Dayton, Ohio

I grew up in Dayton Ohio, and after 20 years I began to fade into gray. The seasons which would normally act as incentive to remain in a place that in moments of fury, felt dismal no longer served their purpose. When the down would get to me on a stark Autumn day and the cold was pressed hard against my face, the promise of only Winter to come I’d remind myself to wait and soon this too, this weather, would change. More often than not winter brought a taste of everything, almost myriad weather. Nighttime low temperatures would plummet in the single digits for weeks straight and by the week following rain would fill the basements of historic homes. I found the weather patterns significant of the mood of Ohio. Or more so the mood of myself as it related to Ohio.

My nature tended to be manic as it seemed easy to waiver in and out of glory. Good moods would flee like a cardinal in a spring chill. In the early years my state of mind was attributed only to myself, my genes. But, as I aged I began to realize that we are where we are from. As human beings we are the most adaptable creatures, we become what we live and I had become Ohio.

The beauty of Dayton is beyond what anyone on in the exterior world (those living elsewhere) could imagine. It’s a small city with a meager population hanging on to the Southwest corner of a state smack dab in America’s Heartland. I invite those ignorant to travel through the streets of my beloved east Dayton over the brick roads and beyond cathedrals that scream of a past so near you can still hear an heir of what was. Children are often found on summer nights wrestling in front yards as their parents sip Milwaukee’s Best beer on the porch and soak up the harmonious scream of crickets. And Spring mornings find me standing still in the back alley behind my house, coffee in hand mapping the habits of albino squirrels and soaking up the rain drenched air. These moments are plastic wrapped in perfection and served in memoirs of those who have come before.

Looking back my time away pulses like a still-frame on a big screen. Snippets of time are distant as though they never occurred and others so vivid I am still living them. Moving to California is an experience I tout as a needed one. I had been away before, sure, but to places my adolescent foolishness could barely comprehend. I needed an adult affair with another city. I needed to feel the maddened air of other places I had smelled on the hands of those who had tried before me to leave. And I had a responsibility to friends of mine who too needed to get away and who depended on me for the completion of our sisterhood of freedom.

Debbie, tall and lean, a model type has a scattered history of all the places she had lived from Old North Dayton, to the St. Anne’s Hill. It was all she knew. We would talk on silent nights while the boxes full of our memories waited patiently to be shipped off to another land. We talked of people we never really knew but still shared our time with. The superficiality of the not quite middle class families we grew up in weighed heavily into our full-bellied laughs and nervous cigarette smoking. Amanda, the other, remained on the outside of our experience. She had been other places and had only lived in Ohio long enough so that she could easily peel herself away. Her childhood was spent in states across the far and wide and her memories made us yearn for fried pizza pockets in Mississippi and lemon trees in California. She was our crutch on which we leaned when our families frowned upon mention of our dissent.

The beach of California is the most beautiful. You can stand on the firm sand in Imperial Beach and look to the North at careless sun soaked buildings that line downtown San Diego streets. Further south there’s an island blurred in the morning haze. A local told me as he sipped beer from a paper sack the island is inhabited with walrus. It seemed romantic enough to believe. During the evenings we would walk the 7 blocks to the beach and search eagerly for sand dollars. One day in particular Debbie found a hermit crab I so badly wanted to keep honed away in a plastic aquarium.

In San Diego the sun never seemed to go away and the Mexican food melted away in your mouth like a tropical dream. We planned our travels to San Francisco and L.A., places that were distant to us as back home were now within our grasp and visiting them was almost a necessary as a means to achieve or California residency. I called home every once in awhile to tell the misty tales of weather, and freedom.

Before we knew how quickly our situation had unfolded were in Springfield, Illinois at a Barnes and Noble taking a break from our all-night trip from Texas to Ohio. Over coffee and magazines our faces were numb and indifferent. Occasionally one among us would smile and laugh almost ridiculously over our status. Although we should have known better, although the landlord should have warned us against the neighborhood and although we had gone against our gut a time or two, we failed. It was a smooth transition, after a week of looking we were housed in a place so close to the ocean we could smell the salt leak through the bathroom window. Murphy’s Law says, that which seems too good to be true is probably too good to be true.

By the time I saw the “Welcome To Ohio” sign, I was in such a stage that it took focus to stay awake. I had been the only driver for more than a thousand miles. Through Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Indiana I forged on. My skin felt translucent in such that I could feel my blood flowing beneath. I was tired but wired. Amanda and Debbie were sleeping restlessly and seemed to be having nightmares of our return home, to Ohio. As my tired car sailed smoothly along I-70 just outside of Indiana and barely across the state line I watched the farmhouses pass like ghosts. I thought about the people, who lived there, the families whose guilt and love was carved into the garden soil and roof shingles. I imagined fathers leaving for work; off to factories to build things that would be sold in far away places, places like California. The faces of these men although only an illusion appeared to me as clear as photographs. I saw in their eyes not only the sadness standing in factory lines to build cars for another man but also the sadness of building their lives and their children whom in the end like the cars would go away to far away places like California. And for a moment in time at 70 M.P.H. on the cold winter day when we returned home to Ohio, I felt a peace I had traveled 2000 miles to find.

L.M. P

Submitted: Saturday 21st February 2004, 1:41 PM

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