the Portland in me

how a place I disliked became an integral part of my identity.

I promise a bit of a reflection on the landscape that’s autumn family photo sessions, but in the meantime I’m writing about Portland again.

While I’ve lived in Minnesota for the majority of my life, including most of my childhood and my coming-of-age twenties, I didn’t go to high school here which in conversation becomes a roundabout talk about living in Oregon between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.

A photo I took visiting Canon Beach one March.

I despised Portland almost immediately after arriving. I didn’t like the dreary weather, especially the winters which while they weren’t bitter didn’t offer me the arctic sun I’d grown up with in Minneapolis. The culture felt sometimes confusing to me, and I’m not entirely certain why. Portland and Minneapolis are often compared to one another, not just in their responses to 2020 or their politics (similar, not identical, more sisters than twins), but also in their demographics bolstered by a trustafarian class and funky art scene. Minneapolis is more like Seattle in its Scandinavian influence, and I found Portland to be irreverent and too hippy for my tastes as a fourteen-year-old.

Once, while waiting to catch the MAX public transit train home from my Catholic High School is shiny Downtown PDX, directly across the street from a Nordstroms, a woman walked around naked protesting something. Troublemaking goths used to sit outside a certain coffee shop with their millions of dogs, holding signs asking for money, and yelling obscenities at passersby’s. Portland felt a little irreverent. Minneapolis is Lefty Lutheran surely, and we do hippy here in our own Midwestern way. Portland had a rough rawness to it, though, avoiding being a corporate town like Seattle, like they’d invented alternative: keep Portland WEIRD a city mural barked.

It took me a long time to admit it, but Portland is beautiful, too. I loved the old historic homes in NE’s Laurelhurst and Irvington neighborhoods where my St. Mary’s classmates lived. My high school boyfriend and I used to sneak into a hotel pool and swim, no one ever reprimanding us. I loved how the sun danced dappled light through green leaves. I loved the organic coops (we have those here in Minnesota, too), music festivals, cold giant rock beaches, and western ferocity. I sense glimmers of it now when we sometimes visit the Dakotas, but its fever pitch ends in Oregon I think, a true independence and grit. It’s a place with real disregard for propriety.

I left Portland in a huff after I graduated from high school, determined to not go back. I landed in New York then back to Minnesota. I didn’t think of my time in Oregon much, in fact, I haven’t been back since early 2006. It lives in my memories and the occasional episode of Portlandia that I enjoy from time to time. I do believe the adage, though, that places become parts of us, even long after we’ve left them. I think it can even surpass generations, too. Every time I’m in the south I feel a deep reverence and connection to my Harris side of the family. And while Stillwater is home, when I drive through areas of Minneapolis or St. Paul and the light is just right, I sense parts of my old self and the many memories made there rise to the top.

It started with birth. After taking doula courses and capturing a few birth sessions I knew I didn’t have it in me to choose a hospital birth. Naturally, I found myself some very granola midwives, and I started having babies out of hospital and have never looked back. I extended nursed with my first, through the entire pandemic, and tandem nursed after her brother arrived in June of 2020. It check outs as a very hippy Portland thing to do.

No, I didn’t see the need to circ my sons. Yes, I signed up for the raw milk share. Yes, I want us all wearing cotton undergarments, and no I won’t follow the standard CDC schedule. You can trust the tap water, but I don’t. It’s feeling very Portland. And while it isn’t this way today, these were all once left of center hippy stuff things. Unlike people who got woken up on the internet after the pandemic, my awakening happened in Portland. They’ve been doing organic since forever.

After months of convincing Seth, I drove home two baby hens from a farm by my mom’s cabin and gave them a home in our backyard. We named them Tupac and Biggie. I made kombucha and sourdough from starters that sat on my counter. I started wearing long midi dresses and stopped cutting my hair as much. Before anyone called this trad Cath, it was Portland-esque.

I’d spent four years trying to escape a place, so grateful I’d left after graduation. I’d bemoaned the culture for a long time, always quick to complain, and swore I wouldn’t be back. Then I turned around and found that it was in me the whole time. I guess I’m a little Portland after all.