will a pilgrim meet me 'round the corner?

Out of all the fanciful things and stalwart heroes that go through all those throes, I've finally found my patriotism. It stands on the firm foundatation of the Upper Midwest. I believe in the life I had, cashing my paycheck chatting with my regular bank teller, getting the gossip. I believe in knowing all of the workers at my grocery store, knowing where they went to elementary school, high school, and if they even went to college, and their grandparents country of origin. I believe in diners with knoefla soup. I believe in library ladies who tell me about their grandkids. I believe in wind.
They have the funniest accents.
The winters, you ask about. Each day I hear someone say, there? It must be cold there. Well....yes. Winter tends to be cold in many places. Maybe ours were extreme. Though I guess I've begun to romanticize the cold that makes you run out to your car periodically during the day to run the engine so that later, when you need to drive, you can. Running from car to house, then sitting under blankets and blankets while you watch a movie at a friends. Yes multiple blankets even though you're already wearing two pairs of socks and a long sleeved shirt and a sweater and a sweatshirt. All the autostart buttons, a few more minutes with a chum because their car has to heat up. The space heater in the kitchen because of the draft from the back door. Thoughts about foot amputation.
That one evening when it was dinnertime and snowing and black as night. I stepped outside to the middle of the street with the black arms of trees arching over the fresh snow. No tracks, only glows from street lamps highlighting flakes in rainbow colors.
Driving through the prairie on frosty winter mornings when the shelter belts (rows of trees between fields) are fuzzy white and one can only tell the sky from the trees from the land by the different shades and textures of whiteness.
Februaries with days that warm up to 40 degrees and everyone goes wild and stops wearing coats for a day.
Late springs that everyone feels hesitant about. Is it really spring? Is it really getting warmer? Roads covered in rootbeer colored slush. Muddy yards. Sweatshirts and damp chill. Cool sun afternoons.
Junes full of drizzle. By the end of grey June you ask yourself, will we be able to light fire crackers this fourth of July?
August full of voices carried over from the pool. Actually my augusts started running season. Waking up for a four mile run at 7am followed by another three/four miles at 7:30pm. In the mornings and afternoons when you run, you run through the country. no matter the direction, one mile or so and you're in the country. Mornings past the airport. Past one red house and their adjoining fields. Afternoon the other direction, sky (Oh the sky! gloriously large and wrapping you all about) threatening rain storm, running past the cemetary and a few more farmhouses. Gravel, gravel, gravel ways.
Octobers of Halloween costumes made useless by winter coats and cross country races through snow.
Thanksgivings with my dad's colleague playing an indian flute for us. The little pilgrim people that sit on the bathroom window and in odd little corners about the house. The Mayflower here, a stalk of corn there.

Oh for an afternoon in the heartland, listening to records all day, playing Global pursuit and eating ice cream and watching Algiers with mes parents, then off to the chums.

But my room has become an adolescent relic.