Accidental Minnesotan

I'm an accidental Minnesotan.

I had no intention when I arrived, an economic refugee from New England, to fritter away a decade plus in the land of 10,000 lakes. My plan was a simple "in & out" guerilla operation. Get some work experience, some city savvy and back to the land with more trees than people and more people than living wage jobs.

Elapse ten years and I'm still squinting across the prairie trying to glimpse the Atlantic.

It started way back with the book the "Places Rated Almanac", the essentials crammed into my '92 Toyota Corolla, and nothing waiting for me in Minneapolis. I had chosen it because it seemed like a good starting point for a semi-rural girl given its low crime rate and navigitable metro. It struck me as the training bra of big cities.

My parents, however, were undone for reasons I couldn't comprehend. Didn't they understand this move was temporary? Perhaps life had given them insight into what was to come next because soon after I was seduced.

First, by a region of the country so damn friendly that people with no cause whatsoever will talk to you in the grocery store.  And then by the State itself, inviting newcomers to join right in and vote - just have that person you met back in produce vouch for you.

My home state of Maine doesn't readily take to transplants. One can even be native-born like myself, but if you don't go back 4 generations you're still "from away." The logic goes "if your cat had kittens in the oven, would you call them biscuits?"  This can make "Minnesota Nice" an entirely heady experience, especially for a little bread product like me.

But after more than a few seasons and several new lines on my resume, I thought I was done with the middle of the continent …when enter stage left:  the Unexpected Norwegian.  Married at Minneapolis City Hall, I turned in my French surname, (battered from Midwestern attempts at Franco-phonics) for a lifetime of spelling "s-E-n."  It was a good trade.

So with a new identity and now two new humans to tend, I'm not the carefree gal who squeezed shut the door to her St. Paul Classic apartment for a spontaneous beach junket. With a baby poised on the hip, the older in the umbrella stroller and enough carry-on luggage to daunt a sturdy Sherpa, the obscure flight to Portland (the other Portland) has become more Shackleton expedition then its former "hop, skip & a jump." $300 plane tickets are now a multiple of four, add in a rental car and suddenly I'm looking at a metro-area house payment. 

We go anyway. I run my family through the gauntlet of relatives, breathe the salty air, marvel in the pines and wonder could I move back? The 5 o'clock "rush minute" of my hometown has been mighty tempting.

But at the end of the visit, the birthplace of the Pillsbury Doughboy calls back all her wandering biscuits. And we return home, back to Minnesota.