Almost Nine Years

On November 11th, I will have lived in this house for nine years. We've been in this state (incidentally, one which I never in a million years thought I would ever visit on purpose, much less live in, which only goes to show that God has a good sense of humor) for more than eleven years now.

My previous record in any city was six and a half years. My lifetime average time in any one place would probably be somewhere between two and three years. We moved a lot when I was a kid. If I wasn't moving, my friends or boyfriends were, so there was always upheaval and people to miss even if we weren't the ones moving that time. I distinctly remember telling my dad sometime in high school that when I got to be an adult, I was going to put down roots to the center of the earth and never move again.

The community in which I now live is a small rural town, largely populated by people who have lived here their whole lives. It absolutely boggles my mind that my friends could have themselves attended the same local school that our kids attend now--not that it is a bad thing, just so alien to my own experience. My high school is approximately 8000 miles away from my current home--looked it up on Google Earth a while back on a whim. When giving directions around here, people say things like "we live across the street from the feed store" or "we're just down the road from the old Johnson farm." Now, the feed store is a good landmark, but the odds are good that the Johnsons probably haven't lived at their old farm in years and that there were probably three different Johnson farms anyway! They might as well tell me to turn left where the big oak tree used to be. I'll have to live here 50 years to get it all straight. And don't even get me started on the interrelationships among the people...I learned early on (and fortunately not the hard way) that the person to whom you are complaining about your child's teacher could easily be her mother, her old babysitter, her niece, or her neighbor...speaking no evil is a really good way to keep your foot out of your mouth in these parts. ;)

The ironic thing is that, now that I have what I always said I wanted, part of me is ready to move. Force of habit. To see what is over the horizon or in another part of the US or in another country (I spent most of my childhood outside the US and would be comfortable going back overseas.) Realistically, it isn't likely, though. We are here in the first place because this part of the country is where the career opportunities for my husband are, and that probably won't change. Also, one of the kids has a language disability, and we have him in a good academic situation, one that I would be very hesitant to disrupt except in the case of a job offer that we absolutely could not refuse.

And anyway, there are too many days like today, where the sky is blue and cloudless and my vegetable garden is burgeoning and the butterfly bushes are overflowing with tiger swallowtails and monarchs and painted ladies and a neighbor invited my daughter to visit her chickens and I saw many of my friends while waiting to pick the Things up from their summer camp and The Hound had plenty of squirrels to chase on her walk and I am constantly reminded of why this place is good for my formerly city-dwelling soul. It would probably take a backhoe to drag me out of here.

In the immortal words of Douglas Adams, "I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."