I was raised in a city, you see. I loved the city. I know many people have dreams of leaving the 'urban sprawl' and setting up the little homestead lifestyle, but I did not. I really enjoyed our holidays in the countryside, but I also really loved my life in the city as well. When I went to university, it was in another city, and it follows that I met my husband in a city, we were married in a city, and we lived in a city. Because he had also, you see, been raised in a city.
And let me tell you, cities are great. They're amazing places. They have architecture, and hidden neighbourhoods to explore and there are always new things to see and restaurants to try. And museums! Boy, I love museums. And my husband loves movies, which are also great in cities because those city theatres get all the indie films and the niche films and the IMAX films and the documentaries. You learn so much in a city - there are always lectures to attend or new people to meet and learn from. And there are nice, big libraries and beautiful parks with things like baseball diamonds that are maintained and also that have TEAMS playing ON them! And swimming pools! And ethnic grocery stores so you could possibly make a recipe that calls for an unusual ingredient! Perhaps most of all, cities have choice. If you don't like that cab company, you try a different cab company. If you don't like that walking trail, you walk on a different trail. You never have to say 'this is the only place to buy toothpaste, so if I need to buy toothpaste, I have to do so here.' In a city, there are probably 200 places to buy toothpaste and half a dozen specialty stores with weird natural toothpaste brands and also at least a few seminars on how to make your own toothpaste and probably a farmer's market to buy it if you don't feel like making it and, and, and.
So that's a long love note to cities right there. Which may not make sense if you knew me because...I don't live in a city and haven't for about 10 years now.
Shortly after we got married my husband and I moved for his school/work, and we moved from a big, vibrant, cosmopolitan city to...a town of about 4000 people. It was a huge culture shock for me, let me tell you. I don't even think I could explain how lost I felt for the first few years we lived there. If I couldn't buy it at Walmart, it was almost as if it didn't exist for me. There were three grocery stores in town, a small mall with...I can't even remember the stores, but nothing so exotic as a food court or anything, just a few little stores, and a thrift store, and a Walmart. There were a couple of diners, and a McDonald's, that sort of thing. I have trouble bringing up in my mind what stores there were now. A hardware store? And I can remember this intense sense of loss; where WAS I? What was happening here? Where was...where was LIFE? It was very grey, especially in the winter, and I felt very little happiness about our surroundings. At first we lived in an apartment, which was horrible, but eventually managed to move to a house with a backyard. And about four years in to our stay in that town, which I never got used to by the way, even though everyone said I would, my husband was called to a church.
In a village of approximately 600 people.
Fortunately I could see better now why God had us move to that first town! Comparatively speaking, going from 4000 to 600 was much easier than going from millions and millions to 4000. Still, there were some more adjustments. Now there was only one small grocery store. There was a smaller, small town library. There wasn't a hospital anymore, or a dentist or a vet in town. Everything now required a drive. I joked for a while that the next place he would bring me would be, like, three houses on a stretch of highway.
We have lived in this village for almost six years now, and in some ways it HAS gotten easier, or at least more familiar, but never comfortable. After ten years away from the city you would think I would be thoroughly 'countrified', but I am most assuredly not. I haven't embraced snowmobiling or owning a large dog or clothing in a camouflaged pattern. I miss the city intensely, but at the same time I have had a few opportunities to be in large cities over the past few years, and I find them overwhelming in so many ways. I'm not used to the press of a hundred people in a subway car anymore. I'm not used to the huge amount of grime on everything, and the panhandlers, and the endless garbage and the TRAFFIC. When I leave, it's with this frustrated sadness now because the city life I love is almost closed to me - I can't belong there because I've been away too long, and I can't belong here because my heart has always stayed in this semi-mythical past city that doesn't exist anymore.
What sometimes hits me is realizing that my children are country children. They've never lived in a city. They haven't had the childhood I had, which I've also mythologized as some sort of Childhood Idyll. My children say things like "Look at all the deer!" on the way to the grocery store. And I can't stand when people tell me how 'lucky' we are to live here, even though I also say that to people, but I take it from others to mean "how lucky you are to live here, as opposed to in that terrible, horrible urban wasteland." And I wonder to myself if they have even lived in a city. If they've seen what fireworks on Canada Day look like when they are put on in a big, impressive, thirty-minute, non stop display. Or what it's like to order in a restaurant where the entire menu is in another language. Or if they've gone exploring and found something new every single time, even in their own neighbourhood. How can that be the terrible, horrible city? When I say how lucky we are to live here, I mean 'How fortunate, that this place we live in, is such a clean, nice place to live', but I don't mean 'This is my favourite place. This is the place I would be, if I could be anywhere.'
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