MIDWEST ON MY MIND

By Johanna Nauraine

The wildflower field, beside our Indiana house, was studded with blue asters, queen anne’s lace, and milkweed pods that cracked open, disgorging their seeded fur. Clouds of brown dust, floated across the field, kicked up by cars traveling on the gravel road near by, giving the field a swirling hat that coated our faces and tongues.

Someone, other than my father, strung a barbed wire fence around that field, hoping to keep the wildness from leaking out. My sisters and I, clambered over the fence, tearing our summer clothes and playing games I no longer remember, returning home to our mother’s —“Oh, you girls!”

When I was twelve, we moved to a house in Ft. Wayne, where I was gifted a beautiful pair of ice skates for Christmas. The skates had red pom poms on the toes and were my Dorothy shoes. I loved to skate on the little pond, in a patch of woods, not far from our house. Gliding over the pebbled ice, I wondered if the long fingered weeds and dark plants, trapped beneath the surface, would spring to life, after the thaw.

In summer, I entered the woods to find a wonderland, lush with greenery. I loved to lie on my back, in the middle of a tall circle of trees, while Jack-in-the-pulpits and penny royal tea, danced around my face. I began to think of that little spot as my cathedral. Wasn’t there something holy about the wind’s soft breath, jostling the leaves above my head, the sound like a lullaby, singing me to sleep?

When my family moved to Des Moines, I looked for trees, which seemed almost rare. Instead, there were acres of undulating green and brown fields, forming an earthen sea. In July, the corn grew taller than a man, bordering the roads, threatening to saunter across the black top like fertile giants.

My father, who was happy in Iowa, said, “at night, you can hear the corn grow.” His words had the weight of prophesy, and I wondered, if I stood outside on a summer night, the heat like a thick gown cloaking my body, would I hear a rhythmic shushing, as the stalks inched, higher and higher.

Now I live in a little resort town on the shores of Lake Michigan, a place I’ve returned to over and over again. In my twenties, I used to drive up from Chicago, following a rope of honeyed light. Once here, I’d walk the north beach, admiring big houses crowning the bluff, their long stairs, like Rapunzel’s hair, falling down the steep cliff. Looking back, I see myself among the restless gulls, pecking troubles out of my hand.

After four decades, I have grown used to the beach’s ebb and flow, the sand, a living time piece. Here, the inimitable sunsets glow in my mind, like magic phosphorescence, long after sleep. It is strange to know a place so surely, and yet be surprised, at how it’s become such deep medicine, for the geography of my soul.

Published in the inaugural edition of Haymaker Literary Journal, 2024 by Kent State University