This week, we revisit Charles' reporting from his hometown of Center of the World, Ohio, in the heart of the Rust Belt. Things have been rough there — the steel mill where his father worked is shut down, opioid abuse is rampant, poverty is high, jobs are scarce. But people remain. Sometimes home is a hard thing to give up on.
So we're asking: did you have complicated feelings about leaving a place you called home? If you did, was it hard to return?
HALEEMA: I was eager to leave the Chicago suburbs I grew up in, but not because I hated it. How could I hate a place that’s always willing to welcome me back? My hometown always gave me what I needed - childhood friends, safe neighborhoods, a great school district, a liberal arts college 20 minutes from home - and perhaps that’s why I was so ready to leave, to build something of my own elsewhere. It’s a strange place to return to, because many things have stayed the same - the halal grocery stores, the aunty-run salons, and the mall culture. But a lot has changed, too - most of my friends from school are married, some have kids, and our parents homes suddenly have more space.
SHANNON: My husband and I had a two-year-old, a 6-month-old and had lived in Washington, DC for many years when we decided it was time to get out. I’d grown up in the area, too, and the traffic, politics, rats in the alley, cost of living and general city-ness was wearing on us as new parents. We each took a map and individually made a list of where we’d possibly like to move. Then we compared notes. The cities that appeared on both of our lists were: Charlottesville, Denver, Austin, Phoenix, and Madison. We visited them all, and chose Denver, and then, two years later, re-thought that decision and moved to Madison, where we’ve been for 10 years. When I go back to DC now I love seeing friends, taking the metro and walking around the National Gallery of Art, where I used to do homework as a teenager. But I wouldn't trade it, at this moment in my life, for this lakeside college town.
MARK: Home has never been too far for me. I grew up 30 minutes east of Madison, Wisconsin — where I live today — and only ever strayed for a few years that I lived in Chicago. I went to college here too in fact, and now work in the same building that I attended classes in as a journalism student.
There’s a lot to love in a college town like Madison but sometimes I worry that I missed out by not spending more time in more places. Chicago made me more sensitive to city politics around public transit, civic data, and housing policy — I found myself less engaged with some of those issues back here at times, given the muscle memory I have for living in a small place that often has pride in staying largely the same. That sameness can be frustrating at times but I’m still thankful for that kind of stability, especially as I get older. It does frequently make me wonder: can a city be vital, healthy and exciting without also being uncomfortable, broken and tumultuous at times? Is the cost of comfort an obliviousness to complicated civic and cultural issues? It’s why I try to engage with those issues in the work that I do, but I still worry I don’t do enough to contribute to the local conversation.
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