Cowboy, Take Me Away!

I've found myself listening to an inappropriate amount of country music as of late.  This isn't anything new for me, but it is something I haven't done in quite a while.  It got me to thinking about WHY I'm suddenly listening to all this country music.

I recently completed a very intense process efficiency training at work, that requires you to ask Why a number of times to find the root cause of an issue.  For the sake of this entry, I'm going to call my country music addiction an "issue".  So here goes:

I'm listening to a lot of country music.  Why?
I like country music.  Why?
It reminds me of home.  Why?
We used to listen to country music while flying down back roads in a pick-up truck.  Why?
Now that is a question no one can answer!  That's just what you do in the country!

So really, this series of Why questions helped me find the root cause for why I'm listening to country music: I miss home. 

Home is something I find myself struggling with regularly.  Home was the suburb of Milwaukee I was born and raised in.  We had a quaint little cottage on a lake, my best friends lived within two houses of me, and my whole extended family was within a half-hour drive.

Then home was a log cabin in the middle of 45 acres with no TV or central heat.  We spent our summers tending the gardens, chopping wood for the winter, and taking care of animals.  We spent our winters hauling wood in each morning to melt the icicles forming in the bathroom.  We couldn't see any neighbors, town was a half-hour drive, and my closest friend lived five miles away.

Then home was a little town in Hessen, Germany, where I spent some time abroad as an exchange student.  I lived with a host family in a town with cobble-stone streets and went to school in a castle.  I made life-long friends and developed a sincere love for the country.  So much so that I returned in college to research my senior thesis.

And now, home is a suburb of Minneapolis.  I have lived in the Twin Cities area for 11 years now and absolutely love it.  I can have the urban feel that I thrive on, but still have the ability to sneak away to a park in the middle of the city for some quiet reflection. 

So why do I struggle with a sense of "home"?  As I stated before, my heart belongs in the city.  Well, most of my heart at least.  There is a little part of me that loves to kick off my heels, run barefoot through a barn, then jump in the back of a pick-up truck to run to town.

A friend posted on Facebook the other day that he was having a bonfire at his house, which is where I spent a considerable amount of my time in high school.  It made me sad and nostalgic to think that I'll never be there again.  I'll never have those carefree nights with my closest friends on a clear summer night.  To have a "carefree" night, I need to find a babysitter, pay a babysitter, get my husband off the couch, and find something to entertain us.  Not so carefree...

Now my parents are looking at selling that little log cabin in the woods and moving closer to me and my family so that they can see their grand kids more often.  I hated that tiny town and the people in it when I lived there, but that house was my home.  It was my home because my parents were there and we had created a very different life for ourselves in that strange place.  When my parents move, I don't think I'll go back very often, and I find myself feeling a bit sad about that. 

So really, the problem is that I miss that tiny little ass-backwards town and the crazy-ass people in it.  I miss the local bars and stopping in at the Kwik Trip, where you could run into about every person you know in a matter of minutes.  Thus, I'm listening to more country music to help sooth the part of my heart that is aching to go back.  I think I see a road-trip to Wisconsin in my very immediate future :)