Thanks to the Lansing State Journal for publishing my Made in Michigan essay. At the time I was asked, I didn’t even know how much I loved Michigan. At the end of writing this essay, I think I
“We grow up listening to songs by the Beach Boys, like “Kokomo,” where we visit all sorts of exotic islands, and “California Girls” where every region of the United States holds beauty. Tony Bennett even had every girl wanting to search his heart in San Francisco. “Footloose” had us believing every place was better to live than the town we lived in, while Disney begged us to visit a whole new world. We wanted to go to these places without realizing our hearts and our whole new world were in our own backyard. For me, that’s Michigan.
In my early 30s and late 20s, I wanted that whole new Disney World in Florida and wanted that California Beach Dream on a Michigan winter’s day. Some of our greatest milestones happened in other places — we fell in love in Arizona, got engaged in Cleveland and brought in the new year in many states revisited for auld lang syne (old times sake). Wanting to not live in Michigan made me fall in love with Michigan. One of our greatest milestones is saying our nuptials at my place of work. I know. Sounds. So. Lame! Totally not. We got married at the Meridian Township Historical Village and it was absolutely perfect and beautiful in every way. We wed under the gazebo by the pond with historic buildings surrounding us.
