Take Me Home, Country Roads

Still blogging away alongside three other talented bloggers.  Each week, one of us chooses a topic and we all post a blog entry on that topic, usually on Thursdays.  (Usually we are on time.  Usually.  Ok, sometimes.)

Here are the links to the other fabulous blogs:

Merryland Girl

Froggie 

Moma Rock

            Merryland Girl chose this week’s topic, and she said:  “I can't.”  Keep in mind, it's not a self-bashing exercise.  Here’s my take:

            It took me awhile to come up with a subject this week.  I mean, there are plenty of things I can’t do or can’t comprehend or can’t tolerate, etc., and I am happy to admit to and write about those.  But I wanted to stay true to Melissa’s wish that we not self-bash, so I passed.  And, anyway, I kinda hate when people dwell on that which they cannot do; it’s a downer.  And when they do dwell, their friends are all compelled to be like, “Awww, you can do it!” even though they really can’t.  (I’m looking at you, Facebook.) 

            I ran a bunch of topics through my head, but nothing felt right.  Until the morning late last week when I was walking down my new street in the burning sun and a strange thought hit me:  I can’t believe I live in Tennessee.  Even though I’ve been here for a few months (and a few months last year), I can’t believe I live here.  I mean live here, live here, like, my address is here.  I own property here.  My cars have Tennessee plates.  My kids go to school here.  Live here like that.  Even a few months in, it still seems weird.  Kind of surreal, actually.

            I feel this way even though in many ways living in Tennessee isn’t that much different than living in Illinois.  I still do mostly the same things.  I spend much of my time the same way I used to and with the same people:  my husband and my kids.  I get the kids ready for school and take care of them after.  I run errands, like grocery shopping.  I blog.  But there are differences when I do these things, noticeable ones.   My not-very-huge town has four WalMarts – FOUR – and only one Target.  I grocery shop at places like Kroger and Publix (so nice!) instead of Jewel, a chain that does not exist down here.  I now drive 30 miles each way to go to Whole Foods, and 35 miles to go to Trader Joe’s – as opposed to just three or four miles in Chicago (Evanston had two Whole Foods within a few miles of each other).  These aren’t Earth-shattering differences, but I notice.  Of course, I also notice that almost everyone has a Southern accent.  For a while, I feared I’d pick it up, but now I doubt it.  I don’t really hear it anymore, and it’s hard to undo decades of the nasal Chicago drone.  But the nine has a twang that grows daily.  She picked it up at school.

            And then there’s the school.  The kids’ Tennessee school is really different from the one in Illinois.  The new school has a big parking lot with a drop off and pick up loop; at our old (old) school, parents had to park on side streets and walk over and wait for dismissal (which is super fun when there’s eight inches of snow on the ground and it’s -10).  My kids receive free breakfast and lunch every day, including on the rare half day, and they receive free bus service both ways, as do all kids, regardless of their address.  (We live fairly close to the middle and high schools, yet the bus will take them.  This is contrary to Evanston, where kids who lived near the school had to get there and home on their own.)  And the differences extend beyond logistics.  I didn’t have to threaten to sue anybody to get services for the eleven, and she is no longer begging me to home school her.  Interestingly, the teachers and principal place a huge emphasis not only on educating the kids as to reading and math, but also as to raising proper young ladies and gentlemen.  My children must say “yes, sir” and “yes, ma’am.”  I’ve never seen anything like it – and I spent twelve years in Catholic school. 

            I pick them up at the bus stop and we walk the two blocks home.  Our house is different, too.  It’s significantly larger than our house in Illinois – and yet it cost a lot less, both in mortgage payments and in property taxes.  Our home is a new build in a new neighborhood within a huge, already-established subdivision.  Our old house was new (a gut rehab, so the foundation wasn’t so new) but it was located in an old neighborhood and not a subdivision.  New houses are springing up around me (ugh) and I’m still meeting the neighbors and will continue to do so as the houses are finished.  Most seem nice, and many are from somewhere else, which helps me feel less “Yankee go home” (though no one has ever said that – at least not to my face).  Overall, people are nice and polite, even when driving, which is mind blowing to me, a born-and-bred maniacal Chicago driver.  You know how when you are making a left turn and the light is green and you’re waiting for oncoming traffic to finish going through the intersection?  Down here, don’t even think about pulling into the intersection.  Everyone stays at or behind the turn lane line.  That took me awhile to get used to.  And I had to resist the urge to lay on the horn; you rarely hear that in Middle Tennessee.

            But the biggest difference between Tennessee and Illinois, to me, is the scenery.  Even a drive to the kid’s school looks nothing like that which I am used to.  The school is brand new and it’s built on former farmland.  There’s a two-lane road leading up to the school; to the left is an old silo, and wild turkeys roam the property.  (The school itself looks like an East Coast prep school, which doesn’t exactly match, but it’s impressive all the same.)  When I drive to the Whole Foods (one county and three towns due west), I take a two-lane road that winds past horse farms and cattle and half a dozen small churches scattered along the hills.  (I’m still awed each time I look over and see a cow grazing next to the road.)  My town is being built up like crazy, but we don’t have to drive far to be in the middle of rural grounds.  Or in the middle of Nashville.

            Funny enough, Nashville reminds me a bit of Chicago, with a little Los Angeles mixed in.  It has the Chicago neighborhood feel, as it is broken into clearly delineated areas with their own names and identities:  12 South, East Nashville, The Gulch, Belle Meade.  There’s even a downtown, though it’s s significantly smaller than the one I grew up near.  The Green Hills neighborhood has the West Hollywood, sunny, hilly feel, complete with the fancy mall and trendy restaurants, and Ann Patchett’s bookstore, Parnassus (across the road from the state’s only Trader Joes).  For these reasons, I almost instantly felt at home in Nashville.  But Nashville isn’t Chicago.  My old friends and family are nowhere to be found; I can’t see the landmarks I know so well (though the Batman Building is kinda cool).  Logistics are different too.  There is no “El” system.  I take I-24 instead of I-94, and I don’t know my way around very well at all.  I suppose, with time, I will.  (I try to go into Nashville once a week or every ten days so I can learn.)

            I still feel I am here only temporarily, even though that is not the plan.  There are several reasons for this.  First, I just haven’t been here long enough to have laid down anything even resembling roots.  We’ve begun doing house projects to make it feel like our home, but we still have boxes to unpack and pictures to hang and rooms to paint and even some mail to forward.  Then, too, there’s the fact my husband’s employer likes to relocate its employees, and there’s no reason to believe that won’t happen to him and thus to us.  Plus, in the past, every time I’ve moved out of state, I’ve returned to Illinois, so I’m not used to staying gone for more than a few years.  But mostly, I’ve spent the vast bulk of my life in the Chicagoland area, so any time I leave, I always expect to return.  Chicago has been my home in every sense of the word since I was born, and my roots run deep there.  I don’t plan on permanently returning (though I want to be buried there), but I’ve lived long enough to know I should never, ever say never.

            And so I wander around Tennessee, learning and seeing and doing, all the while carrying the feeling that I can’t believe I live here, that I’ll be leaving again soon.  I assume the feeling will eventually pass and one day I won’t even think about living somewhere else.  Of course, that will probably be the moment when my husband’s employer will transfer us to Minnesota, but that’s the topic for another chapter of “I can’t believe I live here,” one I hope happens far into the future, if it happens at all.