Written by Hazel Delehey

• Featured Song: “Stay Connected”
• Storyteller: Evangeline
• Teaching Artists: Rebecca Shasberger, Clara Prinston, Lalia Mangione
• Performed by Renovare Music (Rebecca Shasberger, Clara Prinston, Lalia Mangione)
• Connected Works: “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon

Welcome back to Music in Conversation, where we explore documentary songs as windows into what it means to move through the world together. As we continue exploring this year’s theme of ROOTs, we invite you to consider what it means to be rooted in more than one place at one – and what it costs to keep those roots alive across distance.

This month’s song was written by Evangeline, in collaboration with Renovare music, after a two-month trip back to India and – the longest she’d been away from the U.S. since moving here seven years ago. “Stay connected” traces what she found on that trip: a home she didn’t need to adjust to, a grandmother’s kitchen, and a question that follows her back to Cleveland – what does it look like to stay authentic to a culture you no longer live inside of? 

Roots That Held

I found myself drawn to the line “I didn’t need to adjust, I was just home.” I pictured myself walking into my parents’ mudroom, the ease with which I throw my shoes off, hang my coat to the left in the overflowing closet, and walk myself in like I own the place. Evangeline felt that same cushiony familiarity as she joined her grandmother in the kitchen and began speaking the language she’d grown up speaking as though she’d never left. This moment of hers reminded me of the ease in knowing a place in your body; it’s a particularly satisfying experience, comfort at the highest tier – where it all began.

The same recognition threads through the rest of the verse as she recognizes the hospitality, and says hello to her vendors on the street. These things feel ordinary to us in our day to day but they’re our grounding elements, the things we can count in the midst of uncertainties that inevitably arise down the line. While we’re off planting more roots, the ones we started with are deep in the earth, settling in for the long, dark, cold winter. 

George Ella Lyon’s poem“Where I’m From” speaks to this same rootedness, where, over time, ordinary, every-day things become an entire identity. Lyon, who was born and raised in Kentucky, said the following about her life growing up: 

I am from clothespins,

from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.

I am from the dirt under the back porch.

(Black, glistening,

it tasted like beets.)

I am from the forsythia bush

the Dutch elm

whose long-gone limbs I remember

as if they were my own.

I’m from fudge and eyeglasses,

from Imogene and Alafair.

I’m from the know-it-alls

and the pass-it-ons,

from Perk up! and Pipe down!

“I’m from the know-it-alls and the pass-it-ons” is my favorite line from that title. For Evangeline, her know-it-alls are different, but her roots have the same shape. They’re the specific, quiet things India handed her that she unknowingly started reaching for. Thankfully, they were still there when she returned.

Roots That Travel

But what happens when the place that made you no longer feels like the only place you belong?

Evangeline’s trip back to India seemed to offer her a moment of clarity. She returned to a place she was familiar with in ways she didn’t have to think about—the language, the food, her grandmother’s kitchen—and then she returned again to Cleveland, where she has built a life of her own.

There’s something complicated about having roots in more than one place. We often talk about roots as though they’re what ground us in one place, allowing us to bury deep into the soil. But Evangeline’s story reminds us of the conflict, often of the heart, in feeling the push and pull between multiple places. Some people are able to flow between homes with ease, calling on their roots and happily waving goodbye when it’s time to go. Others feel this transition to be tumultuous, rocking their flow out of place, causing disruption to a system that craves stability.

For Evangeline, the question became less about choosing between two places and more about figuring out how to hold them both. “Stay Connected,” we learn, isn’t about staying physically close. It’s about finding ways to maintain relationships with people, places, and things even when we’re far from them. It’s the phone call, the recipe, the language, the stories, the way a grandmother’s kitchen can live somewhere inside you even when you are thousands of miles away.

That’s how roots travel.

What We Carry Forward

I keep thinking about Evangeline’s daughter, who is growing up in Cleveland.

She will know India through her mother: through the stories she hears, the food that makes its way into their kitchen, the language, the traditions, the people her mother loves. She may visit India and feel some of the same familiarity that Evangeline describes, but she will experience it differently. India will be part of her story, but Cleveland will be the place where her own story is unfolding.

There is something tender about that distinction. Evangeline is carrying a deep sense of home from one place into another, while at the same time watching her daughter build her own sense of home somewhere different.

Maybe this is what it means to stay connected—not to recreate the home we came from exactly as it was, but to make sure that the things that matter have somewhere to go next.

Evangeline’s daughter will grow up rooted in Cleveland, but she will also inherit pieces of a place she may never know in quite the same way her mother does. And perhaps that’s okay. Maybe the goal isn’t for the next generation to have the same roots we have, but to give them enough of the story to grow their own.

Staying Connected

There’s a line in Evangeline’s story that I keep coming back to: “I didn’t need to adjust, I was just home.”

Maybe that’s what staying connected can look like. Not holding on to a place exactly as it was, but allowing it to remain a part of us as we grow, change, and make homes of our own.

As we continue exploring this year’s theme of ROOTs, we’d love to hear from you: What are the small things that keep you connected to where you’re from? What have you carried with you, and what are you passing forward?

Share your experiences by emailing Hazel at [email protected].