I wouldn't say our doodle puppy has a whole lot of common sense. Georgia isn't brilliant in any obvious ways. She plays with bumblebees on the back deck, thinks she's capable of running at top speed on hardwood floors and then stopping on a dime (you really should see that trick), and believes everyone on the face of the planet wants her to lick them. One of her most interesting habits though, is her ability to play follow the leader.
Georgia follows me. If I walk into the bathroom, so does she. If I sit down at the kitchen table, she sits beside my chair. When I go upstairs to put laundry away, Georgia simply must come along.
Georgia knows her people. And her greatest desire is to stay close to
them. Which, as usual, got me thinking . . .
For
almost forty years, my entire world has centered on a tiny patch of earth in
suburban Atlanta. I have actually resided
within a ten square mile radius of Gwinnett County since the day I was
born. I did go to college seventy-five
miles away, but I’m not sure that counts.
When you add it up, I was only in Athens for about thirty months of my
life, and sadly, I spent most weekends coming home to do laundry instead of
enjoying the purple “punch” being served out of fraternity house trashcans all
over campus.
Most
of the time, I consider my native status to be unique. I enjoy the label of homegrown girl, and I
love seeing people I know almost everywhere I go because I’ve never lived
anywhere but Atlanta, Georgia. When I
was at Northside Hospital preparing to give birth to our first child, I
informed our labor and delivery nurse that I had been born in the same hospital. She was astonished. Moments like that make me feel pride in my
roots.
Occasionally, however, my pride is replaced with disgust.
Sometimes,
it doesn’t seem at all special that I’ve lived in the same location all my
life. It seems pathetic and short-sided
and entirely uninteresting. Sometimes, I
go online to look up real estate in Manhattan simply for the thrill of
thinking about life in a place that doesn’t have over seventy streets with the
name “Peachtree” in them. Occasionally, however, my pride is replaced with disgust.
I realize Atlanta has a lot to offer. It's a fantastic city in many ways and a wonderful place to raise a family. The housing prices are among the lowest in the country, there are opportunities to experience a variety of cultural and sporting events all over the city, and even with the recent blip of a floundering economy, the job market has been booming for decades.
Atlanta
has convenient proximity to a multitude of interesting adventures. In ten minutes, I can be at any number of
local parks where my children can play, ride bikes, or go fishing. I can drive twenty
minutes south to shop in boutiques bearing the names of designers whose
clothing has graced fashion runways for years.
(Notice I didn’t say I do. I said I could,
if my income bracket went up a few notches.)
In half an hour, I can be lounging on the back of a boat on Lake Lanier.
Never mind that on the boat
next to me, there is a sunburned woman wearing a bikini two sizes too small dirty dancing with her boyfriend while funneling a beer. If I drive an hour north, I can go hiking and
camping in the Great Smoky Mountains, and in less than five hours by car, I can
frolic in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.
There
are other reasons to love Atlanta. The
city is full of jogging trails, playgrounds, golf courses, ice-skating rinks, bowling
alleys, frozen yogurt establishments, malls, movie theatres, beautifully
landscaped subdivisions where every road ends in a cul-de-sac, and twenty million ALTA
teams. There are hundreds of restaurants
featuring food from all over the planet and you rarely have to drive more than a few
minutes to find
Sometimes,
I think I need a change of scenery, a change of pace, a change of
perspective. I wonder if it would be
good for me to spend a little time missing a few of the conveniences of which I’ve
grown so accustomed. Perhaps if I had a chance
to depart from the only home I’ve ever known, I could one day return to it with
a greater sense of appreciation for all it has to offer.
Maybe,
if I had to squeeze my family into a four-hundred square foot apartment with a
kitchen the size of a closet, I would stop wishing for marble countertops and new appliances in my current kitchen. Maybe, if I had to walk ten blocks to find a
patch of grass, I would enjoy the half-acre lot I live on now instead of
coveting the house down the street on three acres. You know, the one with the marble countertops and new appliances. And the hand scraped hickory floors. And the mudroom. And the . . .
Okay,
that’s enough of sharing the whole “where my treasure is there my heart will be
also.” Clearly, my heart has up and
relocated to a fabulous new address, and is now unable to pay even a small
percentage of the mortgage.
The
thing about home though, is that it really isn’t about a house, or a yard, or even
an apartment overlooking Central Park. And when I contemplate the idea of moving away, there are
anchors around my soul that keep me rooted right where I am. Their faces fill my mind when I think about
starting over in a new place, and I realize . . . my place is with them. My place is with my family. My place is with my friends. My place . . . is with my people. The people who know me and care for me and love me in spite of the fact that my heart is so flawed it spends more time longing for Carrera marble countertops than it spends longing for world peace.
Home.
It’s
where your people are, and as Georgia well knows, you should always stay close to
your people. My people are in Atlanta, and for now, a brownstone in Soho will just have to wait. *** After reading this, I suggest you cue up "Home" by Phillip Phillips and dance around your kitchen without spending even one millisecond thinking about Carerra marble countertops. Oh, and stay as far away from Lake Lanier as possible.
