It began in middle school, as far as I can remember. When I listened to songs about breaking away and it stirred something inside of me.
Sarah Evans sang about talking to the scarecrow. The Dixie Chicks were ready to run. Then they sang about wide open spaces with room to make big mistakes.
Even though I grew up in the suburbs; there were no scarecrows around for me to converse with. Still, there was something about escaping, about soaring away like the blackbird, about a young girl’s dreams no longer hollow, that resonated deep within me. It feels deeply American, I think, and maybe that’s where this feeling comes from; that I must come by it honestly through my roots, deep into my very bones.
I remember playing The Chicks’ albums over and over with friends as we rode the bus for field trips, each trying to share headphones, long before earbuds were a thing, listening to one of our Discmans that would skip a beat when the bus hit a bump. I don’t know what my friends’ thoughts were on the songs, maybe they just liked country music. I did, too, but it’s the lyrics that did it for me.
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It’s in college where the running-away feeling grows most vivid. And I’d run away for college, a little bit at least, moving three-and-a-half hours and one state further south. I moved there to get into the school’s esteemed interior design program, a program you wouldn’t have expected from a school surrounded by Iowa’s cornfields. I didn’t get into the interior design program the first time around, but I resolved to try again. So sophomore year, I waited in somewhat of a limbo, taking whatever courses I could to get me through to the end of the year and into the summer, when I would find out again if I’d been accepted. In the meantime, I was minoring in history and figured that was my backup plan, to turn that minor into a major though I had absolutely no idea what that would mean for a real-world job. (Maybe I’d work in a museum?)
That was the year Augustana released “Boston.” It hit that same “let’s-pack-it-all-up-and-run-away” feeling deep in my bones.
She said I think I’m goin’ to Boston
I think I'll start a new life
I think I'll start it over
Where no one knows my name
Whatever happened, whichever turn my life took, I was convinced Boston was the answer. Literally. Just the year before I’d packed up and moved to a school where I didn’t know anyone. I’d done it once, surely I could do it all again upon graduation? I would move out East after graduation, I was sure of it. Just the idea of Boston sounded dramatic, it sounded sexy, it felt posh yet familiar all at once. This was my plan.
And then.
I didn’t foresee meeting Tyson on Memorial Day weekend after sophomore year. I wasn’t looking for a relationship. All I’m ready to do is have some fun. What’s all this talk about love? Instead of me, it was those single girl dreams that did the flying away.
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I graduated a few years later with that interior design degree + history minor (so something worked out), got married, and moved to a brand new state all within a matter of months. In place of Boston, I ended up in Madison, Wisconsin, where Tyson was working on his PhD. It was still a city, a brand new one, where no one knew my name. (Well, except Tyson.)
And It was with Tyson that I ended up exploring Boston for the first time. We’d been married a little over a year when he had a conference there. As soon as I heard he was traveling to the city that had lodged itself in my brain I knew I had to tag along. We strolled around on a mild January day along the Freedom Trail and through Faneuil Hall Marketplace. We ate chowder and lobster. In the days to follow, I hopped on public transit and explored the city myself. I met up with a friend who introduced me to the glory of cannoli; I didn’t have near enough time to wander through the Museum of Fine Arts
Some cities are fun to visit. Chicago is this for me. Visiting Chicago is one thing; I’ve been there at least a half-dozen times. And it’s fine. But I have no desire to live there.
Then there are other cities. Like Madison. We grew to love it there. Eventually, plenty of people knew our names. Though we ultimately left Madison behind, a piece of my heart still resides there. And like Boston. I have to admit, even just on that short visit: it felt like it could have been home.
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I realize the irony of this, writing it from where I live now, only 25 minutes from where I grew up. I did my undergrad in Iowa and we spent the loveliest five years in Madison and now here I am, a decade out from college, a full five years of being planted in the same place. Of course, I’m romanticizing Boston. It really did feel, during our visit, like I could live there. But who knows, if Tyson hadn’t shown up, what would have happened. I graduated college deep into a recession. Who's to say it would have worked out, that I would have actually had the chance to move out there, that Boston would have been all that I’d built it up to be in my head?
Still, I’d be lying if I said I put those running away feelings behind me. The opening chords of “Boston” still pull out that feeling in me, they still make me feel as though I could pack it all up and leave it all behind and head out east. Where no one knows my name. It sounds more charming than haunting to me.
I originally played these songs as a girl, then with dreams of the East Coast dancing in my head, as I drove back and forth from the Twin Cities to school. Later, I still played these same songs, but now I drove from Iowa to Madison to visit Tyson, during the year before we got married. I didn’t dream so much of leaving anymore. But I burned these tracks onto CDs, the tail end of the mix CD era. I’m not sure, but I might have the original CDs stashed away somewhere. The songs still meant something to me even if I wasn’t planning to fly away quite as far as I’d once imagined.
It’s not a mix CD, but I did put together a Spotify playlist. It’s a little moody and a little emo and a little folksy and a little country and a little cheesy and a little lyric-heavy. Mostly, they’re the songs I lean into when I’m feeling my most wistful Enneagram 4-y. It’s a bit of a mish-mosh but these are the songs I think of when that flying away feeling takes hold of me. They’re all, in some way, about searching for something. As The Chicks asked, who doesn’t know what I’m talking’ about?
