City boy returns to the suburbs.

I grew up in the suburbs on Long Island, but when I moved to Boston in 1997 to attend college, I started to define myself as a “city boy.”  My school didn’t have a campus, so I had to learn the layout of the city in order to get around.  I fell in love with Boston fast, and stuck around after I graduated.  For over ten years I lived in the city and its surrounding towns, moving from apartment to apartment.  There was a brief stint where I moved to San Antonio, but after about nine months I found myself back in Boston.  I loved being in the city.

As the years went by I found myself slightly further away from the city, but always within arm’s reach.  In my last apartment, just north of the city, I was far away enough that I wasn’t bothered by the traffic (human or vehicular) of a city center, but also just a bus ride away from my favorite bars, restaurants, and other cosmopolitan attractions I’d become accustomed to.  I could enjoy the quiet of my somewhat-isolated home, but still be in the heart of the city in a moment’s notice.

Now I have a family and a house.  Now my home is very far away from the city.  And I have to say, after nearly a decade of being a self-defined “city boy” and returning to the suburbs… I’m surprisingly in love with it.

I do miss all the cosmopolitan restaurants and fancy bars.  I do miss being a bus ride away from the shenanigans of the Boston burlesque scene that has so graciously adopted me.  I look longingly at my friends’ Facebook feeds, where they decided, on a whim, to dress up and have fancy drinks and get into all kinds of urban mischief.  The city boy in me cries out for a nearby bus to take me back to Boston on short notice.

But my suburban roots have taken hold of me, too.  There are things I love about being far, far away from the city.  I have property now.  As much as raking all those leaves is a pain in the ass, I have a front- and backyard that isn’t subject to a landlord’s… anything!  Our local liquor store has a surprisingly good selection of snobby beer!

And the people out here are just nice.  I live next door to a church, and the parishioners stopped by within a week to 1) welcome me and my wife to the neighborhood and 2) help me with all those leaves.  My neighbor across the street plowed my driveway after a snowstorm, for no reason other than he had a plow and it was the neighborly thing to do.  Crossing guards wave to me as I drive by.  The cashiers at the supermarket even welcomed me to the neighborhood.  I chatted art and music with the guy who refilled our oil tank.

My wife and I have quickly fallen in love with being suburbanites.

Now if only this town had an eccentric burlesque scene.