Wednesday, September 6, 2017 // The Statement
6B
DESIGN BY MICHELLE PHILLIPS
Home
M
y
mother
would
often
express
a
desire to move to the West
Coast when she retired.
In Seattle, or perhaps
San Francisco, the win-
ters are milder, the cities
livelier and there are more
native
Chinese
speakers
for her than in our Detroit
suburb. To her, Michigan
winters are too long, the
suburban sprawl of south-
east Michigan too quiet
and the options for quality
Chinese food too limiting.
These places beckoned
to her because they resem-
bled
—
culturally
and
physically — where she
had grown up: A bustling
city nestled in Southern
China.
Growing up, this love of
one’s childhood home was
alien to me. I had lived in
Canton, Michigan for the
entirety of my formative
years. Before
leaving
for
college,
I
had
only
moved
once;
when I was two
years old, to a house
in an adjacent subdi-
vision that was also in
Canton.
Tucked
on
the
westernmost edge of
the Detroit suburbs,
Canton
Township
primarily
consists
of subdivisions con-
structed
within
a
five-year
window
beginning
in
the
late 1990s; each house
is
seemingly
plucked
from the same catalog of
a dozen or so designs. A
grid of roads connects the
vast low-density residen-
tial expanses to a few strip
malls and big-box retail-
ers, interspersed with the
occasional
public
green
space.
Because such a large
portion of the population
consists
of
transplants
who followed the late-90s
building boom, it lacks the
social cohesion that one
could expect in a small
country
village.
Mean-
while, the low population
density of the suburb also
means that the area lacks
the benefits of a large city.
The cohesion is further
stunted by the fact that
most of the working popu-
lation evacuates to offices
and factories beyond the
township limits every day.
For
one-third
of
the
year, the weather hangs
between summer and
winter;
too
warm
for
snow,
yet
cold enough
to chill
off
any
leaves
from
the
trees or green
from the grass.
To the credit of the
community,
Canton
was
— and continues to be —
far from a “bad” town,
and it is a town that I owe
much of my comfortable
and
privileged
upbring-
ing to. Crime is sparse, the
public schools are filled
with
opportunities
and
the front lawns are well
mown. Yet to my younger
self, this suburban perfec-
tion felt more like subur-
ban monotony. Michigan,
as a whole, seemed to be in
a perpetual state of melan-
cholic decline: Detroit and
the automotive industry a
shell of their former selves,
people and jobs being two
of
our
most
auspicious
exports.
Around age 10, I vowed
that I would leave Michi-
gan as soon as I was old
enough. I had come to
understand
there
was
a
more
colorful
world
beyond the Midwest; pre-
sumably free from long
winters and boredom.
However,
when
the
time came to choose a col-
lege, I deferred my quest
to escape the Mitten for
at least four more years
to come to Ann Arbor.
I
had
momentarily
allowed myself to be
mesmerized by Ann
Arbor: by the city,
the
University
of Michigan’s
programs
and
school’s
programs
and
in-state
tuition long enough
to put down my enroll-
ment deposit — despite its
location, a 25-minute drive
from the town I so vowed
to leave behind.
At the tail-end of my
sophomore year of col-
lege, I received an offer
to intern in Miami, and
my choice seemed natural
enough. This was my first
opportunity to live outside
of Michigan on my own for
more than the length of a
vacation, and Miami rep-
resented to me everything
Canton was not.
But while I was charmed
by the beaches, colorful
neighborhoods and palm
trees of south Florida, a
subtle nostalgia for what
had been the classic fix-
tures of a childhood sum-
mer in Michigan crept on
my conscience.
There
would
be
no
weekend trips this sum-
mer up to the lakeshore
in Traverse City where I
could hike the Sleeping
Bear
Dunes
and
polish
Petoskey stones from the
frigid,
clear
lake
water.
I would be absent for my
hometown’s “Liberty Fes-
tival” and firework display,
always conspicuously held
two weeks before the
actual Fourth of
July.
When-
ever
I
men-
tioned
my
hometown
— to co-work-
ers, locals and Lyft
drivers — three of the
most common responses
were remarks about how
the state was cold, provin-
cial and supposedly on the
decline. My use of the term
“pop” also drew curious
looks.
“Detroit — everyone’s
trying to leave there,” one
Lyft driver quipped dur-
ing an otherwise pleasant
drive.
While I perfectly under-
stood these perceptions —
after all, I had held many
of these sentiments at one
point or another — such a
characterization didn’t do
justice to my childhood
home or the people I had
grown up with.
Sure,
Michigan
was
tucked in the “provincial”
Midwest, but there was
also an indescribable Mid-
western charm that I now
realized I had taken for
granted my entire life.
Carpool parents treated
me as a part of their own
family; I bit into an orchard-
picked Red Delicious in the
crisp October air and got
lost in the miles of winding
wooded trails across the
state. All of this had become
part of me, and I couldn’t
simply forsake it once I
graduated.
When I was recently
talking to my moth-
er
about
possible
places to retire, I
casually
raised
the possibility of
getting a house
in Ann Arbor
along
the
Huron River,
or
perhaps
even a lake
house
in
Traverse
City.
“Why
on
Earth would I do
that, Brian?” she
replied.
I
chuckled
softly
to
myself. How could I expect
her to understand? After all,
she hadn’t grown up here.
by Brian Kuang, Deputy Statement Editor
Sure, Michigan
was tucked in
the “provincial”
Midwest, but
there was also
an incredible
Midwestern
charm that I
now realized I
had taked for
granted my
entire life.