Have you ever looked at a map and pondered throwing a dart, with the intent of packing everything (and everybody) up and just moving wherever it landed?
Strange idea, I know — but Polimom’s been thinking of doing just that. (Well… okay, maybe not a random dart. There are a number of areas that I’d want to avoid, and there are others for which I’d actually aim.)
I have, in fact, been sharpening my darts this week; I spent all of yesterday online, looking through my electronic window at towns and cities thousands of miles from here, trying to figure out where I want to spend the rest of my life. Cuz it ain’t here.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure where “there” is, either. Polimom, DH, and AC are rootless in America.
Polimom yearns for her youth — not the specifics, but the environment. I’m tired of big cities, flat horizons (“Look! It’s Mt. Levee!”), and homogenous tract housing. I miss larger lots and smaller towns, where people walk the sidewalks, sit on porches, and know their neighbors…
Sadly, Polimom’s family is like most of the others I know; divorce and relocation have broken our geographic and ancestral ties. There’s no family home where holiday get-togethers are hosted, no church where our lives are recorded, no neighborhood where my face is recognized…
I resent these losses, frankly, but I can’t do anything about it, and Polimom’s nothing if not pragmatic.
The family homesteads are gone, but the dream is not. Better lives for our children, firm commitment to family, pride in achievement… these are unchanged. What is different (at least for Polimom), is how I define “better”.
For me, it isn’t a big fancy house, an accumulation of “things”, or ever-higher piles of dollars. It’s that sense of belonging, not just to one’s family, but to a neighborhood, community, and way of life.
We’re going to have to start anew, but I know we can; it’s been done before, many times over.
I want to go home to America.