Leaving the Cool City by John Bebow

This is a photo of my wife, Monica, and our newborn daughter, Delaney, enjoying the cool shade of a late-summer afternoon along the Manistee River.

I took this shot just a couple weeks after Delaney was born in 2004 in Chicago, where we lived at the time. As a professional singer and voice teacher, she had a wealth of opportunities in Chicago. As a newspaper reporter, I’d climbed near the top of my profession by landing a job as a staff writer at the Chicago Tribune.

So, we’d “made it.” But we’d traded in our spacious, 75-year-old Michigan house for a tiny apartment in the big city. So much concrete hemmed us in. The city beaches were nothing compared to those in South Haven, or Empire, or Holland.

We sure missed home.

We missed the short drives to northern Michigan. We missed Michigan’s great main streets in places like Ann Arbor, East Lansing, Plymouth, Royal Oak, and Traverse City. We missed old familiar hangouts for hot food and cold beers: the Sidetrack in Ypsilanti, Spike’s Keg ‘O Nails in Grayling, El Azteco in East Lansing, and the Anchor Bar in Detroit. We missed the Cherry Street Market in Kalkaska, the Detroit Opera House, and Michigan Stadium. We missed regular gatherings with regular Michigan folks – good friends with whom we shared wine, book clubs, and poker.

So we left that cool city to which so many young Michigan natives move. We came back home to Michigan. And despite all the state’s troubles, it sure feels good to be here.

As Delaney grows, I want her to have opportunities wherever she might want to live – including Michigan. I want a diverse economy that can receive more of our talented young people. I want good schools and good government for a good price, clean water, open spaces.

Chicago’s still a great place to visit. But I want to grow old right here. In Michigan.