I Heart the Suburbs

My destiny is the big city. When I dreamed as a child, it was always of me in New York, Paris, and even for a brief time, Geneva. In my fantasies I had a high-paying, high-stress banking job (yes, that's right, banking--for the first eighteen years of my life I wanted to go into international banking), with an extravagant, elegant apartment with wall-to-wall window views of the city skyline. The twinkling in my apartment never came from stars but from the skyscrapers beneath me (my apartment was always in the sky; never mind the fact that I'm really not comfortable with heights). My furniture was always all white in my vision, which is odd because I've never been a real fan of white. Colors appeal to me. I digress...

I had this great boyfriend in college, David. He was intelligent, caring, and, I always thought, a little conventional. I used to tease him that he was destined for suburbia, that someday he'd have a white picket fence, 2.4 kids, and a station wagon. I could easily picture him mowing the lawn, tossing a ball with the kids in the backyard, and getting home right at 6 each day for a family dinner. David would always laugh good naturedly when I said this, but he never denied it.

That was one of the reasons (okay, one of many reasons) we were not meant to be. And now, now David lives in suburbia. At least he did the last time I caught up with him, which was about ten years ago (I was always sorry I lost touch with him; simply a matter of one year we fell off each other's holiday card lists). Ten years ago, he was married to a lovely woman, lived in a ranch house, and he drove a practical car. The white picket fence was missing, but for all intents and purposes (which I only recently learned is not "all intensive purposes"), he was exactly where I had thought he would be.

The suburbs--and by extension, marriage and children--was just another way to say "imprisonment," "claustrophobia," and, while this may be a little extreme, "the end of a life worth living."

So how is it that I find myself now living the ultimate suburban life? My town is pure suburbia. Just fifteen-minutes from Boston, the houses scream "white picket fence," although few literally have them. I am suburban mom personified. (Is that right? Can you personify that? I mean "suburban mom" is an ideal--as in "existing as an archetypal idea," not as "embodying an ideal"--right, so it can be personified. Now I'm doubting my grammar....)

I am a mom, even though most days I look at Doodles, whose personality is emerging more and more each day, and think, "Wow! Where did he come from?" That means I take my child to the park, to music class, to the baby gym. And being a mom in suburbia means knowing moms everywhere. At the park, I run into moms I know, and those I don't know, I still strike up conversations with. I see moms I know at the library. At the grocery store. At Starbucks. I can't turn around in this town without knowing someone.

In New York, I never knew my neighbors. Knowing neighbors defeated the whole anonymity thing. Besides, I didn't want to be able to put a face to those noises I heard through the walls. Ewww... And now? Now I not only know my neighbors, I attend their block parties, I take their toy hand-me-downs for Doodles. I chat with them on the street about their house remodels and family matters. My neighbor witnessed Doodles's first step. We stop to play with the neighbor's grandkids whenever we see them in their front yard.

I drive a station wagon, I wear my hair in ponytails, and I bake macaroni and cheeses for people with new babies. I always have Kleenex in my pocket and a graham cracker in my purse. I kiss boo boos.

Suburbia. Who knew it could be so great?