Laughs and Lobotomies

I am the only one in my family from Iowa, but we moved back to Pennsylvania before I was 6.  For years and years I would tell people I was from Iowa.  I would insist.  I would tell other kids how wonderful a place it was.  I was so angry we left.  That everything and everyone I knew and loved – was left behind.  We were happy there.  But the longer the years carried on, the more the memories faded.  The sillier it felt to call a place home that I had only lived for the first few years of my life.  So at some point I stopped telling people I was from Iowa.  And I began to believe it myself.  But it will always be home.  It will always be where I am really from.