MOORHEAD

I was just trying to update my Instagram bio.

“Just moved back to the Fargo-MOORHEAD area.”

I didn’t intend for Moorhead to come out as MOORHEAD. I clicked back to MOORHEAD and tried typing it again, but before I could click the X that stops your phone’s autocorrect suggestion, it changed itself back. MOORHEAD.

And since I read into everything in my life, I started to wonder about MOORHEAD. When had I typed MOORHEAD instead of Moorhead? Why was it defaulting to this all-caps, seems-like-you’re-screaming version of my new city? Why did seeing MOORHEAD make me want to giggle but also burst into tears? It’s like my phone was trying to tell me, “Hello! Why yes, you are in MOORHEAD. Yes, not only in Minnesota, but MOORHEAD! MOORHEAD. You live nowhere else in the world but MOORHEAD.”

When seemingly insignificant things like this happen (again, I was just trying to update my Instagram bio with where I live and a few new emojis) and cause me to pause (I spent about 10 minutes staring at MOORHEAD, before I decided I should sit down and write something about it ), I often take them as signs to look more closely at something. To pay attention, to dig deeper, to search for meaning. I can take a sentence I overhear, or a 30-second conversation with a barista, or a photo of feet amongst leaves and make it into a reflection on my Enneagram type or love life or vocational life -- sometimes all of those, at the same time.

I took my iPhone’s autocorrected capitalization as an invitation. An invitation to think about the fact that I do, in fact, live in Moorhead. Not Portland, Oregon; a location that I chose, that shaped me, that became a defining part of my identity for five years. A location that became home and that, from the very beginning, a location I wanted to shout from the rooftops in capital letters. PORTLAND! I’m moving to PORTLAND! Even before jumping in a U-Haul without cruise control to make the 1500-mile drive, even before arriving at that first apartment, even before walking to the Starbucks down the street to upload that first blog post, I adopted an identity of Moving to Portland. It was part of my family’s Christmas letters to acquaintances. It was my Current City on Facebook. It was a place on a map that transformed into home, that transformed my life.

Now, I’m navigating a whole new set of life circumstances not in Portland. In July, I hopped in my car and drove across the country and now -- I’m living in Moorhead. It’s been a big-yet-calm shake-up over the last six months. And I haven’t written a thing about it, except maybe an Instagram post in August. A lot of life has happened in these six months and I’ve kept some of it at an arm’s length. My excuse has been because this transition is still happening. It’s not like you move to a place and then the adjustment and feelings and challenges are done the moment the last box is unpacked. The complicated mourning and the bittersweet celebrating don’t find their own places in a drawer as your kitchen knives do. The feelings of, “What the hell did I just do?!” don’t leave your heart at the same time you recycle your last cardboard box. A transition is ongoing and constant and very, very present. Even with all the goodness in it, navigating it can be overwhelming. And lonely.

I started this blog when I lived in Portland. I’ve been a scattered writer over the last four-ish years, letting other good things (friends and love and work and school) and not-as-good things (Netflix and depression and doubt and loneliness) get in the way of tending to this space. This space of writing, reflecting, sharing, repeating the process. And yet these posts, though rare, have made me feel more connected; to myself, to my own life, and to others, somehow. They’ve made me feel less alone in the navigation of difficult change and huge hurts, and in the celebration of small wonders and huge awe.

And so, here I am. And here’s a reintroduction of this little space on the Internet -- with a new look, a new location, a new-yet-same author.

I’m going to accept the little invitations that come my way to remember Portland, through texts and songs and middle-of-the-night memories, to think about Portland, to write the countless stories about the life I lived there. And I’m going to listen for the call to think about and reflect on and wrestle with my life now -- right here in MOORHEAD. Because these invitations are everywhere, if we want them to be -- even in our Instagram bios. They’re in conversations with strangers and friends, street signs and radio commercials, all that we see and hear and feel, if we open ourselves to them.

Here’s to accepting the invitations of our lives. Thanks for accompanying me as I open mine.

buy the song.

I have one song in my iTunes library.

I downloaded it on a late, hot August night, when almost a hundred people crowded into a home just a few blocks away from where I had spent the last four years studying, working, and becoming. Everyone was there to play beer pong, eat chips and salsa and chips and hummus, and have one last reckless summer night before “real life” started again in September. Most of them were there to say goodbye — to me and Steph, as we prepared to drive a UHaul (which was already parked in the driveway, already halfway loaded up with our lives) across the country to start anew in Portland. You know the rest.

I remember a lot of things about that night. I remember sneaking upstairs with one of my best friends and crying over the card she gave me and realizing our friendship would forever be altered the minute I pulled away from our hug and from Fargo. I remember sneaking away from the party to play on the nearby playground and swinging, swinging, swinging like I was in second grade again. I remember the police officer who knocked on the door, telling us that the party was over and one of our guests telling him it most certainly was not. This was my first real house party. It was all so real and all so cliche and I couldn’t stop smiling the entire night even though I was saying goodbye to all of my people. I felt like I was in a really great and really cheesy movie about college and growing up and moving on. I was, in a way. In my own movie. I was, in a way. Growing up and moving on. It was all perfect.

But I also remember this one moment — the one where I paid $1.29 to download a song. That night, my phone played the songs that kept getting interrupted by the people calling and texting, asking for directions. I turned on Spotify radio for most of the night and let BOY, Haim, and a few Top 40 hits flood the first level of the house and spill into the backyard. Somewhere between a few and several beers into the night, a few guys marched up to me with a request.

“Can we play a song?”

“Sure,” I said, as I handed over my case-free and already-cracked iPhone.

What I don’t remember is how they exited my Spotify app, bypassed searching for it on my YouTube app, and instead found it in my iTunes app and determined that this, this was the best way to listen to their song. I do remember someone passing my phone back to me a few minutes later with the “Sign In to iTunes Store” pop-up window right there, so I could authorize the purchase. I remember looking at their eager faces and giggling as I squinted at my screen and shook my head and thought how I’d spent $1.29 on worse things.

Maybe sometimes we make a choice because it will make others really happy. Or because they have kindly asked us. Maybe sometimes we make a choice because we truly, honestly don’t give two shits about the outcome. Or because we’re curious and feeling carefree. Maybe sometimes we make a choice because we think of all the harder choices we’ve made and then this one comes rushing in as a relief, an easy one, a mindless one.

I handed the phone back to them, and they set it up on the speakers, and then — it started.

“Choices,” by George Jones.

I would never have guessed in a trillion years that acoustic, country chords would gush out of my phone just then. I thought it was going to be Space Jam or R. Kelly or Jump Around or something that we all would have been excited about and then danced to or karaoked to or jumped around to. The guys who requested this song were the only people in the room who swayed and sang. (If you listen to it, you’ll realize it’s not really a song to jump around to.) I think I did a few sympathy sways with them and then went to the snack table. The party went on. (Until the cop finally did convince the previously mentioned guest that the party was most certainly over.)

There isn’t really a moral to this story. I plugged my phone into my computer for the first time in a long time tonight, and my iTunes library popped up with George Jones’ face and his dark sunglasses looking off to the left, and I immediately knew I wanted to write about it. It seems insignificant. The guys probably don’t even remember that they are the guys who did this. The others at the party probably won’t even remember this happening. But I do. I remember. And isn’t that a good enough reason for a story?

I could have deleted the song the morning after the party, as I ran through the night in my head and checked my iTunes to make sure I really did download it. I could have deleted it in the UHaul on the drive out here, as I cleared out the old on my phone to make room for the new. I could have deleted it any time in the last two years, as I plugged my phone into my laptop to save the pictures that have captured my life since that night. Instead, I’ve listened to “Choices” on repeat as I’ve written this, not only to make my grandmother proud that I’m listening to “her kind of country music,” but also to remind myself that a choice is just a choice. It’s not the end of the world or the start of our lives, even though it feels like everything in our world and our lives depends on it. We’ve made choices before and we will make them again. We will sometimes make the same choice over and over and over again and we will sometimes choose differently every single time we’re faced with it. Big and little choices, easy and hard choices, choices for others and choices that might make others mad or sad but that finally — finally — free us.

Life has us make choices all the time — sometimes ones that we are prepared for, sometimes ones that we will never be prepared for, and sometimes ones that shake up our souls in awesome and awful ways. Sometimes at the same time.

And sometimes, if we are lucky, life has us make choices that we just have to close our eyes at and throw our heads back at and giggle at as we type in our iCloud password and buy the song.

where i'm from.

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I am from the days of big glasses, pixie haircuts, plaid dresses; the nights of bigger curlers, bright lipstick, black leggings; the quiet moments of even bigger dots over I’s, loopy L’s, a signature that has hardly changed in 50-some years but has finalized every big change in her life.

I am from post-it notes that covered bare counters, bare dresser tops, bare refrigerators. Notes that exclaimed: “Vitamins!” and “Don’t forget to dust!” and “Give Trixie two scoops!” but always ended with a heart and her signature.

I am from every swing set, monkey bar, slide. I am from every wood chip, grain of sand, ground-up tire that carried our footsteps as we spun, ran, danced with, around, into each other’s bodies. Hers always careful, protective of mine.

I am from matching watermelon shirts, matching high-waisted shorts, matching denim jackets. I am from matching eyes, curvy fingernails, smile. I am from sometimes matching hair color, sometimes matching favorite TV shows, sometimes matching one-liners, all inspired by her.

I am from apartments, town houses, houses that became home as soon as we walked in the door and set down the box. I am from the packing and unpacking and rearranging that will inspire a book one day, “Journeys with my Mother,” dedicated to and titled by her.

I am from unapologetic independence, unmatched organization, unbelievable tidiness. I am from cautious trust, bright hope, and the biggest damn love I've ever known or ever will know and could ever hope to know during this tiny, beautiful life from her.

I am from a vibrant woman who looks like a sister I never had, a disciplined woman who played the role of a father I never had, a joy-filled woman who acts as a best friend I always wanted. I am from a human who is—deep down in her mothering gut, always has been—my mother.

(This writing was inspired by a poem with the same title by George Ella Lyon. A dear friend and former professor shared this idea with me, and I couldn't help but write some of my own words about where and who I am from.)