Core of Conviction : My Story (9781101563571) by Michele Bachmann

I know. It’s family, friends, church. A happy place. A wonderful place. I never want to be anywhere else. And when I die, I want to be buried in the Garden of Memories Cemetery, alongside my grandparents. We can’t go to some faraway land with no relatives nearby.
    Of course, Minneapolis is just a little more than two hundred miles from Waterloo—but to a twelve-year-old mind that seemed an unfathomable distance.
    I started crying. Then I gave what I thought was a good argument: “But I’ve never even been to Des Moines! Our state capital!” Yet my reasoning fell flat and we moved.
    That was 1968. For the nation as a whole, it was a grim year of war, assassinations, and riots. America was being torn apart. And my world too would soon be torn apart.
    Minnesota, of course, is a wonderful place to live. Yet after this drastic change for the family, it took a little time for the Gopher State to feel like home. For one thing, it was colder. Now, over the years, I have come to love the outdoor winter sports of Minnesota, including cross-country skiing, ice-skating, and, of course, hockey. It just took some getting used to, that’s all.
    We moved into a four-bedroom, split-level house on an acre of land nestled in the pleasant Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park. In terms of material possessions, we had a far better life. Our VW Beetle, for example, was soon joined by another car, a Ford LTD. I thought we were the richest people in the world.
    At first the other kids in sixth grade teased me for being different. They thought I said “thank you” and “please” too often. They were good kids, but they asked, “Why are you so polite?” Well, maybe I was always polite, although I like to think that good manners are something that most parents teach their kids. Being polite at all times was one habit that our mother insisted we never break. And certainly a nation of polite people is preferable to a coarsened culture.
    I was a good student—I got mostly
A
s. How did I do it? I worked hard and read a lot—it remains my favorite pastime. I like to say that I learn with my wrist. That is, I write everything down, and as I write things down, the words and ideas become imprinted in my mind.
    We settled in, and we even bought a brand-new exotic machine called a snowmobile. It was gold and black and gorgeous. Our dad pulled our toboggan behind the machine as we went racing through the snowy woods and over the frozen lakes; we kids thought we had really moved up into an exciting new world of technological luxuries. So while I still missed Waterloo, I began building up a store of fond memories from my new life in Minnesota.
    But then, in 1970, everything in our happy little home changed. Our parents made a decision to end their marriage of nineteen years. We knew no one in our family who had divorced. Security was gone. Stability was gone. And our dad was gone. I will always honor both my father and my mother, but the fact remained that our family was irretrievably broken. Dad moved out, and we didn’t see him again for six years. It’s one of the oldest stories ever told, and it’s been played and replayed many times, but it still hurts. Dad moved to California, and just five days after the divorce from Mom was finalized, he married another woman. Now I had two new stepbrothers, but six years would pass before I got to meet them.
    And so I resolved that I wanted, more than anything else in life, to have, someday, an intact and happy family. I told myself that I would marry a man who would be committed to me and to our family—and we’d have lots of kids! And we would stay together, happily ever after. And so in my teenage mind, I resolved to turn something bad into something good. Four decades later, that determination—which I now share with my husband and children—still burns inside me.
    When Dad left, the economic impact on the rest of us was immediate.