Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania is my junior year of high school (that year my dad took a sabbatical) and me thinking I could be someone else for a year, but finding out that I was, alas, still me. State College, though, was a great town.

Pennsylvania is Gettysburg, just over the border, a half-hour or so away from my Maryland town, where Sue and I would see summer stock and eat cheesecake at the Lincoln Diner. It’s hanging out at Fantasyland when she worked there and with the whole cast between shows. It’s hours and hours at the battlefield with high school buddies and a candlelit picnic at Devil’s Den. It’s biking there later with Tim, in college, then sometimes on weekends when we lived in DC, and even twice in recent memory when we could steal away from family and rent bikes and make it happen. It’s that one time I got a serious case of poison ivy on parts of my body you would not think would be exposed to such a thing. It’s that other time we were resting on a bridge and the bird we’d been looking for—a red-headed woodpecker—landed on a branch above us.

Pennsylvania is college and camp counseling. It’s sugaring at the field station. It’s falling in love, or trying to, or trying not to.

Pennsylvania is my wedding day.

Pennsylvania is my husband’s family and holidays. It’s some beautiful fishing spots. It’s a lot of people I’ve loved since the day we met.

Been there?: Yes