world.” Beautiful and brutal. Brash and fruitful. Memphis means something. I love it as a place, I love it as a people, and I love it as a promise.

Sometimes when I’m back where I was raised, I sink into it a little and enjoy how easy it feels, but I don’t think I could live with easy anymore. I’ve internalized the hustle and the shoulder chip and the daily reminders that I’m not shit if I’m not doing my part. I know there are unspeakable injustices that continue to shape this place, but I live in perpetual awe and respect of the beauty that pain has produced. It’s a gift I didn’t earn, but it makes me want to try.

I’ll always call Minnesota home because that’s where my people are, but Memphis is home now, too. I’m not from here, but I am undeniably of here. It’s changed my language and my heart. It’s shaped my view of history and my priorities for the future. I left both the church and the marriage I came here with, but Memphis taught me how to make the love of my life an action, not an aspiration.

Virtually nothing is the way I envisioned it 22 years ago. Not everything is better than I pictured, but overall, it’s fair to say I came out ahead. I’m stronger but more vulnerable, kinder but more tenacious, steadier but more (selectively) reckless. Of course, some of that happens with time regardless of location, but I have to give the city her due. Memphis may not have made me, but I wouldn’t be me without Memphis.

Tagged: Essays