By this time tomorrow I will be about forty-five minutes away from Cincinnati. (I hope - holiday travel is notorious for terrible delays.) It is not the town of my birth, but it's close enough. I'm actually from Dayton, specifically from south Dayton - Centerville, to be exact, and if that doesn't have Mayberry connotations I don't know what would. Dayton is actually a nicer place than people probably imagine, or at least it was until GM laid off about 400 workers this week, but it seems to be the default city that authors use to refer to a place that is almost but not quite the middle of nowhere, bigger than the oft-cited Peoria but certainly not Chicago, or even Kansas City . PJ O'Rourke did it, Vonnegut did it too (and PJ, you should know better - you're from Toledo!)
But I left Dayton at 18 to go to school in Cincinnati, and I stayed there through college, a crummy corporate job, then grad school, then my first three years teaching. I met and married my husband in Cincinnati. So, in essence, it's where I really became a grownup. It's a far cooler place than people envision: everyone calls Sarasota the cultural coast, but every time I walk into any grocery store, fabric store, restaurant, shopping mall or preserved 19th century building in the Queen City I'm reminded how varied, cosmopolitan and steeped in history it really is. I'm like Marco Polo up there: I leave room in my luggage for all the exotic spices and luxury fabrics I want to smuggle back here every year.
I have a lot to be thankful for this year: I have this dandy new job, Mr. Librarian is also gainfully employed as a professional artiste, my little boy is the paragon of little-boyness, my parents are well and happy . . . and I have somewhere great to visit. After which, of course, I return here to the palm trees and brand-new pink stucco termite-free condos.
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