Viewing the Lone Star Through a Rearview Window
Or why I decided to write about being a Midwesterner living in Texas
“I don’t want to raise Texans.”
My husband Jeff immediately shut down my suggestions that Texas would be a good place to settle if we were going to head south.
After two miserable winters in Indiana, the two of us were ready to leave the Midwest where both of us had spent most of our lives, and head south to somewhere warmer. I wasn’t happy in Fort Wayne and Jeff was just ready for something different.
We looked at options and the more we looked, the better Texas looked to us. It was new, different, and offered warm winters. We figured we would find a way to get used to the heat and humidity.
I was offered a teaching position just north of Houston and that was it. Despite my husband’s misgivings about raising Texans, we moved our four and six-year-old 1000 miles southeast, and for six years we called the state home. It wasn’t perfect, but most of the time we loved our adopted state, and until the last six months, we couldn’t imagine a situation where we would be convinced to return home to the Midwest.
In the early summer of 2021, we did make that difficult decision. We had faced personal trauma and the walls of the vast state felt like they were closing in. Suddenly being closer to family and in a place that we knew would welcome us back seemed like the right decision.
But even as we have gladly settled back into life in the Indianapolis area, I still cannot say that I regret that we ever lived in Texas. Those six years taught us so much about ourselves, our family, and our country. I feel like living in Texas made me a better citizen because I have a better understanding of a region of the country that many find absolutely perplexing.
To many non-Texans, the entire state is a giant mystery, and yet the second-largest state in the Union has dominated discussions of America since the fall of the Alamo. I laugh to myself every time I teach Bram Stoker’s Dracula and I read Dr. Seward’s comment about the Texan Quincey Morris: “What a fine fellow is Quincey! I believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy’s death as any of us, but he bore himself through it like a moral Viking. If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world indeed.” When I studied in London, every attempt by the British students to speak in an American accent sounded like a Texan caricature. And the state politics seem to have far too much influence in our national politics.
Six years there taught us a lot, and some of the most important lessons were about just how misunderstood and misrepresented much of Texas is in the greater conversation. And while I wrote about some of it while we were living there, the truth is there were things I couldn’t see from up close and there were things I couldn’t write about when I had to still look my friends in the face, because the very good is often intertwined with the toxic. After two years back in Indiana, I’ve been able to see things from a distance, and now it is time to write about and remember what our years in the Lone Star State taught us and gave us.
I want to help outsiders understand that the state is not a monolith, that the geography and politics and culture are not all one thing. I want moderates and liberals to know that they are seen and that I still believe that change is coming, because otherwise, leadership wouldn’t be fighting so hard against it. And I want to embrace the good memories that temporarily made Texas home for this Midwest girl.
As we keep hearing about how divided we are as a country, I want to show that we are more alike than we believe. I want to show that not all Texans are a reflection of what we see coming out of the Texas statehouse. I want to be a voice for Texans frustrated with what outsiders see.
So once a month for as long as I have material, I will write a piece about our life and lessons learned while living south. I invite you to join me on this journey, if only as a way to better understand a region of the country that makes you regularly shake your head. If you have questions that you would like to see answered, please put them in the comments below. And share with others. We are better as a country when we seek to understand those who live outside of our regions.
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I look forward to your “Texas series.”
I adore Texas.
As a Brit it (Houston) was the first place overseas I ever went. I did an internship there for 3 months. The people were so warm, the scenery so much greener than I’d envisaged and the Bluebell ice cream they had back in 95 was out of this world!!!
I could not have hoped for a better introduction to the US than my time spent in Texas and when I was there I noticed many inhabitants had moved there from the Mid West.