O Chambana Will You Cry For Me?

I have an uneasy relationship with the Midwest.

A Northerner by birth, I spent most of my life on the shoreline: first in the Great Lakes industrial city in which I grew up, later along the Thames, when my family lived as expatriates in London, and finally, as a young adult attending college in Boston.

Water is a huge part of my life. The ocean beckons me every summer, to Cape Cod where I’ve spent every July since I was just 8 years old.

When my husband called me from the flatlands of Illinois one February afternoon and told me we would soon be living in a college town two hours south of Chicago, my first reaction was panic.

I’d long since returned to the city of my youth. It was where I wed, buried my father and birthed my first child.

It was home.

My father’s death just a little less than two years earlier caused my roots to grow even more firmly into that hilly ground. I couldn’t bear the idea of being so far from his grave, from the water that gave him so much joy.

I did not want to leave …

Won’t you please come read the rest? I’m guest posting for Midwest Parents today. Many thanks.