The Heartland.

My new job has me traveling a bit more than my previous position did. I’m not on the go so much that I feel like I’m living the real life version of Up in the Air, but I do get out of the office at least a few weeks out of the year. Most often, I’m traveling to Ohio, where the rest of my team is based. The area where the Ohio office is located was, at one time, all farms and fields, I’m sure of it. The landscape is vast and wide, with minimal trees. Where there once was nothing but corn or wheat or cows there are now hotels, strip malls, and office “parks.” Often, when I leave the Ohio office for the night (driving an ugly rental car, making my way out of an expansive parking lot) and head back to my hotel, I realize, based on the chain stores and restaurants, that I could be anywhere in the USA.

And yet I find something oddly comforting about driving around this small Ohio town; about the other nearby towns I’ve explored on the nights I’m free to roam on my own. There’s something about this place; the streets, the houses, and the lay of the land that reminds me of home.

Perhaps it’s just in my blood; seeing as I was actually born about 50 miles further up the road. In that version of Ohio, I remember only what’s been told to me; recall only what I’ve seen in old, yellowed photographs, as we moved East when I was barely a year old. There is a touch of the home I do know out here, though it’s hard to pinpoint. There’s something about the open fields, the farmlands, and the sense of small town living that stirs up the love I have for my hometown; something that conjures just a piece of that calm that I get whenever I think of home.

In general, the people are lovely, friendly. As proud as I am of the Northeastern blood running through these veins of mine, I’ll admit we all get a little too busy and self-centered at times. Perhaps it’s the just the weary traveler in me - I am a stranger in a strange land - but I find it comforting when the woman handing me my morning coffee says she’ll see me tomorrow – and sounds genuinely happy about it. It’s heartwarming.

And there’s something else. When I was a child, we made many trips out to Illinois to visit my Grandmother, who, for many years, lived in the house in which my father grew up. Oh, it was a lovely house; charmingly sprawling, with all sorts of twists and turns I adored as a little girl. Often, when we would visit around the holidays, we’d all pile into someone’s car and drive through neighborhoods – oooh and aahing over Christmas lights – as we made our way to our destination. Now, years and what seems like a lifetime later, if I drive away from the hotels and strip malls in Ohio, if I turn into outlying neighborhoods on a whim, I’m able to recognize the same sort of architecture and neighborhood layouts that I remember so vividly from those childhood visits. If I happen upon a radio station playing Christmas carols, and drive ever so slowly through the neighborhood I’ve found, oohing and aahing over the Christmas lights, I can – just for a quick little second – feel like a little girl entranced by the magic of Christmas all over again.

And if I’m very lucky, I just might catch the beginning of the season’s first snowfall; watching individual snowflakes fall on my windshield and later my coat, hat, and hair.