haley anne hodges

Whenever I meet people here, one of their first questions is “Where are you from?”. It seems like an easy question. A one or two-word answer for most people, maybe with a little elaboration in the follow up of “Whereabouts?” But for me, I struggle with that simple question.  I no longer have just one home but two, ten hours apart.

When I’m in Iowa, the answer is simple. I’m from Colorado. Near Boulder, but not particularly like Boulder. I come from a small town called Niwot, 4000 people, 3 stoplights, 2 banks, 1 marijuana dispensary, 0 government. Without a mayor or a governing body, we’re not actually a town and legally classified as a census-designated place or area in unincorporated Boulder County. Niwot is named for Chief Niwot of the southern Arapahoe people who tried to coexist with the white men who came to his land and consequently was presumably slaughtered with most of his people in the Sand Creek Massacre. Strangely, white-washed Niwot doesn’t always mention this bloody history but instead carves statues to Chief Niwot and delights in the quirk of left-handedness — Niwot is said to have meant left-handed, though that’s been disputed lately– through copious left hand shaped chairs through the two-block town and a Left-Handers Day festival every summer. We’re a naive town, I was sheltered growing up in a big house in a safe neighborhood in the top twenty wealthiest areas in Colorado. But that Niwot bubble was home. It meant I could walk to and from elementary school without fear from my parents. That the only time the high school told us we couldn’t leave at lunch was when there was a bear in a tree downtown. That everyone and their mother knew when the fox kits that lived under my house emerged for the first time. That I couldn’t go anywhere in town without running into someone who somehow knows me. It meant I could get a job with the local paper, that as a junior in high school with journalistic ambitions I was one of the more qualified people working for that paper. It meant the familiar. The small. The close.

It’s getting harder to recognize Niwot every time I go home. Suddenly there are pedicabs. A children’s park. A pot shop. The piano store has been replaced with, an admittedly more practical, pub. The newspaper I worked for has changed management about five times. The diner changed its menu for the first time in a decade. The Subway makes worse and worse sandwiches and the mom of someone I know from high school isn’t the one making it. The kids getting their two for Tuesday pizza special at Abo’s are getting younger and more foreign to me. Teachers are retiring. Neighbors are moving. My parents are changing things: Our front door is now blue. Niwot is changing. Home is changing.

My parents are still at home in that big, blue house. My dog is still at home, making the house feel a little less empty every time I go back. Some of my friends are still at home, mostly the ones who stayed at home. In Colorado.

One answer.

But Iowa’s still the other answer. Iowa was never supposed to be home. Iowa was supposed to be temporary. A stepping stone to something fabulous. Something I’ve lost track of. I can’t say my life in Iowa is flawless because I’ve seen some shit, man, but in three years there, I’ve grown almost as much as I did in fifteen years in Colorado. I think what’s changed is that Iowa now has something Colorado doesn’t. Iowa has Mulligan.

Hercules “Mully” Mulligan is a three-year-old dork of a cat adopted from the Animal Rescue League of Iowa in August of 2017 by myself and my roommate. We got Mulligan as an emotional support animal in an attempt to quelch some of my anxiety. Ultimately, he’s terrible at emotional support and even when he drives me crazy running around doing cat parkour or meowing at the door at 3 a.m. or eating the trash or standing in the kitchen sink, he’s still mine and he’s still my responsibility. And I really do love him.

Missing him makes me feel like Iowa is home. That he is home. I have my dog, Toby, in Colorado and if he could live with me in Iowa, I’d take him in a heartbeat but for him, Niwot is home. Niwot is what he’s known since he was a destructive puppy. My parents are his parents, feeding him, walking him, loving him in a way that I can’t. He belongs in Niwot. I don’t.

Home may be where your heart is but my heart is divided. Colorado is technically home. It was for fifteen years. Colorado is where I grew up. I don’t remember enough of California before it. I can’t say that Iowa has the most going for it and I’m not excited to go back to the humidity and the cornfields and the lack of bears and hauling forty pounds of groceries up three flights of stairs in one trip but I am excited to go home. Even if it’s not my only home.