We Are Family

One of the major reasons we moved back to East Coast Big City was family. (Yes, we moved back to East Coast Big City. More specifically, to East Coast Big City Urban Suburb/Town which is just too long to write regularly, so I think I’ll call it Town.) (Yes, I’ve changed my profile--see upper right corner.)

In Red State Capital City Suburb, we basically had two sets of friends: friends from work and friends from the neighborhood. When we announced that we were moving, my friends from work were pretty surprised. Most of them are not from Red State either, but they are deeply committed to work and have accepted the fact that doing the work they do (and I did) means living where you can work, not where you want to live.

Our neighborhood friends, on the other hand, got it immediately. They were sad we were leaving, but most of them are from Red State and an awful lot of them are from Red State Capital City Suburb. They live around the corner from their cousins and see their siblings at least once a week, if not daily. They take out the garbage and shovel snow for elderly aunts. Their parents take care of their kids every weekend, some even every day after school. They’ve always felt for us, with our family so far away.

In fact, it was watching their lives close up that made us realize what we were missing. That and spending $1,400 on plane tickets or driving for 24 hours every time someone turned 75 or got married.

S and I met when we were in high school at the synagogue that both of our families still belong to. Save one sister out in California, our entire family lives in the vicinity of East Coast Big City: my parents both live in City, his parents live in Town, his brother lives in Nearby Town, his sister lives in Suburb, and my sister lives two hours away in Country Town. And that’s just the immediate family: East Coast Big City is also home to countless family friends, high school friends, college friends, camp friends, etc.

The idea that our kids could grow up having Friday night dinner at Grammy and Grandpa’s, actually knowing their cousins, bringing real grandparents rather than loving neighbors to school on Grandparents Day, well, it was pretty compelling. (There were a lot of other reasons we moved, and maybe I’ll get into some of them, but I can’t promise, as I’ve been processing this move for over a year and I’m a little maxed out on it.) (I will say, however, for the record, that we did not move because of the election. In fact, the election made us want to stay and fight the good fight in Red State, but we’d long since decided to move, so that particular good fight will have to be fought without us.)

Our new house is in Town, where S grew up. We’re ten minutes by car from his parents, and last Friday afternoon the girls and I walked to their house, via ice cream and the library. We’re just ten blocks from the Town-City border, and less than a 15 minute drive from each of my parents in City. M and I are planning a walk to my mom’s house some cool day soon.

But proximity is only the beginning of the difference. What’s really different is having family be a part of everyday life, rather than an occasion. Which sounds like a quantitative difference but is actually qualitative. If you go to Friday night dinner at Grammy and Grandpa’s once or twice a year, it’s a big deal. You need to be on your best behavior, and you need to get along with your cousins because you never see them, and you need to make stilted conversation about jobs and vacations and movies because that’s what you talk about with people you never see. But last Friday night at my in-laws’, Grandpa cooked while Grammy and I read in the living room and M, E, and Cousin T went to the playground. Later M got tired of playing so she read while E and T played. We all teased T about the way she races through the blessings. We chatted during dinner and it didn’t matter that our conversation was unmomentous.

And it’s not just Friday nights. The day our moving van arrived, M and E spent the whole day at S’s parents’ house with T. The next day T spent the day with us. When M and I were out shopping near my mom’s house one day last week, we called her and she met us for lunch. S’s brother stopped by one evening to see our new house and ended up going to see Favorite Musician #2 with us the next night. (Sorry about that cryptic post, but if I said who Favorite Musician #2 was, the identity of East Coast Big City would be really obvious, and I don’t want to go there.)

M wants to have the last word here: So to sum it up, all I’m saying is that pretty much we really like East Coast Big City and our family. [I’m not sure if that “I” is me, Becca, or her, M, since she dictated the sentence and I typed it. She says it’s me. I’ll take it.]