penzilla

There are a few things that I truly adore about Ohio. The first—fields.

As I pack my stuff for the old country, I keep asking myself how a lass like me, a sort of small town girl will make it in a big, cosmopolitan European city. I never thought about myself as a Midwestern girl growing up, even though living in Bath, going to Revere, I really was a pretty classic example of it.

At 18, when I went to Indiana University, I really thought I was going to be so different and out of place among the farms and small lakes. The townies who cut the limestone for the lovely buildings in Bloomington weren’t going to be anything like me. Of course they were, and so was the place, and the quietness I felt when I lived in Indiana was probably the reason why I stayed there for six years and almost didn’t leave at all. Though there was always the pull, the curse of the Cuyahoga, as Dr. Ray Craig calls it.

So when I came back to Ohio, I started seeing it in a different way from how I remembered it as a kid and young adult. I could finally appreciate it, and why the people who live here in their adulthood (especially in the NE) can never really explain why it’s wonderful, but for their personal catalogue of images. And how no matter how far away you get from it, you always see things with Ohio eyes.

This morning I drove past the blue heron nests. Many were bringing sticks to their mates. Many were tending to their little blue heron babies. Another one of the core things I love about this area:

Now, as I’m getting together my writing books and pens and moleskins and sitting here writing Budapest from Ohio, maybe it will turn out that I’ll do exactly the opposite from my little flat in the budai várnegyed: write Ohio from Buda.

Oh, and the other thing I adore about Ohio?  Better stock up on those flat-rate prepaid priority shipping boxes Mom and Dad!: