Going Home

The two main things people seem to know about Wisconsin are cheese and football.  Unless a person has lived in the Midwest, Wisconsin is one of those states that people struggle to find on a map, and even fewer have visited.  But to me it's home, and I'm really proud of it.  Like, Texas proud of it.  But just like most teenagers go through a phase where they are embarrassed to be seen with their parents, I went through a phase where I was embarrassed of my home state.  Honestly, I don't know who would blame me - we put cheese on our heads, so... Once I was gone though, I realized how awesome of a place Wisconsin is to live - we put CHEESE.  On our HEADS!  When I think of my hometown of Green Bay and the emotions I associate with it, the colors green and gold display prominently in my mind.  I haven't always been proud of where I am from, but the colors (or at least what they represent) that I thought I detested and which prompted me to move away are the same that brought me back to what I am now proud to call my home.

My family moved to Green Bay from Milwaukee when I was 11 years old.  While I was at first excited about the move, I quickly came to realize that Green Bay was not a big city like Milwaukee was.  There was one mall.  No big-city downtown to speak of.  Very little diversity.  No major museums.  The accent was stronger and sounded more hick-ish than normal.  And there were corn fields less than a mile from my house.  Lots of corn fields.  My parents had essentially chosen to downgrade my life.  It was different, and without any friends besides my sisters, I was bored.

Of course, with school came a place to belong; friends and extra-curricular activities filled in some of the time that had previously been devoted to longing for what I used to have.  But Green Bay has a culture devoted to one pastime, and one pastime only: Packer football.  Streets are named after the greats: Packerland Drive, Holmgren Way, Brett Favre Pass, and Lombardi Avenue.  Buildings and businesses also wear the green and gold, literally in the colors they are painted, but also with names like Titletown Brewery, Lombardi Middle School, Packerland Packaging Company, and The Tundra Lodge.  Green Bay lives, breathes, eats, and sleeps football.  Even into my high school years, it still seemed over the top to me, even pathetic at times.  I just couldn't understand why there wasn't more to life for the residents of Green Bay than football, because even in the off-season, living in Green Bay was like homecoming week all eyar long.  When people talked about the Packers or Lambeau Field, there was a reverence that I thought was ill-placed.  "The Packers are America's team," people would say, or that Lambeau Field was "hallowed ground."  The lengths people would go to, waiting five hours in their cars to buy a piece of the field when the stadium was ripped up for re-sodding, camping out all morning at the practice fields in the summer to watch scrimmages, showing up in the freezing cold the day before a game to volunteer their time to shovel the stadium, and people painting and siding their homes and sometimes even cars in the green and gold were just a few examples of the devotion that was expressed for this team.  When the Packers went to the Super Bowl my senior year of high school, I was excited while I watched the game with friends, but was surprised when school was cancelled early upon the team's arrival home so the town could greet the players as they returned.  While I liked the day off, I was confused that the football team was more important to the city's officials and parents than the education of its students.

When it was time to plan for life after high school, getting out of Green Bay and even Wisconsin was a top priority.  If Packer football wasn't enough for me, being done with the dramas of my teenage years was.  While I had a great group of friends, I never felt like I truly fit in.  I was one of the few Mormon kids at Preble High School.  My religious culture didn't always mesh with the rites of passage many high schoolers go through in Wisconsin.  I felt like I had to explain why I couldn't do certain things all the time, that I was missing out somehow, and that if I moved away (to Utah to be specific), my life would be so much easier.  People would understand me and I would finally belong.  I would get away from the bowling, beer culture, bratwurst, fishing, hunting, humidity, frigid winters, mosquitoes the size of your hand, polka, and mullets that I felt were so corny but were so part of my home state's culture.  When I put on the green graduation cap and gown with the gold tassels representing Preble High, I felt an excitement and hope that my life would somehow be better, that I would finally start living.  When I pulled out of the driveway in the gold-colored car my parents had bought me and my sister, all of our belongings packed in the trunk and back seat, we headed to Utah.  I couldn't contain my excitement for this new adventure.

What I didn't anticipate was how much I would miss home.  While there was still the adventure of living away in a new city in Utah, there was also no home to go back to very easily.  While there were people who believed and lived like I did, there were new challenges that I hadn't anticipated with living in a new place.  In the place where I though "everyone" was like me, I soon realized that everyone wasn't like me.  There were new pastimes and customs I didn't participate in.  There was a new set of vocabulary and a new accent.  New holidays that  I didn't buy in to.  And I missed my mom and dad.  I missed my friends and the simplicity of high school.  I missed the thunderstorms that made the grass and trees and corn fields so green.  And I even missed the quirks of Wisconsin culture that I had before resented - the accent I got teased for, the taste of grilled bratwurst in the summer time, reasons to go to the lake shore to escape the heat, the camping, the diversity of people and belief systems, the summer festivals, and even the camaraderie that Wisconsinites have over the shared love of football and the shared endurance of harsh winters and relentless mosquitoes.  The things that I thought I had disliked so much actually had given me a rich background of experiences with people and the outdoors.  Utah wasn't bad, but it was different.  When I finally graduated from college and could afford to go home for the summer after a seven year absence, I stepped off of the airplane and noticed one thing in particular: how green everything was.  I was finally home, and I was glad.