Hello, Ohio! Is that me I see?

Though I didn't grow up in Ohio, both my parents did, and as they hauled their four children from one Air Force base to the next, we somehow learned from them, or from the occasional visits to the rooted homestead, that Ohio was a place where good, honest people lived. Farmers and astronauts and Miss Americas were from Ohio. As a kid (when Miss America seemed like a pretty cool thing), I loved going back for visits, though by the time I was a teenager and for the decade following, romanced by Southern charms, I couldn't imagine a place more boring. Yet, the circle, like faithful Ohio seasons, comes around.

When we crossed the Ohio River on an old metal bridge from Ravenswood, West Virginia, my heart leapt with excitement. It did indeed feel like I was returning to a place where my DNA knew it belonged. My cells, each nucleus, were being pulled like a magnet to a land that was part of who I was, even if I knew I wasn't all that much a part of it.  A place that for me would forever hold a grandma who gave squishy hugs and a grandpa who had his own private stash of ginger ale, which he'd share with us kids while ignoring my mother's half-hearted protests.  Where cousins whom I barely knew but with whom I instantly felt a kinship had the same grandma as me and, with an odd familiarity, called my mom Aunt Judy. Where life carried on in an orderly way because grown up people seemed to know what they were doing and so kids could just be kids and bang on the Hammond organ trying out all the cool sound effects, or lay on the hammock reading comic books, or create plays or dress up in grandma's clothes, and never ever get in trouble.  A grandfather clock chimed softly each hour to let you know time was passing exactly as it should.

And finally, we were there! But the Ohio I was used to seeing was the west, flat side. We always came in at Cincinnati, where north of town the hills of Kentucky smoothed out like a fitted sheet for miles. This time, my husband, Keaton the dog and I came in from the foothills of the Appalachians, which continued rolling merrily along, woodsy and hilly, all the way to Athens, our destination about an hour away.

It was a beautiful college campus -- in fact, the first university in the Northwest Territory, founded in 1803 -- with green lawns, majestic trees, and old stone and brick buildings.  As we drove into town, we headed straight for a college bar -- not because we were in desperate need of a drink, though I did promptly order a beer -- but because my husband's friend of 30 years whom we were coming to see was playing a gig.  The joint wasn't hard to find, since the strip of restaurants and bars across from the university was only a few blocks long. Yet, it had a friendly character of mostly locally owned shops, and I had the feeling it hadn't changed too much in appearance despite a cultural revolution in the world and students that now filled its streets. As it turns out, two of my aunts and one of my uncles went to school here.

The band played R&B to a rowdy crowd of alumni in town for some event.  On the break, I met John, my husband's guitarist friend, who had that Midwestern straight-up niceness. He gave us the keys to his house and told us to stay as long as we'd like.  I am not one to enjoy staying at a stranger's home, and my husband and I had a pre-arranged agreement that we'd stay one night and then shove off.  But once we got to their house, I immediately felt at home.  Though John's wife was out of town till the next afternoon, photos of her smiling warming surrounded by family drew me to her, and her quilts on our bed and about the house, and her inviting art room in the room next to ours, made me sure we'd hit it off.  And we did, so we stayed a second night.

The town was well-kept with quaint older homes on hilly streets.  John and Suzanne lived not 5 minutes from campus, in the hills to the east of town where they had five acres, a large garden guarded by towering sunflowers, an empty historic log cabin idly passing the time, and an energetic German shepherd puppy named Pinky.  They both had public service jobs, he at the university involved with health care for kids and she at the public television station doing education outreach for kids. (See? Good people. My parents seemed to be right.)

As we drove around town and ate at an incredible restaurant that served locally grown, organic foods, and visited the farmer's market where we stocked up on organic grapes and berries, banana bread and homemade jellies, and as we visited a coffee shop that supported a local sustainable farming initiative, and passed by the quilt barn where art shows are held, I imagined myself slipping into this life as easily as climbing into a familiar bed.  John and Suzanne knew people every place we went; we constantly ran into other musicians and quilters and a friend who made maple syrup or was a beekeeper or artist.  It was a hip town with agrarian roots. Yes, I think I could live here. (If they didn't have winter.)

After a couple of days, we headed west about 40 miles, taking meandering back roads lined with white clapboard houses behind sprawling mowed lawns, to a park called Hocking Hills where eons ago glaciers cut out caves in the limestone.  We camped two nights there, spending a full day hiking the caves and resting in the pools and waterfalls where butterflies darted about so colorfully, I thought I might have time-traveled right into a Disney animated meadow.  (Was Walt also from Ohio?)

From Hocking Hills, we decided to go up to Lake Erie, driving north along narrow, hilly roads, through a summer storm that helped break the humidity. I wanted to go through Newark, the town in Licking County east of Columbus where my grandfather had grown up on a farm.  That farm, though I've never seen it, seems to call to me.  No one else in my family is interested in the farm girl life, even my citified, backyard garden version. I have my Great-grandma Ada's quilts that she made while on that Newark farm where she raised five kids, and often as I snuggle under its cottony sheen, I imagine her fingers pulling the needle through the patchwork again and again, and I wonder if she ever imagined it would be treasured by a great-grandchild she barely knew who one day would grow up to be nearing fifty and longing to know her.

I didn't know where the farm actually was, but we passed farm after farm all similarly possessed with sturdiness, upkeep, and German practicality and orderliness, and the beauty that emanates from those virtues.  As we passed through Newark itself, I saw a business sign that carried my very unusual maiden name.  I whooped upon spying it.  All my life no one had ever heard of my last name or could figure out how to pronounce it.  I had never lived around extended family, never felt that I belonged, despite a sincere effort at fitting in, including a propensity for adopting a new accent within about five minutes of landing in a new home.  And here, plain as day, proclaimed for all passers-by to see, was evidence that I had relatives, distant cousins, going on about their lives. People who if I lived here, I might run into at the grocery store or the hardware store, and they would say, Oh! aren't you Dick's girl, Ralph's granddaughter?

And I would nod, yes ma'am, that's who I am.

As it turns out, my Dad later told me, it was just about then, just as I was thinking those thoughts as we sped away from Newark, that we passed right by what once had been the family farm. Where no matter what it had become and no matter where I go, I will in some way always belong.