1980-1981

It should be fairly obvious why I have no memory of this place. After all, I was merely days old when I first encountered it, and not much more than a year old when we left.

I know that when my parents moved here from Iowa City, they arrived to find a neighbor hosting a cookout or some sort of backyard do. I know that those neighbors and their guests helped unload the moving truck, and that some of the neighbors also became life-long friends. I know that Mom worked as a phlebotomist before I was born, and that they were regulars at The Kitchen Table – to the extent that Mom edited their cookbook, copies of which we both have.

But I don’t know anything about the house. I seem to remember – from pictures, of course – it being a ranch-style. I know there are pictures of me peeking out the front window, safely ensconced in my playpen. I know from pictures that there was a squat wood-burning stove.

I don’t know how long my parents lived in this house, or how they felt when they left it. Our next move was back to Iowa City, where all of Mom’s siblings live(d), where my parents both gone to college and Pop had gone to med school. I know how fiercely attached I felt to Champaign, so I can only imagine that leaving Marshfield must have felt like going home.