Small-Town Old Lady

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Washington, D.C. for an overnight stay. It was the first time since early June, when I moved to Portland, Maine from New York, that I had been in a big city. And I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

As a little girl in Portland, Oregon, I dreamed of living in New York. I suspect the idea was planted in my head by a record album my parents owned, Manhattan Tower, that I first heard when I was five or six years old and which I appropriated from my parents as my own.

How many times did I listen to Manhattan Tower as a kid? Who knows, but when I heard it again after about 45 intervening years, I still knew every lyric by heart which is more than I can say for my Cinderella and Snow White soundtracks.

And so it came to pass, in 1968, that I fulfilled my dream of living in New York and for nearly 40 years, I considered it my town. Yes, it’s dirty, noisy, way too expensive and the traffic – vehicular and pedestrian - is abominable. But it is also a world-class city containing everything from the highest culture of its museums, libraries and concert halls to secret opium dens in Chinatown. Whatever it is you want, if you can’t find in New York City it doesn’t exist.

I wept when I was forced to leave.

My hotel in Washington two weeks ago was on 14th Street NW, in the heart of busiest section of town. Even though it is the seat of our national government, compared to New York it’s a small town. The streets are clean of trash. The traffic is far less chaotic than in New York. It’s just a much more civilized place (if you’re not referring to the politics).

The car service that was to take me to Reagan Airport for my return home was late, leaving me to wait in front of the hotel for 20 or 30 minutes. It was late morning, traffic was heavy. Trucks lumbered by, an ambulance tried to get through, horn honking ensued - not a single, short episode, but for the entire half hour I was standing outside. It was so loud, I didn’t hear my cell phone ring when my driver called to say he was almost there.

Now, I tolerated worse noise in New York every day of the 40 years I lived there. But that day in Washington, it made me nuts. I couldn’t think. I was getting testy and my head hurt. I couldn’t wait to get home.

For all my life, I’ve thought of myself as a big-city girl. I seem to have become a small-town old lady.

Comments

[susan]

Ah, welcome to the quiet peace of New England.

And by the way, I'm so jealous of your bookshelves I could spit.

[Ruthe]

I feel the same way each time I return to New York after living in Pittsburgh for a year, but somehow it doesn't keep me from returning. The enticements of the big city still beckon. I'm going back at Christmas to remind me why I like living in Pittsburgh.

[Rain]

I grew up on the edge of wilderness. Twenty miles away, Portland was the big city to me. Then I lived in a suburb of Portland for about 15 years before I got back to country living-- currently 90 miles south of Portland. I love to get to any big city, with all that is going on-- for a day or two. I suppose if I someday have to live in one, I could do it but it'll have to be have-to.

[Pete Sampson]

A bit of civilized quiet is something you sometimes don't even know you want (or actually require) until you have it.

[Mick Brady]

Ronni, I know exactly what you were feeling. I have had the good fortune to have been able to spend much of my time here in Santa Barbara in recent years, which is a pretty small town; or in Desert Hot Springs, 3 hours south of here, which is a really small town. Now, with a new granddaughter in Los Angeles, I'm forced to endure, smog, traffic jams, road rage, you name it. Ahh, the things we do for love.

it's become popular in america to look with disdain at large urban centers. it's also becoming quite popular among ultra-conservatives.

as a new yorker, i'm more interested in why folks choose to live where they do, rather than reading a litany of why someone else's choice is "better" than mine.

[Melinama]

Hi Ronnie, great posts, great bookcases. I visited Blogher and also the Embedded article (which was beautifully written and chilling) and noticed that all these websites have TINY print. I know how to make it bigger, but I bet a lot of older people don't. What kind of nuttiness is it to make websites hard to read for people who would really enjoy them?

[Ronni Bennett]

Melinama: Good point. I've written about font size and old eyes in the past, but not recently enough.

As to whomever posted the note above yours, funny how when people leave snarky comments, they don't leave a name or link...

[Bev]

I grew up in San Francisco and lived in the Bay Area until 1973, when we were "exiled" to the boonies. Davis is 80 miles from SF, so a nice compromise, but living in a town of 40,000 was a huge adjustment. It took me a good 15 years before I began to think of it as "home" and now I wouldn't move back to the Bay Area for everything. I guess that's a reflection of my age. I like the peace and quiet.

[joared]

Find your observations interesting as you experience personal changes, along with that move to your new environment. I view such movement personally and environmentally as just the ongoing evolution and adjustment of our lives that, coincidentally, accompanies our aging process.

As for the snarky comment, reads like someone on the defensive to me, as you described your experience and were not criticizing someone else's choices.

[colleen]

I love being a hick. It's more my true (mostly Irish) nature. I usually have my husband with me whenever I'm in DC. He grew up on the outskirts of the city and knows his way around, but even he gets testy.

Too bad that our nation's capitol is surrounded by poverty and slums.

[donna]

Loved New York when I visited, loved coming home. I enjoy cities, but only to visit. I don't think I would like living in a large city, although near a smaller college town would be nice. These days I dream of a nice ranch full of my golden retrievers and raising service dogs, while despising suburbia. This has been a good place to raise the boys, but I'm ready to move on. Unfortunately hubby doesn't want to move yet, so here we are.

Sigh. I think we learn to be content where we are, even when we dream of other places.

I like visiting D.C. I am abhorred by the poverty surrounding it, the violence of the area. It is curious that this area surrounding our capital is such a mess, isn't it? Perhaps it is the microcosm of our nation - rich white men making decisions about our future, surrounded by the poor who they ignore in their planning and deliberations.

[janinsanfran]

Funny -- I lived in Manhattan for awhile, then moved to San Francisco and felt as if I'd moved to the country. Now I've been in SF for over 30 years and sometimes wish desparately that I could move on to a quieter, greener place. What's changed is not the city I don't think, but me. I think of this as part of being older.