Best of All Worlds

I am a city person. I felt this in my bones long before I actually got the chance to live in a city, and once I got here I never looked back. But everyone needs a refresher every now and then, and for someone who did most of her growing up in rural Maine, who considers a peninsula on the Atlantic to be her rightful second home, there are times when those urban bones start aching for the wilderness, for nature and space. It's fortifying, and essential to maintaining my emotional balance. And lucky me, I'm in for a big dose.

Living in New England is so cool. To go from swimming in a pool in suburban Connecticut to wading in the waves on the Rhode Island shore within the same week, then splashing in a pond in Maine two days after that, with no individual trip exceeding one tank of gas... that to me is pretty damn sweet. Then we've got the foray up to the Maine/NH border for a quick campout the weekend after this one, and our extended stay on the aforementioned beloved peninsula beginning at the end of the month... all that fresh air and wildlife ought to fulfill my country cravings for the coming year, at least.

It'll be really interesting to see how HR turns out, what his living preference will be when he's an adult, as we have no plans to relocate from our current home located smack in the metropolis. His upbringing will have some marked differences from Mike's suburban one and mine in the plain old sticks. For one, grass and dirt is not his default terrain. But I sort of relish the idea of meeting the challenges unique to raising a city kid. The parental worries won't be any more or less in quantity, just different in some ways than the ones our parents had specific to our geographical circumstances. It's another reason I'm glad we've been impelled to do so much scooting around with our boy lately, to expose him to lots of "other." As he gets older I hope to do a great deal of traveling with him, cross country and to Europe and wherever we can make happen, it's a family priority. But for now just going someplace where he can run free, to eat a berry he picked from where it grew on a bush and not from the produce section of Foodmaster, to make a real-life connection with something that has thus far been confined to his storybooks, that's enough for me. And if that's all we ever get to do, it'll still be enough. All this, all this. We are so the fortunate ones.

Back at you next week... sometime... with several states in between. And a lot of this on repeat, probably, as it's one of HR's current top requests.