My personal geography

There's a story by Garrison Keillor in this month's National Geographic magazine. He's the creator and host of the old-style radio show Prairie Home Companion on public radio, an author, an essayist and a proud yet quirky Minnesotan. The magazine article is entitled There's No Place Like Home, and it's a personal geography. Read it if you have the time. Those of you who have lived in the Twin Cities will identify with it, those who haven't will at the very least enjoy the writing and the photos.

"The Mississippi, whose rhythmic spelling I liked to whisper to myself—m-i-SS-i-SS-i-PP-i—like a secret password, flowing over the St. Anthony dam and under the 1883 Stone Arch bridge of James J. Hill’s railroad near a 1908 General Mills grain elevator with the Gold Medal Flour sign lit up." Words by Keillor, photo by Larsen

Reading about the significance of Twin City places in Keillor's life makes me wonder about my own personal geography.  I suppose each of us has one and none are quite the same. How my like would look like drawn as a map? There would be three and a half parts.

The first in Lisle, Illinois, an unremarkable comfortable suburb with summer afternoons at the swimming pool, acorns falling on the roof, walks to school, bike rides, strip malls and sled hills. We kept guinea pigs in the basement, played with the little boys next door, did a lot of homework, answered the phone ringing with girls who called for my brother.

Then there was a year interruption, a move to Belgium with a one-foot-in and one-foot-out mentality, teenage upheaval, the sensation of being new, drinking wine, being without my siblings, living in a big house owned by someone else, seeing new places with foreign names and then coming back.

The next part of the map would be Saint Paul (though I did spend a year in Minneapolis, don't tell). It would start on Grand Avenue with college classes and strange roommates, meeting Brian and the cold walks we took together. There would be the track and the dorms and the deli where I worked. Then come the apartments, Brian's, mine, then ours together. I'd draw out the Russian restaurant, the Irish bar, the Chinese buffet. Then the jobs that taught me how to get around the city and brought me into Mexican neighborhoods. My map would show the Basilica where we got married, and the other churches we tried out later on. It would trace our bike routes. And, like Keillor's, my map would show the Mississippi river and Como Lake behind our house.  We almost didn't get out of the realtor's car to see the house at first - we'd looked at so many dumps already. Then we found its big yard and clawfoot tub and orange dining room and made it home.

Now I am here in Hannover. We have a different lake, a man-made one from between the wars, and a different zoo (one I still refuse to visit because admission is not free). What our apartment lacks in character and green space it makes up for in fifth floor views and the ease of getting everywhere on a bike. I would add the Indian restaurant and the Turkish döner shop to my map, the international school, my German classrooms, our friends' garden plot and the hockey stadium. My Hannover map isn't finished yet. Many parts of the city are still just places, waiting for some kind of meaning to make them stand out.

What's your personal geography? Think about it. Places don't mean much until you are in them.