Girl Goes West

My "So Saint Paul" status is a running joke among friends (to the point of my friend Debra saying "You're So Saint Paul your summer cabin is in Saint Paul," which is true....)

But my dad's place, since the early 1970s, has been on 41st and Sheridan, in the epicenter of Linden Hills — but since long before it was the "Linden Hills" you think of today, back in the days when the commercial node had a greasy spoon and a hardware store instead of high-end shops and restaurants, when Uptown was a bunch of neighborhood bars (even Figlio was, at heart, a neighborhood bar), and when it was basically just a cozy neighborhood. I had a Minneapolis library card through that address, and technically a bedroom at my dad's, though I really rarely stayed overnight. And I grew up walking down to Lake Harriet, and exploring antique shops at 50th and Xerxes, and eating chocolate mousse at the Calhoun Beach Club and ice cream sundaes at the Bridgeman's on Lake.

And truth be told, I've never been one that lets that river get in the way too much. I love how much the Twin Cities has to offer, and so Beatrix attends theater classes at CTC, and we attend a lot of plays and exhibits and such in Minneapolis, we shop at places like Wild Rumpus, and often meet friends to hang out. (that said, I still tend to get lost in the downtown skyways...)

But now that the place on Sheridan is no longer my dad's but mine, it's a strange feeling. Though not *from* Minneapolis per se, I feel like I know the area very well, and that brings with it a sense of nostalgia. Today I would really have liked to take time away from cleaning at my dad's and just walked down to the lake and looked at the architecture and people-watched.

I'm not going to be the owner of this place for very long, so I didn't want to get too attached. But it seems that the attachment may have formed a long time ago, and that I may have more western roots than I knew....