Last week, for Easter, we went back to Findlay and Lima to visit my grandma and my future child's grandma (aka my mother-in-law). Every time we get back to northwestern Ohio, I think about all of the great things you can do there that you can't do in Cleveland. That's a little ridiculous, if you've ever been to Findlay, Lima, or Ottawa, because Cleveland is larger than all 3 put together, particularly from a diversity and cultural standpoint. As you can see, the Putnam County flag is pretty close to the confederate flag. That's much less shocking than you might think, for a county literally 3 hours from Canada.
But even so, there are things back "home" that you can't get in Cleveland. Kewpie (Lima) burgers are still the best fast-food burgers in the world; Main Street Deli (Findlay) could hold its own even in Cleveland's crowded deli-sandwich scene, and Pizzeria (Ottawa) would be my favorite pizza in Cleveland if it were here. I don't know if my opinions on all of those are at all objective: but its the stuff I grew up with and its the stuff that, sometimes, I crave because you just can't get it here. I should also note that, even though a "Titan Burger" is essentially a Big Mac made at a local ice cream stand (in Ottawa), my mouth still waters at the thought of it, even though I could get a pretty close approximation all over the place. But it's just not the same. You long for the things you grew up with.
But despite all of my cravings for things back home, (including non-food experiences, like sitting around a fire in someone's backyard, drinking busch light, with the closest neighbor miles away, or running into people you vaguely remember at the gas station and talking with a faux-southern accent), more and more, "back home" isn't very much home lately.
About a year before I moved to Cleveland, my mom left our family. Though it would be easy to say it was a standard divorce sort of thing from my dad, it was really a complete walk-away from our entire family. I've talked to her maybe 4 times since, and it is never more than barely polite. Ever since, home, or whatever notion I had of it, just hasn't been the same. Even if I'm in the backyard of a farmhouse on road M-10, drinking a busch light while the fire blazes, waiting for the pizzeria to deliver our pizza and crazy bread, there's not so much home to go back to when I go "back home." In its own way, I suppose Ottawa, Findlay, Lima, etc. will always feel like home. But it hasn't been the same since my mom left. There will always be a gap between what growing up was, with how my family is (or isn't) now. So many of my memories and feelings toward northwestern Ohio are tied to a conception of life and family that doesn't exist for me anymore, because the family I grew up in doesn't really exist anymore.
And it is with that background that I came to Cleveland. And it is in Cleveland that I'm finding the home I'd lost. It could simply be a product of the facts: this is where my wife found a job, this is where we live, and this is where we're starting our own family. I'm sure that is a part of it. But more broadly, there is much more to it.
I've always said that something I love about Cleveland are the times when you get the sense that we're all in this together. At a sporting event, at a festival, whatever it may be, there's a certain love for this place and a will to see it rebound and thrive that ties everyone together. That is when Cleveland is at its best. For me, thats the lifeblood on which I thrive myself. It doesn't matter where you came from in Cleveland (at least when Cleveland is being the best version of itself) If you've chosen to make this your home, you become "one of us." It is very much the opposite of the cloistered German-American society I grew up in (I literally knew 0 white people besides my (technically adoptive) grand parents and extended family on my dad's side who weren't German. As a complete side note, it's interesting that Ottawa, which was one of the earliest reservations for the Ottawa Indian Tribe, is now a sort of de facto reservation for German Catholics). As my own home from my whole life faded into nothingness, Cleveland became a place where I could be who I am to this point, and become who I'll be moving forward.
There's a place for everyone in Cleveland. And that's a good thing, because Cleveland needs everyone it can get. It will always be a wild ride, as we struggle with our systemic problems that lead to poverty, homelessness, and scads of condemned and decrepit buildings. But there's a camaraderie in the struggle. As Cleveland engages in its own fresh start, it grants us all the opportunity to do the same. There's a circular beauty there. Home is where the heart is, they say. Perhaps, my whole life, my heart was here, and I just didn't know it. Cleveland is my home now, and in many ways, more than anywhere else ever was.
Now, if we could just get rid of "Wahoo"....
-Zack
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