I Don't Want to Give Up on Indiana
And those of us living in red states shouldn't be asked to do so
We ended up in Indiana entirely by accident.
Well, at least we originally ended up in Indiana entirely by accident.
I had dreamed of moving to Colorado after I graduated from college. My eight weeks of student teaching in Denver convinced me I didn’t want to return to that school, but I still wanted to move to the home of the Rocky Mountains and miles of blue sky.
Unfortunately, my first teaching position was at a school on the far south side of Chicago, close to the Illinois/Indiana border. My new husband was still working in Michigan as an intern, and the cost of living was significantly higher on the Illinois side of the border. We decided to find an apartment in Indiana, and we two newlyweds began our daily commute in opposite directions to separate states.
We kept it up for three years, but I never considered Indiana home. It was where we lived. All I ever saw was the industrial corner of Northeast Indiana shifting into farmland as we got closer to Michigan. All I knew of the state was the small corner I drove through during the five years I was attending college in Nebraska and the farmland I got lost in as a high school senior when a friend, my little sister, and I stretched our independence by driving ourselves to a youth retreat in Ohio.
But even when I decided it was time to move on to another teaching position and get out of Chicagoland, we didn’t leave the state. Shortly after I accepted a position in Indianapolis, I got a phone call from the Lutheran high school in Vail, Colorado. This would have fulfilled a long-time dream, but I felt nothing. I had no desire to even consider talking to the school. I wasn’t just excited about my new teaching position; I was excited about living in Indianapolis. It felt like home, and for the next five years of our marriage, it was.
Over the next ten years we would spend five years in Indy and then five years in Fort Wayne after my husband Jeff was transferred when his company moved operations. I desperately missed our lives in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne never felt like home. When we Midwesterners grew tired of two brutal winters, we started looking for something different and moved to Texas for next six years.
We loved Texas. No really, we did. There was a lot to love about the Lone Star State. But when our lives fell apart through a series of events, I finally told my Jeff I wanted to return home.
I didn’t want to return to Michigan, where our parents lived right around the corner from each other.
I wanted to return to Indianapolis. I wanted to return our two Hoosier-children to the state of their birth. I wanted to return to the city we had fallen in love with when we were two twenty-somethings finally figuring out adulthood. I wanted to return to Indiana state parks. I wanted to return to the Midwest.
I’m a lifelong Christian on a years-long faith reconstruction journey that includes full acceptance of my political homelessness while firmly standing on the side of the pro-democracy coalition of misfits. That sentence alone could convince anyone left of center that I was crazy to choose to return to Indiana, especially after leaving the equally conservative stronghold in Texas. After all, our family could have returned to our parents’ conservative corner of purple Michigan, where a Democratic governor and legislature continue to care for the entire state.
But we didn’t. We moved back to what we once joked is the northernmost Southern state. We moved back to a state we had escaped from when we decided we couldn’t take the cold anymore. We moved back to a state we never wanted to call home in the first place.
Why?
I think John Green stated it best in his book Anthropocene Reviewed: “You gotta live somewhere.”1
But honestly, it’s more than that.
Here’s something I never thought I would say: I love Indiana.
Not like I love the sandy shores of Lake Michigan. Not like I love the snow-covered peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Not even like I love the rugged canyons and desert landscape of West Texas.
But I do love Indiana.
I love living in a mid-sized city that hosts huge events, including Final Fours, Big 10 Championships, and Taylor Swift. I love camping and hiking in Indiana state parks. I love perfect Indiana summer nights when the sunset paints a canvas over the cornfields by our house. I love that first big snow, which isn’t guaranteed in central Indiana, but we’ve been lucky enough to experience it over the past four years since moving back.
But moving from one red state to another in this particular political climate hasn’t been easy either.
We had the emotional and financial capital to make one move, and we knew we needed to make it count. We were moving one year into a global pandemic that hadn’t disappeared. We bought a house outside of Indianapolis in one of the surrounding red counties, well aware that we would be political minorities.
Yet, I also knew that if I wanted to make a difference, even a small difference, I would have an easier time doing it in Indiana than I ever would in Texas. There I was an outsider, a Midwestern interloper with Yankee ideas. Here, a Midwesterner is still a Midwesterner. Sure Hoosiers, Michiganders, and Buckeyes are known to eye each other with suspicion and make jokes at each others’ expense, but when the shit hits the fan, state lines and even politics don’t matter.2
Indiana may currently turn red on the electoral map right now, but it isn’t just red. It isn’t even just red with some tiny blue dots. Numbers don’t lie: there are a lot more blue dots than it appears at first glance. I walk around my red county shopping and going to school events and trying to get involved in my community well aware that most of the people I encounter probably voted for Donald Trump, but 32% of voters voted for Kamala Harris. That means that one-third of the people I encounter every day might have voted for Harris.
Some days, that knowledge is enough to keep me going.
I’m tired of the angry posts from people who say we Hoosiers voted for this. The reality is 41% of Indiana voters did not vote for our current national situation. In fact, 45% of Indiana voters did not vote for our current state government situation. Our neighbor to the south had fewer Democratic presidential voters than Indiana did, and they have a successful Democratic governor.
Many of us have love/hate relationships with our home states. Like the family member everyone talks about, we have no problems talking trash about our home, but we don’t want to hear it from anyone not living within our borders. We might ask for advice, but we want it to be helpful. Sometimes we just need a listening ear and emotional support. Sometimes we need a nudge. And we are all well aware that state lines are arbitrary boundaries that don’t hold back monsters that want to travel back and forth.
Like it or not, we’re all in this together. There is no way out of this boat. Canada and Mexico aren’t going to start annexing states, nor would they want to. Because none of our states are monoliths. None of our states subscribe to a single political theory or belief. And we are a union of 50 very different states.
One of our strengths as a nation has always been the diversity that comes from a nation formed of many states.
One of our weaknesses as a nation has frequently been a motley crew of states with unique needs, wants, and experiences.
But through it all, we’ve always been the United States, imperfectly seeking a more perfect union.
And that is what we need to keep working toward now.
Because, for better or for worse, there really is no going back.
The only way we are going to build a better, stronger union on the foundation given to us nearly 250 years ago is if we stop giving up on the states that disappoint us, because even we have something to bring to the table.
So I’m going to keep standing up for my adopted home state because I don’t want to give up on her, and I shouldn’t have to. This is my home too, even when it makes me want to throw things.
Other Red State writers worth following
(I’ll gladly take any suggestions for additions to this list.)
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In the chapter “Indianapolis,” he writes about moving to Indianapolis with his wife only two years after my husband Jeff and I moved to Indy the first time. Green never intended to stay, and he’s never left the region. He recounts his wife asking the employee at U-Haul what he thought of living in Indianapolis. That was his response. And yeah, you do have to live somewhere. Apparently, it is good enough for both my family and John Green’s family.
Unfortunately, exceptions are always made for Chicagoans. Michiganders refer to Illinois and Indiana tourists as FIPs, but there’s a special kind of dislike for those coming from Chicagoland. Personally, I don’t get it. I truly love Chicago. And if I’m being honest, if I had to deal with traffic on the Eisenhauer every single day, I’d be a little testy too.
Fellow lifelong Hoosier (rural Huntington County). Our Democratic Party in our county was one of the top counties to trend more blue this time. We have a long way to go, but we keep filling the ballot and taking baby steps.
Hello! I live in very red Marshall County, where I run the Solid Waste district and recycling depot. I spend a lot of time with elected officials, and it can be pretty discouraging, because it’s very red here. However, we are still here after 30 years, even after our two grown daughters have moved away. We are geographically center to most of our family, including our aging parents, so we don’t feel that now is the time to move away. But there are some nice things about living here. We live on our main street, so we can walk downtown. We’ve made some good friends who are lonely liberals like us. Ha ha. Community is where you find it.