Here are things I would not have done if I had not spent all of that time in Iowa City:

• given birth to my three children;
  written The Greenlanders, Barn Blind, A Thousand Acres, and The Age of Grief (at least);
  taught at Iowa State University;
  married the fathers of my children.

I do not in fact know what I would have done, or who I would have been as an adult if I hadn’t lived in and around Iowa City for nine years.