Across Ohio, west and east

This past weekend, my husband and I drove from Pittsburgh to Ohio for a visit with my family.

Over the past 27 years, we've made the journey hundreds of times, the miles dropping past familiar landmarks along two turnpikes. Cornfields, silos, marshes and reservoirs, barns and in more recent years, condos and McMansions.

Along the way on Friday, heading towards the setting sun, we put in a CD that had been sitting in the car for ages, John Mellencamp's 1978-88 retrospective "The Best That I Could Do." I am not the biggest Mellencamp fan in the world, but as we listened, the lyrics sent me soul searching. Because every song, from "I Need a Lover..." to "Paper and Fire"  to "Check it Out" is about dreams realized and frustrated, about desire, and about mortality ever present.  They are the arc of a life, from youthful hopes to the wistfulness of the middle years  and finally on to the solid embrace of a life with deep Indiana roots. The embrace is not always strong, or even welcome, but it lasts.

My Midwestern roots are shallow, having been planted only decades, not centuries ago. But flying by the Ohio Turnpike's flanks for maybe the thousandth time, taking in the umbers, rusts and charcoals of the fall landscape, felt in an oddly solid way, like home.

The picture is dried yarrow in my Mom's garden.