Oh Tumalo

Oh Tumalo, I didn’t even know how to pronounce your name correctly. (I still don’t say it correctly.) It wasn’t until I overheard someone say it to another on the phone that I realized I didn’t really know you. What I do known is you’re a petite, not-famous township right outside Bend. You were kind to me, just like my Andover has been. You’re not popular and were described by the more recognized towns nearby – just like my Andover. You were un-forgivingly hot, but offered to show me sights my Andover could never (even if she wanted to). We saw mountains and fields of flowers and waterfalls that actually had water running down them. We ate burgers and street tacos and enjoyed skillet cookies at food trucks. We got gas pumped by kind, bald, tattooed men, bought ice from creepy clerks, and binged Blockbuster films (we both know it was just Grease on repeat). You allowed me to drive ninety in a fifty-five and not think about work for a week. (Andover would have surely scolded me). Oh, the freedom you gave me. 

I can say I loved you, oh Tumalo, and that would not be a lie. Mistakenly, I may say I fell in love with you, but as I think about my Andover… I must think about my brothers and sisters, my nieces and nephews, the park that I first learned how to accomplish the monkey bars on, the windy roads I traveled miles on that my feet know well, the names of the streets I memorized when I first learned to drive, the neighbors down the block with the same last name as mine, the corner I flipped my bike and got a scrape I was too embarrassed to let my mom see, the dogs that attacked and left more than one kind of scar; all the elements that made up…me. When I think about these things, I know, oh Tumalo, you are still a dream and I loved you so, but my Andover will always be home.