It all feels so exotic. Wisconsin. Whenever I overhear that word, my ears prickle. After sixteen years living outside of Wisconsin, feeling like Wisconsin was something private, a piece of my childhood that sits somewhere between my shoulder and my collarbone, a biannual hiatus, here I am. It’s everywhere. Wisconsin. And Madison. How about Madison? That’s a good word, too. Other nice words include: Eagle. Owl. Capitol. That one I’m used to. Yet it’s different here. It’s right there, in the middle of everything, looming above it all. The birds sing differently here. I remember.
There are memories. Yes, there are memories. But it doesn’t feel like I’ve stepped back into childhood, like I feared it might. We are in a different neighborhood living very different lives, lives which we’ve been intentional about building together. The red home office for morning writing with two monitors and a window looking out onto an owl’s domain. I see the owl sometimes, hunting at dawn. I also see the branch that looks very much like an owl, all the time. I look at a lake once per day. We have a king-sized bed. These things are new. But still. The memories. They can’t be avoided. My first job, my second job, my third job, my fourth job. The post office I could walk to without thinking about it, only wondering, when I was half a block away, if this wasn’t the right place? It was. The roads. The roads are still here.
I’m remembering how to drive again.
I spent many years now barely touching the wheel of a vehicle. This was because (a) I was largely unable to, not having a car, and because b) I convinced myself I didn’t want to, because of c) my unaddressed driving anxiety, which I’ve experienced in some shape or form since I was nineteen, when I was terrible to my body and my body told me to stop, and the only way it could do so was with panic attacks. It’s actually quite terrifying, right? Driving. The life-or-death task of the everyday, an absurdity of life that our bodies have learned to handle. When you drive, it’s not about driving at all, but the seat beneath you and those lines on the street disappearing beneath the wheels. This, I need to re-learn.
But now, after two months of painting, assembling, organizing, power drilling, and sitting on our couch, Seth and I are currently in Mexico staring at the ocean. I’ve been here before. I’ve been in this city, on spring break in high school, on a very different trip. So the memories are here too. This place, which once felt exotic, now feels like a place that is known, and a little unreal. A dream, materialized, as I look back on my past self, these young high school girls with thick tan lines they’ll regret when they’re older. The waves that once terrified me. The place where I got my very first panic attack, when I tried to scuba dive in a churning ocean. Running through the halls in bare feet. My first alcoholic beverage: a pina colada.
My favorite thing about Wisconsin is its geological history. Take a step outside of Madison and you’ll find yourself in the Driftless region, so named because, throughout the Pleistocene Ice Age, four stretches of glaciers, on their churning journey south, bypassed the region. During the final period of glaciation, the Wisconsinian, ice came down on both sides, grinding away yet still avoiding our precious Driftless. So in a land of flat, suddenly there are boulders and cliffs. This is something I learned well after childhood. After many years away from home, I became interested in the place. Studied it from abroad. Learned all sorts of things I never paid attention to while living there, like the names of rivers and bridges and the tallest hill in Wisconsin (it’s Timms). There are towns in this state called Berlin, London, and Paris. There are more eagles and cranes than I remember. There is a whooping crane conservancy where scientists dress in bird suits to teach the cranelings how to fly.
And now we are in Mexico, where the most unpredictable thing is the strength of the margaritas, leading me, once, to a very dizzy evening. We were at a nice dinner and had to leave to get some air. We walked to the pitchblack ocean and watched the angry foam come in and out. It didn’t stop churning. And the stars, they were spinning. I stared at the stars and commanded them to stop. I told them to stay still. Finally they did. Then we could watch the ocean again, a thin white line of foam separating black sand from black water and black sky. And then the sky exploded. Fireworks from a nearby wedding.
There was one bad night in downtown Madison where Seth got ill and needed me to drive home. He needed me. Before that night, when driving, I’d never take the direct route. The direct route would lead us over a bridge where I’d had a panic attack and a brief highway where I’d had a panic attack. But Seth needed to get home quickly so I drove. And I drove over the bridge and didn’t panic. And I drove over the highway and didn’t panic. It was dark and the roads were nearly empty and I was slow but I drove because there was no decision to make.
The worst part about anxiety is anxiety. It’s the memory. Remember: you’ve panicked before. Will you panic again? Will this be the moment I panic? How about this? Am I ready to face this fear? Should I wait? I should wait, no I shouldn’t, yes I should, it’s too late! But when there were no questions, no maybes, maybe-nots, there was no fear. Just the familiar feeling of foot on pedal, white and yellow lines disappearing in rhythm.
I drove Seth home, over roads with too many stories, trying to imagine them anew, driving for the first time, when I was young and had no fear. When I was bold and ran in bare feet. The waves disappeared. The stars stayed in their place. I commanded them to stay, and they stayed.
This post has taken a meandering path, but all I’m trying to ask is, what’s exotic, what’s mundane, and what separates the two? The opposite of exotic is familiar. Familiarity comes from memories. And yet memories can be traveled through like distant lands. They can be banished and recreated, or excavated like fossils. The rocks of the world all share the same memories. They were created in the center of the planet, now they’re here, in pieces of sand. I am abroad and I am also home, where everything is new and everything is the same, where there are too many stories, and infinitely more to discover.
-Denise
