Friday, June 1, 2007

The Soul Sucking Suburbs

We were a family of suburbanites... Mom, Dad, four children and a dog, who moved to a small town and have been changed by it. Living in a small town is dramatically different than living in a suburb, in big ways (the distance to things) and in small ways (many stores don't take credit cards).

Pete and I spent the first 35 years of our lives in the suburbs. We have always lived in the suburbs. We knew no other way. Suburbs are so darn convenient. We were near work, a variety of restaurants, the mall... Target. We had a new, lovely house in a pretty neighborhood. All around us were identical homes with other families... we think. We never actually saw other people.

And that was what was strange... we knew that the houses were owned by people but no one visited the neighborhood swimming pool. The playground sat empty. The only living beings on the walking paths were squirrels. For the longest time, we didn't question this, we just accepted it as the status quo. "Well, both parents work and the children are at school or daycare all day. Bummer for us, as a homeschooling family.".

One summer though, our eyes were opened as to how weird all of this was. In a neighborhood of 300 houses, that swimming pool should have been packed. As my children splashed listlessly, looking around for some playmates, it dawned on me that this was creepy... like a Twilight Zone episode. I would hum to myself, "Where have all the children gone? Long time passing...".

I realized that we were deeply lonely, even though we were surrounded by people. I could go to Meijer's and not run into a single person I knew, even though I'd been living two blocks away for seven years. That's not right.

One day it occured to me, "We could all drop dead in this house from carbon monoxide poisoning and no one would know for months.". That's how connected we were to our neighbors. Everyone was living their lives in the fortress of their own homes and not building relationships. We were going through the motions of having a life but it didn't feel like living. There had to be something different, something better... an authentic life.

To make a long, exhilarating and frustrating story short, one summer we discovered an honest-to-goodness small town about 40 miles west of us. Much to our surprise, we moved there. It's been a life-changing experience with wonderful moments and difficult ones. It's not utopia, to be sure. But it has always felt authentic, messy, real. We've gotten our souls back.