If you had asked me at any point before approximately two weeks ago what I thought of my hometown, I would have given you a 10-minute spiel on how I would never return to that god-forsaken place. But, as I stood in my driveway at 3 a.m. two Tuesdays ago amidst the brisk, 60-degree air and smelt the faint scent of lawn fertilizer and oak trees, crying over a Dollar General that hadn’t been there over winter break, I would tell you that my answer has changed.
If you had asked me a month ago to tell you about my experience growing up in Spring Lake, Michigan, a sleepy town not even five miles west of Lake Michigan, I would have told you that I cried legitimate tears of joy when I graduated high school. I was fully prepared to walk away from the red and gray colors of my school that I had not proudly worn for four years, gladly exchanging them for maize and blue and never once looking back.
I might have told you how, in the eighth grade, I once sat in the locker room to eat my lunch instead of braving the perfectly lethal faces of my classmates, too anxious to walk past and potentially hear whispers about myself. Or, how I worked the same country club job for four years, braving flirtatious comments from members in exchange for extra summer cash. All of my life, I had worked towards escaping Spring Lake. I studied and participated in extracurriculars to ensure I could go to a college far enough away from home to set myself up for a life where I would never have to go back.
But, alone in my Ann Arbor apartment in May after my freshman year of college, sitting on an old, cigarette-burned couch with a snoring black cat in my lap, I realized how utterly alone I was. With all of my newfound friends having moved home, I had next to no one to hang out with and nothing on my to-do list other than to work the three jobs I had lined up for my summer in Ann Arbor. But I started to realize how desperately I wanted to feel the sand of the Spring Lake Public Beach underneath my feet and wake up to my mother’s terrible rendition of “You Are My Sunshine.” I found myself longing for the familiar laughs of my high school friends and the sounds of my brother screaming at his Rocket League video game in the basement. The absence of the people that I loved and the loneliness that I felt pressed against my chest at every moment throughout the day, and it made me long for Spring Lake in a way that I hadn’t since I left.
Not more than a month into my new solitary living situation, I sat at my kitchen counter on the verge of tears. I had made myself a copycat version of the Olive Garden chicken scampi — a recipe I had nearly perfected — but it wasn’t quite right. In every bite, I remembered all of the Diet Coke’s I split with my mom and cheesecake bites shared with my brother every time we visited that strange “Italian” place. It was that feeling of loneliness — and remembrance — that broke something in me so thoroughly. In an exhaustion and food-induced state of panic (and probably slight mania), I packed up the bare essentials, including my kitten, affectionately named Juno baby, and drove the two-and-a-half hours home to Spring Lake. Around 3 a.m. I reached Exit 9 and merged onto M-104. I saw the Magnum Coffee roastery that had nursed many early morning headaches and Corner Market where I would buy snacks after school, but there was something different from my otherwise unchanged surroundings.
Across the intersection before the final turn to my house, a brand-new Dollar General sat. I pulled into my driveway, cat carrier in hand and stood looking at it. And suddenly, I began to cry. It was such a minuscule change — it’s not like it was out of the ordinary for new businesses to be added to our tourist town. But I think what pushed me over the edge was the fact that I hadn’t cared enough to ask my brother, mother or anyone I left behind in Spring Lake what was new. Of course, I kept up with my family and friends back home enough, but standing in my driveway staring at the monstrosity of the yellow-and-black sign that adorned that Dollar General, I wondered if perhaps my town had left me behind too.
No matter how much I wish I didn’t have to acknowledge that the familiarity of home is comforting, even if all of my memories in Spring Lake weren’t the happiest, it’s the truth. I was ashamed to admit that I needed to move home — that I was struggling too much living alone. I believed so sincerely that by building walls of resentment around my heart regarding my hometown, I alone had adequately prepared myself to move out and never come back. In truth, though, I realized I’d failed to recognize just how much Spring Lake had actually given me.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, recent Spring Lake High School graduate Isabella Donaldson commented on her own experience growing up in Spring Lake.
“My dad was the bar manager at Jack’s at the (local) Holiday Inn,” she said. “This led to a lot of the community knowing my family when we would go out and about in the town … The one thing that stands out to me about this town is the sense of community. Everyone seems to know everyone.”
When asked about her experience in the Spring Lake Public Schools, Donaldson had fond memories of support from teachers and fellow students.
“My time attending (Spring Lake Public Schools) was amazing,” she said. “As someone who lives on the autism spectrum, I struggled to make friends because I didn’t know how to communicate properly, and it would sometimes take me longer to understand things my classmates picked up on quickly. If it hadn’t been for the amazing teachers and students, I would not be the person I am today.”
The saying “it takes a village to raise a child,” never truly resonated with me until my drive home. I thought back to all of the carpools, guidance and tears shed on the shoulders of my friends, teachers and community members throughout my adolescent years. Growing up with a single mother, people always stepped in where and when they could to help out and, frankly, raise me and my brother. Spring Lake hadn’t just given me a litany of not-so-pleasant memories, but also the ability to even go to college and function as I am today. I missed everyone who had played a part in my life up until that point, and I needed to go home. I needed to be with my people.
Living alone is truly difficult. I don’t just mean living without your parents, transitioning into the era of roommates and lofted dorm beds, but really living alone. Globally, this phenomenon of aloneness that we deem “adulthood” isn’t actually the norm. The United States is one of the only countries that encourages college-aged “adults” to move out for good at 18.
It is said that the adolescent brain is not fully developed until 25 years old, so how are 18 and 19 year-olds expected to, well, up and go? Others, like myself, have spent the past 18 or so years being comforted by the monotony of everyday life living at home with their parents, so when push comes to shove, many college students struggle with adapting to living alone.
Upon my return to Spring Lake that fateful Tuesday night, I had a score to settle. Perhaps my way to thank Spring Lake for what it had given me was making peace with the fact that this place is where I come from, that it’s my roots. Standing in the citrus luminescence of that damn Dollar General sign, I concluded that perhaps it was okay to find comfort in the beauty of the small community that raised me. Sure, two wrong left turns and I might end up back at an old friend’s (or fling’s) house and, sure, I might see every teacher who’s ever taught me at the local grocery store but, despite this, I found myself taking in a deep breath at the familiarity of it all. The local WESCO attendants know my name (if not only for the sheer amount of midnight slushie runs and sneaky late-night snack trips with my friends in the summer); the small-business owners are always happy to strike up a conversation and community members take the time out of their day to sit through tedious interviews about COVID-19 recollections. I thought to myself, maybe it’s not as bad as I had made it out to be. So, I turned around in the driveway, walked into my home, and went to bed pondering if I have a summer crush on this sleepy town.
In an interview with The Daily, former Spring Lake police officer and school board member Curt Theune commented on the Spring Lake community as well.
“We are a very philanthropic community,” Theune said. “I mean, I’m looking at my position on the school board right now and with a bond that recently passed for the kids to be able to continue not only sports, but the fine arts. I mean, that field house is going to have a 70-yard synthetic turf and it is meant for band.”
While I may not have served on the Spring Lake School Board or had a stellar high school experience, I found myself nodding along with Theune’s and Donaldson’s recounts of the happiness Spring Lake has brought them. Their words echoed in my head for a couple of days after our interviews. Perhaps I had been so shrouded in the belief that all Spring Lake had to offer was negativity and close-mindedness, that I had become close-minded myself. Their stories are two of what I’m sure are many wonderful experiences living in Spring Lake, and just because I didn’t have that for myself doesn’t make this place entirely horrendous.
It’s been nearly two weeks of familiar hometown bliss, and so far I have reconnected with old friends, bought snacks from Corner Market and yelled at my brother for screaming at his video games way too loudly. I have yet to enter the new Dollar General, not just because it’s new, but because I know it won’t smell good in there and there’s no reason to subject myself to that experience. However, I do keep finding new pockets of peace in this town, and I’m slowly but surely replacing all of the bitterness I once harbored for this place with a sort of calm content. Instead of shuddering at the thought of running into old classmates in the local coffee shops, I instead sit proudly by myself, working on whatever piece of writing I happen to be consumed with. I can’t erase all of the times I posted on my private Snapchat story that “I hate it here” (thank you, Taylor Swift, for writing a song I never knew I needed in high school) but I can change the way I see my hometown now.
No longer will I be haunted by petty rumors and snarl at my mother when she wakes me with her singing. Spring Lake is changing, and so will I. I don’t know if it will be for the better, but I do know that I can’t spend my life hating the place that made me the woman I am today. I think tomorrow I’ll go to the beach.
Statement Deputy Editor Anna McLean can be reached at agmclean@umich.edu.
The post I kind of don’t hate my hometown anymore appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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