I have heard people joke about Iowa my whole life, like it is just fields you drive through on the way to somewhere else. I never saw it that way. Iowa is where my parents worked, where my grandparents are buried, where my kids learned to ride bikes, and where people still wave even when they don’t know you that well.
I left once when I was younger because I thought there had to be something bigger out there. Maybe there was, I don’t know. But after a few years away, I missed the quiet, the space, the way neighbors notice when your car hasn’t moved, the way family still matters here.
Iowa gave my family a good life. Not a perfect one. We had bills, funerals, bad winters, arguments at the kitchen table, all of it. But this state gave us a place to belong, and I love it more now than I did when I was young.
This hex is for Iowa, for my family, and for the ordinary people who never needed this place to be famous in order to be proud of it.