Hello, my name is Morgan

Imagination as necessity and midwest nostalgia — an introductions of sorts

How does one put a date on when they started writing?
When does one start imagining?

I don’t know when I started writing. But as a kid I played make-believe for longer than most, and to my own dismay, had scary dreams well into my teens. But like most kids growing up in the rural midwest, I learned quickly that imagination was necessity. You needed it on those blistering hot summer days when you weren’t quite old enough to be trusted alone at home or to be dropped off at the local pool like other pool rat kids.

Pool Rat was a term I would learn years later working as a lifeguard the summer before college — long after it no longer applied to me or my siblings. A pool rat referred to those kids who got dropped off at the gate before open, dropped off with their pb&js wrapped tight, dropped off rain or shine, regardless of lightning, which kept the water off limits until the last clap or lightning strike had passed by 30 minutes. It makes sense looking back now, parents seeing that a season pass to the local pool with a contraband lunch was considerably cheaper than hiring a babysitter. I wouldn’t doubt the same is still true today. It’s hard to fault those parents, and I know I’m biased. But those summers of my middle-school years being dropped off at the water park with my twin sister and brother were some of the best. Even today it’s hard not to hear certain songs without first thinking “Oh this was on the Wild Water West playlist” (playlist linked here for your listening). Honestly, it was as good a way as any to grow up.

images from pinterest

But before the freedom of pool rats, there was the farm.

My mom would pile my 9 y/o brother Dante, my 8 y/o twin sister Paige, and me into her Toyota and we’d drive 40 mins away to Emery, SD, population 415 people where my grandparents lived. I wouldn’t say we hated being dropped off there or even that we thought it was uncool spending the summers with my grandparents. Honestly, there were just a few factors that impacted the overall experience:

1. It could be boring at times. There were few kids in the small town, and the only kids we liked were the neighbor’s grandsons who would very sporadically come to visit. There were three boys, and naturally, this was the first time Paige and I would crush on the same person.

2. In the early years and up into adulthood my grandfather was a sharp and unyielding man who could be quite cruel.

3. We just really missed our mom. I had a framed picture of her and my dad I’d sleep with under my pillow, and Paige would cry a lot at night.

Aside from these factors, again, it wasn’t a bad way to grow up. And without sounding like a broken record — especially now in a time when social media is so consuming — I realize just how lucky we were to grow up on those acres of land. And when I think back on my oldest memories, a majority of them come from the farm.

And by this I mean those memories I can actually remember and aren’t just ones from stories I’ve been told about myself and now FEEL like my own memories

I would even say a lot of my happiest memories come from the farm. Being a pool rat was fun and the chicken strips and fries were always fire at Wild Water West, but I was already growing up — already so concerned with my appearance, with boys, with the clothes we couldn’t afford, with the ideas of love and what lasts. But on the farm, I still had something childlike in me that hadn’t been taken or outgrown.

images from pinterest

My Grandpa Frank broke horses, but ironically I never learned to properly ride. I did learn how to get them to race me though. I’d stand outside the metal fence and step to the left a few feet then the right, picking up pace like I was getting ready to juke. As soon as the horse began to mirror my moments I would bolt right and run as fast as my legs to carry me. I’d hear their beating steps behind me, then beside me, trying to push myself further, faster, until they would inevitably overcome me.

Out in the country, on dirt roads, these were the kind of things you did to entertain yourself. You believed you were racing the horse in a contest to win its eternal loyalty, or picking raspberries when the sun dipped low to offer to some fairy queen, or avoiding the evil lair of the snake pit in the center of the yard (to this day I’m still not sure if the tarped square really contained snakes or not).

But it wasn’t all picturesque imaginings. I remember kneeling to pray over a dead rabbit my grandfather shot in the yard, and the cruel way he disciplined his hunting dogs. I remember the smell of deer carcasses hanging in the barn to bleed dry. It was a childhood of deep and reverent beauty. I see that now, and I ache for it. Those days where there was always a meal, and my grandma’s warm harms as she washed our backs in the tub. The gentle timbre of her voice as she read Harry Potter aloud before bed. And woven with the beauty was the awareness of brutality on the fringes. When I was young I think I believed such brutality was confined to certain spaces, or people, now being older, I know it is something humans have always done and will continue to do.

And perhaps this is as good as any way of saying this, saying that when I write, I hope to occupy the space between these two realities:

That it is a deeply necessary work to honor and draw attention to what is beautiful, joyous and quotidian. Part of being here is being reverent over the “everyday” and choosing to cherish it with a ferocity that refuses to regard what is old or normal as no longer interesting or full of value.

That being here means being uncomfortable, means being aware and honest about the brutality, heartache and genuine horror that happens due to our own wrongful delusions and the delusions of others.

My writing has always been something I’ve done to practice memory, to make more permanent the thoughts and ideas I have, which I hope you enjoy experiencing. Being 32, I can look back and see how my imagination and attentiveness as a kid influences how I write today. I am grateful for it, and am constantly learning how to be more concise and genuine in these attempts to share something meaningful. I hope you’ll stick around for more of my run-on sentences, my hopeful ramblings, my angry ramblings, thoughts on books, and observations on flowers blooming, to name a few things…

Thank you for reading. With careful attention,
xx M