Breadcrumbs Across the Midwest

Part I: Milwaukee, scene of late adolescent turmoil

It was a whirlwind two weeks. Two of the best weeks of my entire life, without a hint of hyperbole. I found all the places I went looking for, and at the risk of being unbearably cheesy and clichéd, found things I never expected and didn’t know I needed.

It was easier than I thought to find the places I was looking for, and not just because of the wonder of my iPhone and Maps. Without knowing addresses, I found that after I located my favorite coffee place and started wandering, my old apartments appeared as if by magic. Please believe me when I say I have the actual worst sense of direction on the planet. Once, my mom and I stumbled into a janitor’s closet at the airport because we were trying to literally to read the exact angle of the signs pointing us to the escalator, missing the waves of people directly to our left. I do not have intuition when it comes to anything spatial, and usually if I am trying to find my way somewhere I identify my gut reaction and then do the opposite. There is no muscle memory when it comes to me finding my way around, whether the locations are ancient history or familiar and frequently traveled.

And yet as my brother and I walked the streets of Milwaukee, I somehow drifted right to both my old apartments, recognizing them without any photos, only memories blurry from the haze of 20+ years and recollections from the perspective of a turbulent late adolescent haze. There they were, just like that. I found the diner we used to call “Narnia,” because when we wandered there late at night, it felt like we had entered a portal to another dimension. I couldn’t remember its real name, and yet, there it was. (The Comet, in case you were wondering.) We just walked, and places appeared.

The Airbnb we rented for the weekend was remarkably, and purely accidentally, close to the neighborhood we used to live in, making our pedestrian discoveries easy. The building—old architecture, wood floors, small bedrooms and kitchen—reminded me of one of the old homes I lived in when I was barely 22, unsettled, untethered, wild and not in a good way. Somehow inhabiting a space whose energy evoked that old house from years past, now in my adult body with the mind and energy of a 44-year-old mother/writer/friend/teacher, gave me a peace I hadn’t known I needed. It was a whisper to the past version of me who felt so ill at ease, so uncertain, so ungrounded. You’re going to be fine. Better than fine.

And it was a gift to the present day version of me to remember that after enduring the necessary phase of life where you had no idea what the fuck you were doing, I had eventually landed into the self I had always longed for. It was a homecoming cloaked in soothing layers of understanding and a clearer purpose.

I found all my old haunts, the pub where I spectacularly threw up all over my shoes after getting food poisoning, the downtown historic apartment building where I first fell in love with the city, my favorite bright yellow and purple iconic coffee shop, the streets where my co-intern and I panhandled for “entertainment cash” as she yodeled with her guitar and I held a sign wearing orange pleather pants and a black wig (true story). We found the super-cool apartment we had yearned to rent but didn’t; it was above Atomic Records (how badass, an actual record shop, sadly now closed) and it had a roof patio. We would have gotten into so much trouble had we ended up living there, alas.

And I got to do all of this adventuring and excavation with my brother, who had been my companion during an especially intense life stage, and now we were able to experience each other in this old place but with new psyches, no family members or jobs or pets or real life to distract us from our connection. It was beautiful.

I started every day with coffee on the balcony, wrapped in a blanket sometimes as it was blissfully overcast and chilly, journaling and meditating and doing my usual woo rituals. We walked for hours every day, had fantastic food and bougie cocktails during the afternoons and evenings, and at night drank rose, did DIY spa treatments, and listened to our favorite music. I needed a recharge, and this was it.

Here are some of my favorite pictures of my step-retracing. Next up, my trip to Iowa which was perhaps even more profound. I couldn’t stop crying for days after it ended. (Fortunately, I returned to the gift of seeing Taylor Swift’s Eras concert in Denver with my girls, a college bestie and her daughter, and then Tori Amos for my birthday after that. You guys don’t want to see photos and videos of that, do you? Speak now! 😉 #IYKYK) Stay tuned for my next post, in which we explore the myriad treasures of Iowa, both mundane and extraordinary.)

Snapshots of Milwaukee

If you aren’t subscribed yet, please do! Hopefully Substack interrupted your reading multiple times to suggest that option. . . 😉 And you can keep up with latest episodes of The Mother Plus Podcast right here, where I’ll also be chronicling my memoir process, brainstorming with Stacey ways to survive summer, and sharing my favorite woo-woo rituals and practices. See you next week for the Iowa edition of my travels!

XOXO,

Steph