We have a friend* who just recently moved from the city to the small seaside town where we live. Having made a similar move, from New York city to this small town, I can relate. At first it’s too quiet. Too clean. Everyone is in shape, or at least seems to exercise regularly—and probably takes a daily multivitamin too. Families seem neatly shaped, stacked in place with perfect parents, offspring, and every possible possession, from stroller to Subaru, necessary to propell that family forward for the next twenty years till the children go to college. You feel funny, like you might suddenly and loudly curse in Starbucks for no reason, or that your library books (if you roll that way!) will be monitered, or that the music coming out of your apartment windows will reveal you to be what you really are: a city person misplaced in a small, beautiful, town.
But I give our friend props. Within a month, he’s worked on a friend’s sailboat getting it prepped to go in the water, he’s discovered and grilled a new kind of marinated meat from the local grocery store, and he bought his dog Lucy this collar.
It took me living here about as long as I’d lived in Manhattan in order to loosen the grip on metropolis pace—and that’s with a few years in Brooklyn as a transition before moving here. I embraced the suburban supermarket instead of the deli at the corner, but it’s taken some time to get into the pace of “town”. Once here, the city still appeals. But there’s no need to wear it. Where we are is alright by me.
*okay, you guessed it, the friend is "Food Guy", whose cuddly yet stylin' Boxer Lucy is staying with us this week.
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