A Modern-Day Manual to the Midwest

Ria Dhingra

 Start your car. Drive. Find something to do—make sure it’s something worthwhile. Let’s go over our options: walk in an empty mall food court, loiter in a nursery, take a lap around the lake, or end up in the same parking lot you always say you won’t go to. None of this seems appealing. I know. Do it anyways. Repetition is better than resigning to do nothing. You’ll regret wasting a weekend afterwards.

 Wasting time. Get good at it. Here, there’s tons of time to kill. A lack of urgency slows life down. Days are long, dreary. There is sanctuary in sleep. Lay in bed until noon and nap again at four. Dream up plots worthy of the big screen, but never actually go to the movies. The popcorn’s overpriced and soon you’ll be able to predict the resolution to each story. Don’t do that to yourself. Your life, like the movies, comes with an ending that’s predetermined. Save yourself the hurt of getting good at guessing.

 Time to run errands. Mow the lawn, clean the house, and trim the hedges. These are the perks of being a homeowner. Now, go grocery shopping. Pick up milk. Remember that your brother prefers Oat and your mother likes Almond. Resist the urge to crash your car—full of plant milk—into a roundabout. Be a good person, know that good people don’t crash their cars on purpose. Take it easy, it’s the Midwest.

 Abide by tradition. Value hard work. Do what others did before you and figure out how to have a good time while doing it. There are no high expectations, just fixed occupations. Follow the path of least resistance. Don’t think too hard.

No, yeah, this makes sense. I’m happy. We’re all happy. How could you not be happy? This is the dream.

 Say sorry. Be polite. Be ditsy. Be cute. Be clumsy, but confident. Walk with purpose, or you’ll lose it. Still, stop to smell the roses. Never stop moving. Become a living juxtaposition. Be independent, but needy. Never admit to needing anyone. Follow these rules.

 Watch your parents go to wine nights, PTA meetings, and bake sales. Help your mother buy a casserole dish. Question when they fully assimilated. Are they happy? Of course, they are. They lost everything, worked for everything, and wished everything upon you. They made it. This was their dream.

 In the springtime, let the temperature shifts shock you back to life. First seventy, then thirty. Hot then cold. Dress in layers. Go to carnivals and concerts and kiss under lamp posts. Pretend that the lights are thousands of tiny moons. Go “up north,” to the lake. See the real moon. Fall in love. This isn’t all that bad.

 Go on dates at drive-ins. Make sure it’s not with a boy from high school, or else everyone will know. Remember, here, we have no secrets. Play it safe. Get a summer job. Or two. Keep yourself busy. Get interested, but never invested. This goes for both boys and jobs. Divest all and any desire. Keep a level head.

 Winter chills will freeze both the Earth and your freedom. Try not to panic. Your first defense to frigidity will be to fidget. Don’t do that. Work to recall life in the winter and learn to live for the summers. Find motion in the form of work and beauty in the form of snow. Focus on projects

and papers and promises. Buy candles. The sun will start setting at a quarter before four. Romanticize working under the cover of darkness and pray you won’t lose yourself to it.

 Try to leave. Go to college. Actually admit you’re from the suburbs when peers ask. They’ll all guess it anyways. Get cultured. Sample success. Try not to get hooked on the taste, you’ll be left forever chasing. Come back for summers and to argue politics at Thanksgiving dinners. This will become your new routine.

 Shove your ambitions into bottles and break them under bridges. Smash plates and heartbreak and any hope for opportunity. Be sure to bring garbage bags to clean up all the broken pieces. Dance with doubt. Get married. Don’t make a mess or wallow for too long.

 Yeah no, I’m not okay. Nobody is. How can they be? This is the dream.

 Stop. You’re privileged, comfortable, sheltered, and only just learning to become more self-

 aware. You don’t know enough. Try leaving, actually leaving. Not to college, but the real world. Try leaving, we dare you. You’ll last ten minutes. You’re not smart enough.

 Don’t dwell on it. Just come home. Darling, come home. Be comfortable. Be content. Stay

 idealistic. Stay soft. Stay hopeless. That’s how you win. Show them resilience by retaining your romanticism.

 Get a license to kill. Go to a shooting range. Practice. Go daily. Get good. Tell no one. Never buy a gun—we live in the part of the Midwest that hates those. For the first time, feel powerful. Revel in it.

Sometimes, when you wake up to the sound of singing birds, your restlessness will finally subside. You’ll be at peace. Other times, you’ll wish you had that gun to shoot the birds. Relax. Both reactions are only temporary.

 Read stories of peers who “made it.” Tell yourself they’re not happy. How can they be? Their dreams come at the price of leaving home. This is your home. You owe it to home, to

community, to stay. Here, we all owe each other lots of things.

 Be a good neighbor. Shovel their driveway, then get driven to school. Help one another through blackouts and thunderstorms and injury. Nanny their children and rush them to the basement when the tornado sirens blare. Have those children cheer for you at graduation or anywhere.

Adore them and be adored. You’ll never find this kind of love anyplace else.

 In spring, a robin builds a nest and lays tiny blue eggs at your windowpane. This is your new project. Get attached. You worry a hawk will break these eggs. Go to Home Depot, buy chicken wire, and encase the nest in it. Cut a hole big enough for a mother bird, but not a hawk. Line the hole with fabric so the mother stays safe. Spent an entire afternoon bent backwards out your bedroom window.

 The mother never returns. You’ve confused her. Remove your makeshift cage and hope she changes her mind. She doesn’t. You stare at the eggs each morning, and feel responsible for their abandonment. For the first time in your life, allow your heart to truly break.

Somehow, the eggs still hatch. Hearing the babies’ cries, the mother actually returns. Feel joy, pure unadulterated joy. Feel wonder. Get hooked. Find it in car rides and the stars. Taste it in

cups of tea and at family dinners served in new casserole dishes. Learn to get excited. Look for joy because you need it to persist. Negate novelty, but don’t settle for simplicity.

 Become a traveler in your own right. Explore every coffee shop, strip mall, and state park.

 There’s more, here, in the Midwest than what originally meets the eye. Stop at every strange road-side attraction. Never ask for directions and always take the long way home. Master footpaths missing from maps. Find harbors hidden in prairies. Trek up knolls with picnic baskets, siblings, and telescopes. Fight off mosquitos with old badminton rackets. Light sparklers with old candles and throw them down the driveway. Create your own shooting stars.

 Turn shallow rivers into waterparks. Build tire swings and tree forts. Sneak out with friends to jump into ravines. Hit one hundred on the highway. Stand on the center console to stick your upper body out the sunroof. Scream just for the sake of it. Learn to grow up without giving up. Become a protector of baby birds. For once, the story starts to seem more interesting than the ending seems worrisome. This is life, and it’s still far from perfect—you finally see it now.

 Spend a night out on the docks, stay up to watch the sunrise, and skinny dip in the lake afterwards. Score the skin of a friend with an ink dipped sewing needle, twin tattoos drawn out on a Tuesday. Marvel at the marks you’ve made. The mark you still can make. Carefully pour one bottle of ambition into a large wine glass. Drink it. Get drunk. Share. Realize everyone else smashes bottles too. Of course, they do. So, smash some. Save some. Share some. Survive.

 Find book shops and thrift stores and new places to park the car. Get up early. Stay up late. Stretch time far and wide. Drive into the city and see yourself reflected in the windows of every skyscraper. Yes, you’re moving forward.

Yeah, no, for sure, you learn—I learn—to be an odd sort of happy. Anyone else here would too. After all, this can be the dream.