Twisted Wicker

This photo, taken during that infamous home-ec class at Centerville High School, is perhaps my favorite of us.

Dedicated to Jason Braman.

Things I want to remember: Hissing “yesssss” at each other through the phone. Listening to “Arnold Layne” and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” at full blast in your room with the strobe light flashing. Drawings created with ball-point pens and colored pencils ― your doodles. Hippie beads, scarves and that cape I made you from a red velvet bedspread we bought at the Goodwill in the Oregon District. The way you carried one of those ’70s flowered suitcases as a book bag at Centerville High School, circa 1988. Songs you wrote and played for me on the guitar. Trudging along in the snow-covered golf course behind my parents’ house admiring the sun’s glint in the ice-covered trees. You, an almost constant passenger in my red Chevette.

Remember how we could read each other’s minds? People thought it was something we, the wacky and iconic couple, made up. But we knew it was true. I wonder if you’ve been reading my mind in the weeks since you’ve been gone.

I’ve been wearing that silver and opal ring you gave me, on a chain around my neck. My body has spread a bit since that day in high school when you got down on one knee in home-ec class and proposed to me. It doesn’t quite fit my ring finger, but on the chain it lays right on my heart. Back then, we had read books about soul mates, astrology and numerology checked out from Woodbourne Library and we knew we’d be connected forever. Back then, forever was a philosophical concept we also discussed for hours while hanging out at Denny’s or in David’s Cemetery. I’ve been wearing this ring to remind me I once had that kind of connection with another human. Even though it has been years since I last saw you, I miss you so much now. Like crazy. You left me way too soon.

Homecoming 1988.

Things I want to forget: Visiting you in the psych ward at Grandview Hospital and Twin Valley Medical Center. Having to tell you I can’t see you anymore because you stole beer and over-the-counter medication from my house. The vague sense of relief I felt when you canceled plans for us to get together because you were “sick,” although I was sure it was because you’d had too much to drink.

All these memories I want to crumple up. After all, you are my coming of age story. We were inseparable for nearly three years during that time when we lurched through poems and art and music and books, grabbing pieces of who we would become. Pieces of me are swimming with your ashes in that Wisconsin lake, and I feel pieces of you in me like lumps under my skin.

You are the person who convinced me I could write, even though you, too, could cook words into a gourmet meal. I remember reading you a piece on the phone that began with a letter to you. At the end, you were crying. I doubt I’ll ever publish that piece. It’s about such a dark time in my life ― geesh, it’s titled “100 Days of Winter” ― but I reprint the letter to you here:

A piece of your artwork, titled "The Fear and the Struggle," from 1991-1992.

Dear Jason,

Sorry I’ve been out of touch this past year, but I’ve been really busy going crazy. Burying my I-can-hold-a-day-job self in a morass of self-loathing has taken a lot of my time.

I know I’m not supposed to say I’m “crazy.” Or “nuts.” I know those aren’t politically correct terms. They offend someone. But I am crazy now. Here’s how I know: Sitting in my doctor’s office, in the windowless basement of some rectangular brick building, I started to cry because some soft-serve song about “remembering people” played on Lite 99.9 FM. It’s supposed to be nothing more than the background noise in the office, dimming the buzz of the florescent lights, but this song was on a DVD played at Kier’s sixth-grade graduation featuring smiling portraits of all the kids who were moving on to junior high and lives of teenage malaise. I started sobbing ― guttural cries that made me double over and start choking. I freaked the receptionist, who took me right back to an exam room. My blood pressure was something nearly unheard of, like 100 over 200, and she told me to breathe, panic spreading across her face like a wine stain on carpet.

I also know I’m crazy because of what happens to me at night. The hand of a ghost reaches into my brain and turns up the volume to 10. Boosts the bass, too. I’ll think it’s time for bed, and all of a sudden the cells in my body are humming a catchy show tune and tap dancing. Some nights, my head is an engine running full speed with no oil, metal scraping metal, a pain so intense I am almost paralyzed with fear that I’m dying, for real this time. Still other nights, I’m sent scampering to my journal, freestyling verse like some hot shot hip hop from the big city.

At our perpetual high school hangout, Denny's.

The moments when I can’t breathe remind me I’m crazy, too. It’s always something trite that gigs me out. Like thinking about a meeting and I haven’t written my stupid weekly activity report. Or because of a kitchen cabinet, like when someone goes on a search for hot chocolate mix and then puts everything back in the cabinet pell mell. I have to pull out everything, check for sticky spots on boxes and crumbs, wipe down everything, and put it neatly back in the cabinet the way nature intended.

Now, you know normal people don’t do these things. So I say I am crazy.

But enough about me. What was it like when you went crazy? Did you know it in one flash, like the Three Kings seeing the Star of Bethlehem? Or did it creep up on you? Was it like the feeling you have when a wispy Daddy Long Legs crawls up your leg?

Remember when you wanted so badly to be Syd Barrett, the madcap laughs, be crazy just like him? We used to make fun of you and call you “Syd the hairclip,” remember? So it was kind of funny at first when you really did go crazy. We thought you’d snap out of it, that it was one more of your eccentric experiments in living. But as time passed, it seemed a trap set in your brain was clutching you tighter and tighter. We would sit around my dining room table with somber faces, clutching glasses of wine as we discussed your latest antic or despair. “What happened to Jason?,” we’d ask, shrugging. Not everyone believed you were crazy, but I did. I believe it about myself now.

One of your poems, this one published in our high school literary magazine.

I should have gotten in touch with you sooner. I know you understand me. You always have, and you have never judged me no matter what. I can’t say the same about anyone else. Please write back soon.

Love you,

Kristen

I wrote that so long ago, but it’s still tinged with truth, at least from my version of this story that was your life. In my version, your life seemed utterly tragic at times ― so tragic that one of the most intelligent, thoughtful and creative people I will ever know was smudged with medication and booze and schizophrenia and pancreatitis. Really, though, you lived through a bullhorn, lived on your own terms. In moments, it may have felt a bit pathetic that you hadn’t quite found your niche when the rest of us “adapted” ― I wear high heels and blazers to work sometimes for chrissakes ― but I wonder now who is pathetic and who is true and free. If you were here, we would talk for half a day about this alone.

I have rewritten this piece 276 times. Waited a month to publish it. Only tonight, during a discussion at my book club about a memoir that reminded me so much of the terror and raw beauty that was you, did I realize it’s a dishonor to not put it out there. And so I do, even though I feel as if nothing I could ever write will serve your memory justice.

One of perhaps a million "artsy" photos I took of you in high school.

I hear you were truly in love when you collapsed on your couch. This makes me happy, because that is what you deserved. And regardless the pieces we remember, regardless of the way we choose to fit them together, those of us who knew you will never forget Jason Braman.

I promise to remember you as the tortured genius, the effervescent teenager I so deeply loved, with that laugh and skip and wry humor.

See you on the dark side of the moon.

Barbara and her adopted baby girl.

I’m downloading photos of a baby from Facebook to email my mom and dad when I begin to cry.

I know why I’m weepy even though, to be honest, babies give me the heebie-jeebies with their tiny, fragile bodies and late-night cries. It’s because this baby is special. Already, even though we haven’t met, I love this baby in some instinctual way.

It’s because this baby is adopted. And because I’m adopted, too.

*****

There is a woman. A woman with a womb. A womb that once held me. Her baby. Stretching and breathing and squirming with a heart beating in a balloon under her belly. A woman. With a womb.

I do not know her.

*****

I am a little girl, sitting on top of the counter in my parents’ blue bathroom. I swing my legs and watch my mother at the mirror in her bra and panties squeeze her eyelashes and pat them into shape.

Adoption. I’ve always known the word. Somehow, as if whispered to me during my sleep. Uh. Dah. Puh. Shun. But now, here in the blue bathroom, I want my mother to tell me what it means.

It means God and destiny and some other woman. A woman. With a womb. It means I am wanted, I was chosen, I am divine. Literally an answer to prayers sent up to heaven like smoke signals.

Adopted. I wrap my tiny mouth around the word. I feel the way it creates a hollow space in the curve of my tongue.

*****

Little Kristen, spoiled rotten.

I have a playroom. My parents had it built on the back of their tri-level house in the suburbs on Pine Knott drive. To hold my dollhouses, crayons and paints, even a ’50s-style jukebox. The carpet is yellow, orange and brown. I transform its grid-like pattern into avenues for my Barbie vacation van. The playroom cabinets are filled with stacks of MAD magazines, old textbooks I use to play school and boxes of supplies for craft projects.

While I play, my mother sets up a TV tray, pushing the legs into the shag carpet in the living room. She brings down my lunch and a glass of milk. I sit, eat. Watch Three’s Company. On school days, my mom makes my lunch and puts stickers on the baggie that holds my sandwich: ghosts and pumpkins in the fall, bunnies and tulips in the spring.

I am spoiled. Divine, wanted, loved.

*****

So how is it, after all this, I turn on my parents? Betray the two people who sat up late at night, frantically praying for a baby to pop into their lives?

It happened when I was 13, riding home from school, staring at the C on my report card. In health, of all classes. I am a straight-A student. I don’t make Cs.

But this is back when report cards were hand-written, and my health teacher had even used a pencil to write in this disastrous grade. I look around the bus to see if anyone is watching. I erase the C. I write in: A.

My mother finds out. She confronts me two days later when I get home from school. I watch words fly like bullets out of her mouth, ringed in red lipstick. I create an elaborate lie in which I am innocent. But she knows.

*****

High school: When the angel baby transforms into a vile teenager who thinks it's fun to scare people at the Dayton Mall during the holiday shopping season.

I am 17 and I hate my mother. I have hated her for awhile now. We have been in fights ― big fights with scissors and heavy textbooks hurled through the air, fights my kid sister has had to break up, sticking her skinny body between the two demons we’ve become.

I run away from home. I get in my red Chevette with a plastic shopping bag full of cassette tapes by bands with names like Suicidal Tendencies and a gym bag full of polyester thrift store clothes, black tights and ripped T-shirts. My mother will not see me for three months.

She will have time to think about this woman. The woman with the womb and half my DNA, the man who also contributed his DNA. My mother will tell herself it is them, the mystery, that keeps me away. My mother will search for them, try to capture something about them and hold it in a jar, like fireflies, keep it to show me when I finally turn up again.

*****

I am back home, and my mother wants to discuss why I left. I’m sitting at the counter in her blue kitchen. I swing my l legs and listen to her tell me what she discovered. They were young, in college. She worked as a waitress. The Womb. He was studying architecture. The DNA.

My mother reaches in the pantry and takes out a roll of beige paper. She unrolls it across the counter as I reluctantly move the bowl of homemade minestrone I’ve been eating out of the way. The paper is filled with drawings I made as a child ― crude blueprints of an entire city: houses, schools, streets, libraries.

“See? Remember?” My mother draws in close. I can see the flecks in her red lipstick. “You drew all this. And he is an architect.”

Can I feel who I am now? Do I see it, written in pencil, on this paper?

*****

Holding my baby at my Grandpa Wicker's house, standing in front of framed photos of me and my parents when I was a baby.

I can feel when it happens. Like a pinch.

I know it as we hike the Grand Canyon, up steep trails carved in sheathes of limestone, across the Tapeats plateau peppered with brush and cacti. We stop for a break and eat crumbled Oreos, some of our last food from the backpacking trip for which we packed too lightly.

In a few weeks, I will pee on a plastic stick. I already know what the double pink line means. I also know I will keep this baby. This baby is mine.

What I don’t know is how hopelessly unprepared I am to be a mother. I also don’t know that the experience of motherhood will finally darn the frayed quilt that has become my relationship with my parents.

*****

My father had circled the ad for summer jobs in Grand Canyon in the Dayton Daily News. I’d gone for an interview at the Holiday Inn on Wagner Ford Road, was immediately hired as a housekeeper. Drove West. Decided to stay.

Now, it is fall. I am back in Dayton for a visit. And I need to tell my mother.

I sit on the white antique bed in my old bedroom. I’d had a mattress on the floor and painted the room a dark purple. Now the walls are covered in blue wallpaper. Stuffed teddy bears sit on a shelf above the bed.

My mother sits beside me. I chew my nails. She wants to know about my life thousands of miles away. I tell her about my job. I tell her I’m pregnant. I tell her I’m getting married. She can come to the wedding if she wants.

The next day, we go shopping. My mother buys me a white dress.

Hiking with my baby in the Grand Canyon.

She drives me to the airport a few days later. In the car, we talk. She apologizes for the flying objects, the punches, the big, big fights. I nod. I tell her ― and I really mean it ― I am sorry, too. On the plane, I look out the oval window at flat, green Ohio and cry.

When I get back to Arizona, I get a letter from my father. My mother has told him. He tells me he’s disappointed. He expected more. I am too smart. But we are a family. His love for me is what I see when I look up at the sparkling, never-ending Western sky. He will love his grandbaby fully in just the same way.

*****

I am filling out a medical form at Planned Parenthood. At the top of the “family history” section, there’s a small box. A box you check if you’re adopted.

I’m surprised. By now, I’m nearly 40 with my own baby grown up, graduated from high school ― and I’ve never seen this before. Usually, I write the following: “Adopted: Don’t know family medical history.” Instead, I check the box. How nice that I don’t have to explain!

Next to me is a stack of magazines. Red lettering on the cover of one reads, “Adventures With My Adopted Daughter.” I pick it up, turn to that page. The nurse calls my name. I cough and tear out the magazine pages. I must finish reading. I stuff the pages in my purse.

When I see the doctor, she asks about my family medical history. I tell her about the box I checked with a thick, black line.

She apologizes. She is embarrassed. Tells me she’s not used to looking at the box. Not many women check it.

Later, I will not be able to find the pages I ripped from the glossy magazine discovered in the office lobby. It’s as if they dissolved into the lining of my purse.

*****

My parents. Mom and Dad.

I am holding the special baby. Her mother glows like the moon and almost sizzles she is so happy. This special baby has a pacifier with her name embroidered on it and little tights with a Mary Jane shoe design sewn in the feet.

She already is spoiled. And loved, madly, just like my parents love me ― as deep and vast and intense as the Arizona sky. I hope it doesn’t take this little girl as long as it took me to realize how special she is.

Recently, my mother told me about a friend, also adopted, who searched out his birth parents. She thinks it’s strange, and I know she’s really asking if I’d ever do the same. I have parents, I tell her. The womb, the DNA: They are only those two words. They are not the ones who helped raise my son, taught me to cook and sew and ride a bike, sent me cards with notes of encouragement when I was distressed.

I imagine my parents, 40 years ago, as happy as my friend is while she holds her special baby. Then my friend says something that sticks to me like paste: “We don’t say, ‘Our daughter is adopted.’ It’s, ‘We adopted her.’”

What a beautiful way to arrange those words.

Steeler Fans... from Dayton

When I told my sister I wanted a Steelers T-shirt for Christmas this year, she thought I was kidding.

Which makes sense. I used to tell people ― very truthfully ― that if sports ceased to exist, my life would be wholly unchanged. I barely knew a baseball from a basketball. In my world, “tight end” had nothing to do with football. If people started talking about sports, I couldn’t even pretend to participate in the conversation. Most important to point out: I didn’t care, not one bit, the world of sports was not in my vernacular.

All that has changed now. My name is Kristen, and I am a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

Really, it’s my BFF Eva’s fault. A Pittsburgh native, she is the kind of true die-hard who was kicked out of a “sports bar” in Englewood after the waiter informed Eva her level of foul-mouthed fan play can’t be tolerated in what, apparently, was actually a “family restaurant.” For nearly a decade, Eva tried to cajole me into watching football with her. She’d call me after games, full of beer and chicken wings, and go on and on about interceptions, tackles and the quarterback getting sacked. I’d put her on speaker and set down the phone so I could file my nails or empty the dishwasher. Finally, Eva would take a breath and I’d say to her: “Girl, you do remember that I have no idea what you’re talking about?”

So it seemed quite unlikely that I’d accept an invitation to watch the Steelers vs. Bengals game in early November. I don’t know why I did it. Maybe it was because my 40th birthday was looming. Or because I’d been watching pieces of games with other friends and finding it not altogether disagreeable. But on that day, at the Dayton Racquet Club’s 29th Story Lounge, my conversion happened.

Eva, Ivan and the author are just three of the members of Steelers Nation who watched Superbowl XLV in the 29th Story Lounge.

Eva had brought me one of her Steelers shirts to put on, and I joined a host of black and gold-clad fans jumping out of their seats, pumping fist, hollering, high-fiving. This time, when Eva explained forward pass and throwing from the pocket, I was fascinated. Then, of course, were the stories about the players and coaches. The drama! The characters and intrigue! The conflict and tension! The twirling Terrible Towels! The beer! I knew I’d be back for more.

Here we go!!

*****

Yet my conversion wasn’t nearly as dramatic as that of Eva’s husband, George.

Being a Cleveland boy may have been part of what kept him at bay for so many years. George would join his wife to watch games on occasion, but he was no fan.

Until Super Bowl XLIII: the Steelers vs. the Cardinals.

George and Eva, along with fellow fanatics and Steel City natives Jimmy and Theresa, traveled to Pittsburgh to watch the game. At 11 a.m., the day found them paying $10 each for seats in a smoke-filled Strip District bar. If they left, they’d lose those seats. The only option was to start drinking.

A Steelers Fan is Born

George likens the experience to watching the game with 600 of your best manic-depressive friends, and on that day, in that bar, all those friends were on their A game. It was like a Fellini film in black and gold: snake people, midgets and bearded women, as George tells the story. From the second floor ― hidden from view, sounding like the disembodied voice of god ― a DJ spoke to the crowd, keeping them pumped throughout the day and bringing them back from the brink of despair during the nail-biter of a game. Middle-aged men were crying in their beers as Bruce Springsteen played Thunder Road during half-time, and women were dancing on the bar as the DJ played Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing.

Suddenly, toward the end of the game in a bar packed with screaming fans, George can’t hear. But, oh, what he sees! It’s an epic battle between good and evil as the Cardinals morph into Orcs and Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger transforms into Frodo. Aha! George knows exactly who’s going to win this game. He tries telling everyone the Steelers have this thing. They’re good. The Cardinals are evil. But no one will listen.

Then it happens: Roethlisberger throws the ball to Santonio Holmes, whose arms are outstretched like Big Butter Jeebus. Holmes dives and catches the ball, barely keeping his toes in bounds to make the winning score. For a second, the bar is completely quiet. Probably, the Earth stopped. Then the DJ spins Queen ― We Are the Champions! ― and the towels are spinning and the people are screaming and the party really begins.

George saw it. He knew. Sure enough, the next day, the newspaper headline reads: Lords of the Rings.

And another Steelers fan is born. The kind of true die-hard who, the morning of Superbowl XLV, puts conditioner on his toothbrush in the shower because he’s such a nervous wreck.

*****

It’s Superbowl Sunday, and I am gigging out. I wake up early and, while I put toothpaste on my toothbrush,  I can’t get back to sleep. This time last year, I’m pretty sure I didn’t even know it was Superbowl Sunday. My friend is trash-talking me: “You an inexperienced fan,” he says. “You finally gonna get into football and side with those punks?” I get it: I’m an Ohio girl, and I know plenty of Bengals fans. They may love me, mostly, but right here right now they think I’m a traitor.

Indeed, my conversion has been swift and complete. I am reading the Dayton Daily News’ sports section. I’m at a club for a bachelor-bachelorette party and spend most of the time talking football with some guy in a Troy Polamalu jersey. “Who ARE you?” friends ask. I’m so worked up watching the Steelers vs. Ravens game at my sister’s that, after the opposing team picks up a live ball and literally walks it into the end zone for a touchdown, my brother-in-law has to pour me a drink that’s mostly Red Stag. A co-worker questions me, of all people, about the definition of a blitz.

I’m pre-gaming with George and Eva a couple of hours before kickoff. Eva is putting the final touches on a vision board she’s made: a collage of words and images from that day’s newspaper. We’re listening to a CD of cheesy fight songs George made, singing along, dancing around their condo, bumping fists. Here we go!

We meet Jimmy and Theresa and a crew of fans and friends and head back to the place where, for me, it all started: the Dayton Racquet Club. We scoot tables and chairs right in front of the big screen, and set up a shrine of sorts: Eva’s vision board and a Roethlisberger bobblehead on, of course, a Terrible Towel.

We lose the game, but I’m still proud of our team for making it to the Superbowl. I learn in the elevator, on the ride down from the highest point in the Miami Valley, this isn’t good enough. It’s obvious I’m getting on everyone’s nerves for trying to “look on the bright side.” Shut up! The next morning, a friend says he saw us walking back to George and Eva’s condo, looking as if we’d come from a funeral. We basically had. Now, why did my first football season have to end this way?

George & Eva at the game

Then again, this really is a story about a beginning, about transformation. I admit I’m kind of proud of myself, too, for letting down my guard long enough to allow for a new experience. For a girl who’s long tried way too hard to be “different,” there’s something refreshing about becoming obsessed with America’s Favorite Sport. Seriously: If I can learn to love football, anything is possible. No. Holds. Barred. Me, in a No. 43 jersey, black and gold beads around my neck, unable to eat and bouncing in my seat, eyes glued to the freaking Superbowl of all things. Who would have thought.

This is the lesson I will try to remember during these dim post-season days. Especially when I pull on my Steelers T-shirt ― the one my sister bought me for Christmas.

P.S. We WILL get that seventh ring!

Dear Dayton,

OK ― I admit it. You win.

Not that I didn’t put up a valiant battle. I’ve fought with you most of my 40 years. Oh, the hours I spent dreaming about the day I would leave you! The images of myself ― happy, carefree ― in a place bursting with hipness and cool! My life would be evocative and weighty once I left you in my dust.

Humph.

So this fall, when the time finally came for this long-awaited breakup ― the kid graduated from high school, my career at a crossroads ― what gives? I made a decision. A bona fide choice. I will stay with you. I realize I’ve come to genuinely love the way you smell and how comfortable you make me feel. Besides, the thought of packing boxes makes me twitch, and the idea of leaving my friends makes me hollow and still.

My epiphany came in a rather mundane moment: I was walking from a boxing class at Drake’s Downtown Gym through RiverScape MetroPark. It was an early fall day, and the plants were still blooming in the park. The sun was setting over the Great Miami River, and one of my favorite songs was playing on my iPod. I was on my way to meet good friends ― fun, interesting, dynamic people ― for a $2 glass at The Wine Gallery.

I realize, Dayton, it is not you who isn’t cool enough. It isn’t you who is lacking.

Dayton: 1. Kristen: 0.

XOXOXO

Your gal

Reprinted from the Feb. 14-20, 2002, issue of Impact Weekly newspaper:

Hometown Crush

A complicated love affair with Dayton

By Kristen Wicker

Tuesday nights are one reason I’ve come to love Dayton.

They go like this: I pick up my 10-year-old son, Kier, from the bustling Five Oaks house of my neighbor and after-school babysitter, a stay-at-home dad with five kids. There are always some quick jokes and, if I’m lucky, a chocolate chip cookie. Kier and I swing by Flying Pizza downtown and grab a couple slices of cheese before hitting Hauer Music on Patterson for Kier’s clarinet lesson. Sometimes, we swing by the downtown library to grab some books and CDs.

For me, those evenings embody all that is worthy about this often-ridiculed city: Cool and interesting neighbors, big-city urban kicks in a friendly, small-town package.

Don’t get me wrong: My relationship with the Miami Valley hasn’t always been so great. The day I moved to Arizona in 1990, I rolled down the window of my red Chevette, stuck out my arm and flipped this town the bird as I drove south ― fast ― on I-75. Moving back here in ’94, I felt trapped in a dank, hopeless swamp. I sent my friends in the vast and sunny West a mixed tape I’d labeled, “FROM THE ARMPIT OF THE UNIVERSE!!!”

Even today, Dayton is a town I love to hate. The city is, after all, an easy target: The summers can be too muggy and the winters bitingly cold. Hip and unusual enterprises ― art hops in the Santa Clara Arts District, the Serendipity theater ensemble performing original plays in a grubby warehouse ― are often short-lived in the Gem City. Other cultural innovations ― loft apartments, urban farmers’ markets ― prosper in bigger cities for eons before breaking into this corner of the Midwest.

So it was with an immense amount of reluctance that I finally admitted it is possible to find, of all things, happiness in this town. It was a realization that came about slowly, like a rising tide ― during a walk along the Great Miami River, eating burgers at a neighborhood block party, dancing at the Reggae and Cityfolk festivals, watching my son finish a painting at K12 Gallery for Young People, hanging out with friends and a pitcher of brew at Tank’s.

One moment, I remember in particular. It was a late summer evening, and I packed my son and four of my neighbors’ kids into my car for a trip to RiverScape. The Dayton Jazz Orchestra played in the background as I read a book and the kids ran through the fountain, putting on what they called a “cute show” for the grown-ups. Then came the sunset: A flaming, widespread affair in an intense band of oranges. “This,” I thought, “isn’t so bad.”

There are, of course, less esoteric and more practical reasons to dig this town. My family lives nearby, along with a crew of friends, some of whom I’ve known since high school. Despite what anyone thinks about Dayton Public Schools, my son and I have been downright delighted with Franklin Montessori and Stivers School for the Arts. Plus, I can actually afford, on a pretty limited income, an expansive house with original wood floors and crown molding, antique lighting fixtures, and four stained-glass windows. If you want to live amongst people who are not like you, diverse Dayton easily fits the bill. And from Dragons games to independent films at The Neon, from homegrown rock bands taking the stage at Canal Street Tavern to Broadway shows at Victoria Theatre, it’s a rare occasion when I cannot find anything to do.

Indeed, my life is full here ― but still relatively quiet. I think, sometimes, of moving to a bigger, more “exciting” city, but I wonder if I would be able to pry open any more cracks of time to fit in all that additional bustle.

I think of a recent trip I made with my mom and sister to New York City. I’d never really been to the Big Apple and, just as I’d been warned, something was going on at all times and in every direction. We spent the bulk of our time waiting in line or worming our way through crowds. There was no such thing as cheap.

Take my sister’s haircut at a fancy, celebrity-infused salon at the Park Plaza Hotel. It cost $130. However, while the hotshot stylist was snipping her hair, he looked at me: “Your sister has a good haircut,” he said.

“Thank you,” I replied, puffing myself up. “$30. Dayton, Ohio.”

I liked New York, but I surprised myself by breathing a sigh of relief when our plane hit ground in good ol’ Vandalia. I don’t think I could live in the gigantic NYC. I’ll live here, in this little city ― although I can only do it begrudgingly, if only for old time’s sake.

I have just unearthed this article from a stack of old newspapers stashed in my attic. Truth is, I doubt this is the last time I will write two love letters to my hometown with eerily similar thoughts ― even the same flash of clarity down by the river. Dayton is a city that needs to be constantly reassured of your love.

True, the Santa Clara is now a drug-addled hot mess. Serendipity theater ensemble? I barely remember ye. But like shark’s teeth, when one thing falls another equally creative, inspiring endeavor rises to take its place. Dayton, with its grungy patina of self-loathing, is the One. True. DIY. Town. And I have been One. Lucky. Girl. to call this city home base during a life full of adventures that have taken me across the country and, indeed, the globe.

Which brings me to right here, right now. It is my intention in this column to tell the stories of those adventures ― some taking place in Dayton, others in faraway places ― but all of them written in my cluttered little office here in this, my home town, by me, a Dayton native. I look forward to sharing them with you and to hearing your stories in turn.

Photo Credit: “Dayton Sunset” by listentilithz, on Flickr