“Where’s home for you?”

It’s the first thing she’s said to me on the entire flight. The wheels touch down on to the runway.
“Here,” I say. That’s when I start to cry. I don’t cry for too long, either. Just a minute and just a little. I didn’t cry at all when we were losing altitude and I needed to pull out my journal to write down everything I saw.

Adventures in the Minneapolis Airport; Part One
Here’s what I wrote:
The clouds are all level, and it’s like looking down on a glass table top, with little piles of melting whipped cream sitting on top, or ice floating on a perfectly clear lake.
I notice the lakes; how could I not? They’re large and sprawling, strangely shaped, like half a muddy footprint filled in by the rain. Paul Bunyan was here for Lumberjack Day.
The horizon is blue, varying shades stacked on top of each other, uninterrupted by ugly, dirty mountains. The world goes on forever here, and I am not trapped in a right side up bowl.
Water towers. I see them before I notice anything else, and it brings me the closest to crying so far. After I see one, I see a dozen through the same small window. They stick up from the earth like squat skyscrapers, with bubbly heads, steely blue, or off-white, and I wonder for the first time where the rest of the world stores their water.
And baseball diamonds. They are everywhere. The reddish color of the dirt stands out from the greenish blue of everything else. They are everywhere; I count nine before I stop looking. I love baseball. I have always been only mediocre when playing, but if there is a place in America that loves its patriotic sport, it’s the Midwest.
Everything is in patches; there are patches of dark green trees, and almost square patches of emerald fields. There are patches of houses, and patches of city. Winding roads dart around everything, like a garter snake, unable to run straight, because they’d interrupt something. As we get closer to the ground, I can see that lakes aren’t the only water, and every bit of land not filled with buildings or trees is filled in. Little ponds, and little lakes. I count eight out my window, just on the airport grounds.
The pilot announces that it is forty degrees with twenty mile per hour wind, and I relish the thought. I want to get out and breath in the air, but my layover is only three hours, and an hour of that would have to be spent checking back in.

Adventures in the Minneapolis Airport; Part Two
I’m off the plane now. I can’t get the internet, so I won’t publish this until after I’m in Virginia.
Every time I look out the window, I have to tell myself “the sky in Utah sometimes looks like that. There’s nothing to cry about.” Or “There is nothing special about that road, just because it’s in Minnesota doesn’t make it better than other roads.”
I am sure about one thing though: the air. I feel suffocated in Utah, because the air is so dusty and so dry, but even in this building I already feel that I can really breathe. This is wet, cold air. It soothes the throat as soon as you suck it in.
Lana said, “The air in Arizona is like a big blanket.”
“A big down blanket that wraps you up, and tries to shove its corner down your throat to suffocate you,” said I. Maybe that was too cynical.
Maybe it was not cynical enough. I cannot seem to describe how much I hate Arizona. People are never willing to accept that my hate is genuine. Arizona is the anti-Christ to Minnesota. You cannot love the Lakers and the Jazz, right?
Right now a balding man with a toothpick in his mouth is taking a picture of a giggling group of Asian girls. They’re standing behind me, their arms wrapped around Snoopy in his bomber jacket and scarf.
Most of the people here are not native. Everyone in the history of airplanes seems to have a layover in Minnesota, but every now and again I catch a hint of a Minnesotan accent in someone passing by. I am doing very well, not crying, thank you very much.
But I am passing signs with loons on them, and the Twins logos. Lord. Why can’t I handle this? It’s the first time I’ve been here in over a year. I could probably claim Utah as soon as Minnesota.
But I don’t want to.
I love it here. This is home.
Here is home.

Adventures in the Minneapolis Airport; Part Three
“Excuse me,” I address the bent man behind the podium labeled Traveler’s Assistance.
“Yes?” he peers at me, a grin stretched across his face, and the phrase Minnesota Nice hits me kindly in the throat.
I cough it out. “I’m not sure if you’re who I ask,” I say. “But do you know if there’s a Culver’s in the airport?”
He shakes his head, as if he were as disappointed as me.
“No, no Culver’s and no Cinnabuns either.”
“No kidding?” I say, “this is just like a giant mall, you’d think the first thing they’d build would a Cinnabun!”
This is the type of polite and pleasant banter that strangers elsewhere do not participate in.
“Well, they had ‘em, and then a few years ago, they ripped them all out.” He shakes his balding head. “And there aren’t any Culver’s either.”
“Well, that’s too bad, I haven’t been in the Midwest in long time, I could really go for some frozen custard.”
“There’s always DQ.” I smile because I only ever hear people call it DQ in Minnesota.
“Yeah, but there are DQs everywhere,” I say.
There is a moment of silence, before the man looks up at me. Surprise in the corners of his eyes.
“There aren’t Culver’s everywhere?” he asks.
“Nope,” I say. “They’re just out here. I live in Utah and I’ve been going crazy for Culvers.”
He shakes his head, this final blow even more disappointing than the lack of Cinnabuns in the airport.
“I suppose they’ve never even heard of cheese curds out there,” he mumbles.
And I start to laugh, because not a month goes by that I don’t introduce someone in Utah to the novel idea of cheese dipped in batter, then deep-fried. Sold at carnivals, and the best of restaurants.
“Most of them haven’t,” I say. We both smile sadly, chuckle a little, and I turn to find food elsewhere.

Adventures in the Minneapolis Airport; Part Four
I did eventually find food. Deciding I’d rather spend five dollars and an hour of my time in a real restaurant, over five dollars and twenty minutes eating fast food that that will drive me to illness, I approach the hostess at one of several restaurants.
“Dinner for one?” she asks, and I say yes out loud, to prove to myself its not weird.
I had decided on the flight here to eat in a restaurant by myself, to prove that I could, and that I wasn’t scared of the idea.
I also made myself promise to act like a grownup and not read a book. I would sit, and eat my food like a normal human being. Because if I distracted myself from the fact that I was eating alone, my entire purpose would be defeated.
I am led to an area of the restaurant, filled with little tables, and few chairs. I can tell, this is the “Dinner for One” section.
I order a five-dollar salad, ordering myself to believe that it is better than the meatball sandwich and fries for the same price because it is healthier. I type away at my computer while I wait for the food, jotting down notes about the airport.
When the waiter returns with my food, I put away my laptop, and don’t look at what he’s brought me until he has left. When I do look at my food, I laugh. For real, out loud.
And people lean out from their booths to see the crazy, disheveled looking girl sitting in the “Dinner for One” section, laughing.
I was laughing for two main reasons, first: There is romaine lettuce, chopped up with chicken, cheese, and tomatoes, seeming like a perfectly normal and healthy salad. But stacked vertically on top of the greens is a tower of battered and deep-friend onion rings, and in case you weren’t sure if you had officially entered hick town yet, there is no dressing, but instead, barbeque sauce has been dumped over all of it.
That is the first reason: the onion rings and barbeque sauce. The second reason: that I looked at that weird food, and I found it totally appetizing.
I ate the entire salad and was grateful that it was so big, because I was so hungry. But I didn’t realize that I was a small town hick right down to my thrift store purse until I said to the waiter, with all sincerity and honesty, “thank you, that was the best salad I’ve ever had.”
Oh lord. It was. That’s what worries me.