"He was born in the summer of his 27th year,
coming home to a place he'd never been before..."
--John Denver, "Rocky Mountain High"
It's inevitable, when I meet someone new here in Nebraska and they find out I'm from New Jersey originally, they always say, "Wow, how did you end up in Nebraska?" And they say "Nebraska" like they might say "WalMart" or "McDonalds." With a hint of self-deprecation. When I connect with people from my past, whom I knew in New Jersey, they say, "why Nebraska?" as if to say, "why would anyone want to live in Nebraska?" Of course, when I tell people that my parents moved to Mississippi the reaction is even worse and I catch them stopping themselves from saying "Ew!" as they try to keep their face from looking like they just stepped in dog poop.
I expect that kind of reaction from my friends and family back east, but I never get used to people actually from Nebraska say, "why did you voluntarily come here?" Maybe they are just too close to it, too familiar with it to see the value.
When I was Larry's fiance, I lived in Osmond, Nebraska for a month with his church secretary while I waited to go to seminary at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City. Larry was the pastor at Osmond, a small town of about 1800. It was fun being the pastor's girlfriend because of course they fussed over me. But I instantly fell in love with small town Nebraska.
I never felt truly at home in New Jersey. It's overcrowded, intense, constantly moving, and it's hard to get away from that and find some nature to dwell in. There are some beautiful areas of NJ, don't get me wrong, and I will always miss the beach, but I won't miss the 11 million people crammed into that tiny space. It was impersonal. Stressful. Just driving from one place to the other was a source of stress.
In Osmond, I walked down to the post office and they knew who I was. Strangers chatted me up on the street, waved to me and smiled. I could charge things to Larry's account at the grocery store without any ID. The streets were safe for children to walk to school by themselves. All over the state, wherever we drove, strangers waved with one finger-- the index, not the middle finger like in New Jersey. Across the street, strangers waved or nodded. In the department store or the grocery store, strangers struck up conversations with you. They complimented my rings or my clothes. Or they talked about the weather. Weather is very important in Nebraska! And it's extreme, I learned. Really hot in the summer and really cold in the winter. Driving was not usually a stressful activity, unless you were in Omaha or Lincoln. In most other places, you just go from here to there without incident. You can usually drive 60 miles in one hour, and see the town up ahead 10 miles long before you get there.
That's the main thing about Nebraska, when I arrived in Osmond in the January of 1990-- even though we wouldn't live there after that year-- I felt like I'd come home to a place I'd never been before, just like John Denver's boy in the song. He was talking about neighboring Colorado, of course, but the meaning felt deep and familiar. I was home. Not in one town specifically-- we'd live in several places before we settled in Gibbon, but the state. Nebraska instantly felt like home. It felt like the place I'd been longing for. A wide-open place, where you can see the sunset or sunrise just as it starts on the horizon. A place where you can breathe the fresh air and there's plenty of room to move and live.
Don't get me wrong, it's not perfect. We have murders, domestic violence, ridiculous politics, corrupt corporations, and all that normal stuff. But it's all easier to deal with when you can go down to the local grocery store and chat with the cashier about the weather or how the college football team is doing or what your kids are up to. Going to the post office or the grocery store is a social event. Going to the nursing home on Game Day you will see a room full of elderly people wearing Husker shirts and staring at the T.V., whether they have dementia or not. Weddings are not scheduled on Game Day if they can help it, or the wedding party will be watching the game in the bar during the reception. Even if you don't care for football (don't tell anyone) you wear red on Saturday and you feel like you belong somewhere.
For me, Nebraska is a gentle place. Yes, people fight, some can be mean, it doesn't matter where you go, you'll find such people. After 20 years of living here, I consider myself a Nebraskan, though the locals may not. And I resent it too, when someone from some other place-- particularly the coasts-- come in and think that they can do what they do here and push people around. Nebraskans insist that you be real. We spot "fake" a mile away, and we know when we're being manipulated and we don't like it. And we don't like someone acting like they're better than us because they think we're just a bunch of hayseeds out here in The Middle. I've met people in the isolated spots of Western Nebraska who have traveled all over the world, more so than some of my friends back East. We probably have more time to read and think here, because the pace is slower than back on the coasts. Plus it takes longer to get from here to there, so we tend to enjoy the view on the way. I was an anxious child anyway, and I think if I'd stayed in New Jersey I might have just gone right over the edge from the anxiety that was the air people breathe there. And even though there is much more social diversity in the big cities, I witnessed just as much racism, classism, sexism, every -ism. as I do here. People aren't necessarily more enlightened just because they are surrounded by diversity. People are people no matter where they live.
I choose to live and die in Nebraska, because it is good for my soul. It's gentle. The landscape is gentle and beautiful, and as I drive from place to place, I always have something to look at that feeds my spirit. It's my home. I couldn't wait to get here, and it's where I need to be to be fully who I am. And I am grateful.
