The Local Turn

Family, memory, and the pull of place

I’ve been quiet for a while.

Part of that has been my 80-year-old mother’s health crisis. She’s been struggling with multiple health issues for a while now, but an infection at the beginning of November sent her spiraling, accelerating her physical and cognitive decline. I’ve been back and forth to my hometown of Lima, Ohio four times in the past month, the most time I’ve spent there since I helped my parents move out of their home of 50 years in 2019.

Mom spent a week in the hospital and then 2.5 weeks in a nursing home for rehabilitation. She’s home now. My father is doing the hard work of caregiving, while my sister and I attempt to support as best we can from a few hours away.

Dementia is a terrible thing. There is nothing quite like the experience of sitting with your mother in the nursing home and hearing her process her social anxiety about going to the dining room through the lens of 60-year-old memories of social anxiety in her first year of college. One moment, she’s 18 again. The next she’s trying to figure out why she’s gone back to college at 80. Perhaps the hardest moment was when her physical therapist asked who I was and she didn’t know. She knew I was safe and belonged, but couldn’t name me or our relationship. I spent a lot of time assuring her that her parents (who have been gone for 30+ years) are well and being taken care of.

I’m grateful for the support of others who have walked this path. I’m grateful to walk it with a wonderful sister. And I’m even grateful for those who carefully, lovingly remind me that we’re likely still in early innings of this terrible journey.

Returning to Lima

I’ve lived away from Lima for decades, but being back so often these past weeks has reawakened layers of memories in me.

Lima is a small industrial city of about 35,000, halfway between Dayton and Toledo. It was once a railway hub and industrial center, bustling in the early 20th century. My ancestors, farmers from nearby counties and immigrants from Eastern Europe, came to Lima chasing opportunity in the years before and after 1900. I sometimes think about how those migration patterns, fueled by Lima’s industrial pull, shaped who I am.

This is the place where my mom’s mom used to sell chickens she butchered early on Saturday mornings at the corner of High and Main. She had a loyal customer base. My mom and her siblings would sit on a blanket nearby while she worked, a part of the hustle and bustle of the place.

My own memories of Lima are from the 1980s, when downtown had already hollowed out and the Mall with its animated Christmas displays and Santa’s village had become the place to be. That, too, is mostly gone now.

But lots of life remains and new things are growing. On a snowy Saturday morning, I watched a man on a rickety ladder sanding Victorian trim that had just been uncovered after decades under aluminum siding. People gathered in the town square, ducking into a new coffee shop next to city hall. During my stay, I ate some of the local favorites — Kewpee hamburgers, Lima-style pizza, and the shredded chicken sandwiches that exists nowhere else.

It all fed me.

Lima Town Square early on a cold Saturday morning

Seeing Differently

When I left Lima at 18, I quietly relished the idea that I wouldn’t be back as a resident. I’d escaped, or so I thought. Over time, I shed the rural Ohio colloquialisms (though my kids find it funny when they slip back in), and I came to feel fully at home in cities like Chicago and New York, Seoul and Cape Town. I hate to admit it, but that global ease became a kind of quiet badge of pride.

But something began to shift around 2020. I found myself surrounded by people who shared many of my dearest values, but who spoke with open disdain about “red America.” I remember a conversation just after the 2020 election, when someone born and raised in big cities said she wished we could just be rid of places like “those red counties in Ohio.” I didn’t know how to respond. I sat in stunned silence, feeling torn between worlds.

My children, fluent in urban-global culture, call Lima a “small town.” I remind them that it’s a small city, and more than that, it is a place that is layered, complex, and deeply human. As they become young adults, I they’re starting to see that and to realize that its story is part of theirs. It’s in their bones. I’m grateful for that learning.

Next Steps

My mom’s health and the many trips to Lima are a big part of why I’ve been quiet lately. But there’s something else, a deeper, slower question that’s been unfolding in me.

For much of my adult life, I’ve lived globally. I’ve been fortunate to travel widely, to learn from brilliant people, to feel at home in cities across continents. That life has shaped me. I’m grateful for it. But something in me is shifting.

I no longer feel the need to be everywhere. I feel the need to be somewhere.

That’s not Lima, though it is in my bones. It’s here, where I live now, this West Michigan place that my kids know as “home.” I find myself asking what it would mean to be more deeply rooted in the place where I actually wake up every day. What does it mean to build relationship, to cultivate meaning, to tend the social soil right where I am?

I find that I’m having this conversation with a lot of people with life stories like my own — hearing their desires to be more grounded in a place. That reminds me that I’m neither alone nor crazy.

That’s not to say that I’ll stop paying attention to what happens in far-away places. I can’t let that go. Perhaps, more rooted, I can do that work better. To quote Otto Scharmer: the future of global is local.

Last weekend, I took my kids to the Christmas Tree Festival at the Allen County Museum. I’d not visited this Lima tradition since the early 90s. I felt something settle in me. The trees — decorated by local organizations, clubs, and businesses — were beautiful, gaudy, creative and everything in between. Most importantly, they allowed the community to gather around them and experience traditions and rituals. The “talking evergreen” held court in the general store. Kids poured through the kid-sized “kids’ shop” doorway just like I remember. I ran into a high school friend now leading a civic organization in Lima. I was reminded how much love and labor it takes to hold a community together, especially in fractured times. I saw how memory is not just something we carry. It is something we make together.

These are the questions I’m sitting with now:

How do I show up where I live?

How do I tend the relationships that sustain life and meaning?

What does it look like to stay truly present?

I don’t have answers yet. But I’m listening in new ways.

Some other recent work

One of my goals for 2025 was to finish a writing project. I’m pleased to say that I finished it and hit “publish” in October. The Rush Creek Brethren: A Frontier Congregation in a Changing World (1805-1925) tells the story of a community shaped by a number of my ancestors. It’s a story of how people came together in community in bewildering times of change, how they navigated (and failed to navigate) conflict, and how institutions evolved (or failed to). I had a lot of fun researching and writing it and have appreciated some of the early feedback. Self-publishing local history/genealogy won’t fund my retirement, but it does bring me a lot of joy.