Last weekend

Rocky, Victor and I

Walked around our neighborhood,

Hamline-Midway,

Me with my camera

Around my neck,

Bouncing on my chest

As I walked,

Pushing Rocky’s stroller,

Victor walking next to us in his

Swishy snow pants,

His begloved hand

Resting on the stroller handle.

The sky was utterly blue,

Cloudless,

And the winter sun was

Small and hard,

Throwing symmetrical noon shadows from the

Southern sky.

I was out looking for

Cool stuff to

Photograph

In my

Neighborhood.

In Hamline-Midway, this

Gritty,

Authentic,

Sketchy,

Dynamic neighborhood where

I’ve lived for

Six years.

Growing up in the suburbs of St. Paul,

I was restless for a more

Complicated ambiance than the

1980s housing tract

Surrounded by marshland

My parents lovingly provided,

And I rushed into the city

As soon as I started college.

But it’s taken me a

Long,

Long time to

Get a grip on the trade-offs of

City living.

When we first started looking for

Houses in 2008,

I’d listed to our realtor

All the neighborhoods I wanted to

Look in,

And seeing my price range,

He’d mentioned the

Midway.

“No way,” I’d said.

“Really? Midway?

Isn’t that kind of

Ghetto?”

“There are some nice

Neighborhoods back there,”

He’d said.

“Affordable.”

And so we’d bought our

Salmon-colored

1920’s bungalow,

Six of us in this

Little house,

Winter boots shoved in corners

Because there are no coat closets,

Refrigerator in the back hallway,

Visitors wedged

Hip-to-hip on the

Couches in the

Small living room.

And the neighborhood:

The empty shopping carts

Tipped over on snowbanks,

The pained stories on the neighborhood

Facebook page of

Home break-ins and

Cars rifled through,

The homeless folks with their

Cardboard signs

At the main intersections.

For the past couple years,

I’ve been

Planning my escape,

Emailing regularly with my

Mortgage banker and

Meeting with our realtor about

Plans and

Plans:

A bigger, nicer house in a

“Better” neighborhood.

But deep down,

I knew I hadn’t really given

This house and

This neighborhood

A chance.

And I suspected that if I

Moved to a

Beautiful house in a

Whiter,

Richer

Neighborhood,

I would realize too late how

Valuable to my

Life experience

This house and this neighborhood has been.

How the century-old buildings

Fascinate

For all the

Life that’s been

Lived in them.

How living as neighbors with

People who’ve had

Very few breaks in life

Has helped me find my

Voice as a writer who

Writes about

People of privilege encountering

Marginalized people

And having their worldview challenged.

I’ve always suspected that

This is a precious place in the world.

That there’s real life going on here,

Life that’s not always easy,

Life where things don’t

Fall into place,

Complicated life.

Rich life.

In a two-block radius from our house,

There’s a

Russian tea house with

Line-around-the-block pierogies,

A men’s drug and alcohol treatment center,

A pawn shop,

A porn shop,

The best Thai restaurant

In the Cities,

A surplus store displaying a

Real iron lung (not for sale),

An Ethiopian restaurant,

A drum shop,

A used book store with

Surly signs in the windows about

No bus waiting and

No kids without parents,

A 1940s-era nightclub with a

Mosaic scene of

Cowboys artifying an

Exterior wall.

Recently, we’ve decided to stay.

To add on to this house we might be able to

Actually pay off some day,

To recommit to this neighborhood.

And as soon as we’d made that decision,

My eyes started seeing it:

All the art that’s here.

The architectural details,

The mosaic designs.

And the funny,

Humble people who believe enough in

This place

To make this art.

I needed to act on my re-commitment,

And so the picture day.

The day I started seeing how

Rich this

Hamline-Midway is: