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Favorite quote from this section: “Setting out in this world, a child feels so indelible. He only comes to find out later that it’s all the others along his way who are making themselves indelible to him.” - Eudora Welty

As I read in Eudora Welty’s essay “The Little Store,” I thought of how people identify with where they are from, and I thought about where I am from. When I was younger, I always considered myself to be from Arizona. The first day of class in Michigan, every year, I would stand up and tell everyone that Arizona was my homeland. But, that isn’t true. I barely remember living there, my only memories are of a hot desert sun and watching my brothers play T-ball. Hardly a place I can claim identity to. If people questioned my affinity with Arizona, I had a back-up. North Carolina. Now here was a place I could somewhat claim. There, I remember so many stories. It was in North Carolina that I had my first best friend; it was there that I was introduced to reading, music and art. So many funny moments, hard times, and grand adventures happened in those Blue Ridge Mountains. But North Carolina was only my home for three years. I was five years old when we moved away.

I’ve always said, “I hate Michigan.” It has been my mantra since the moment I learned that Michigan was a place and not a beverage. I said it as we drove away from my beloved mountains, I said it as I started kindergarten, I said it as I graduated from high school. I hate Michigan.

I don’t know exactly when that statement turned from fact to fiction, but it did. One day, as I sat in my dorm room talking with my dorm friends about our homelands, I freaked out. Somewhere, sometime, my revulsion turned to adoration. My comments turned from, “there is weedy green crap that infects every orifice of the land,” to “in the spring, the sunlight makes the leaves and grass glow like emeralds.” It kind of scared me, but I realized that it was a long time coming, I lived in Michigan for thirteen years. I made some really good friends and some pretty weird enemies. Most of my memories lie in Michigan. Summer days, chillin’ on the triple slide with my best friend, watching the clouds roll by, biking down the “rail trail,” camping at Sleeping bear dunes, making friends with random kids on playgrounds, so many memories.

It’s funny how an opinion of a place can hold for so long, and yet be so off. Even now, with all of my fond memories of my hometown, I have a love hate relationship with the place. The truth is, I am from Michigan. As I read Eudora Welty’s essay “The Little Store,” I realized this, I identify with the place and I know its stories. I know how to drive when there is a foot of snow on an inch of ice over the road, I know the smell of the evergreens after a three day rain shower, I know the feel of black soil and 99% humidity. I may not like it, but I am from Michigan.