I have lived in small, rural northeastern towns my entire life, except for a few short stints in Boston and California and my six-month study abroad in Costa Rica. As a teenager and young adult, I wanted out of small town life. I had big dreams of joining the Peace Corps or a living in Australia, or basically as far away from home as possible. But somehow those dreams didn’t come true and instead I ended up in another small, northeastern, rural town just a few short hours away from my own hometown.
I wish I could say that my geographic dreams changed but that would be a lie. To this day, I still wish I could travel the world and experience cultures very different from my own. However, over time I have grown to appreciate, and find contentment, living in a place not that much different from my home. As an adult, my home is an incredibly special place to me and always will be. When I go there, to visit my parents, I realize that, as a kid, I never appreciated how lucky I was to grow up where I did. I was raised in a quiet, clean, beautiful, small New England town. My parents house is situated just steps from a small and quaint lake. On summer nights you can see all the stars and hear all the peepers. In the winter, you can cross country ski down the middle of the road after a snowstorm. Nothing is more beautiful than the weight of the snow on the boughs of the trees, creating an arch over the road. When I am there, I think about what it would be like to live there as an adult. Where could I work? What house might we live in? What if my kids went to school where I did? But most of all, I think about what it would be like to live so close to my mom. When I was a kid, we went to my grandmother's house every single night after dinner and every Saturday morning. What I wouldn’t give to go grocery shopping with my mom or have a cup of coffee with her after dinner. So, part of me thinks it’s weird that people want to live their lives as adults in the same place where they grew up, but I can also completely understand the benefits of raising your own family in the same place where you were raised, particularly if you’re lucky enough to live in the place where I grew up or where I live now.
Just a few short years into my life Upstate, my mom was visiting me and we decided to walk to the farmer's market on Saturday morning. It was only a block away from where we parked but it took us 15 minutes to get to the market because I stopped and introduced her to all the people on the street that I knew. The same thing happened at the farmer's market and, before you know it, an hour had gone by and we hadn't bought anything but she had been introduced to at least half a dozen people. As we were walking back to the car she said to me, “You have really made this your home." And she was right. I had found a happy place to start my adult life. I think this was hard for her because she expected me to live not far from my childhood home, just like she did. Yet, I knew, when she said this to me, she was happy for me because she could see that I didn’t have to live so close to home to be home.
Sadly, what has struck me over the last 17 years while I have lived Upstate is that, while I may consider this my home, I sometimes still feel like an outsider. It’s true: I was not born at the hospital in town, I did not go to the school in town, I didn’t go to the cotillion at the fancy hotel, I wasn’t on the fondly celebrated high school sports teams, and I didn’t graduate from high school here. But I did go to graduate school Upstate and I chose to get married in town, instead of in my hometown. I bought my first house Upstate, got my first real job Upstate, gave birth to my babies in the local hospital and enrolled my children in public school in town. I do what I can to give back to the community I live in. I go to local events, donate to local charities, serve on a local nonprofit board, and even installed a little free library to share my love of books with my neighbors. In just a few short years, I will have lived at least half of my life in this Upstate town. But I’m not what the locals like to call a native son or native daughter. Why does that make me feel like I don’t belong Upstate?
Andy has run for two elected positions over the last several years and his opponents or critics often cite the fact that he was not born and raised Upstate to be a deficit. It almost feels like saying if you moved Upstate, from elsewhere, is a dirty little secret.
"Shh....don't tell anyone I'm from......dare I say it? Massachusetts!
I have struggled to accept Upstate as my permanent home, but I think Andy was at home Upstate the very second he rolled into town. Sometimes, I get really irritated at how much he loves living Upstate because, when I want to dream about where else we could live or what else we could do, he looks at me like I’m crazy and asks me why I would want to live anywhere other than our small, rural upstate town. For him, our town has everything we need. It didn’t come as a great shock to me when he decided to use the words "I love" in his campaign slogan or that he created a political party by that name. The dude loves it here. If you can love as place as much as you love a person, we can say that Andy loves Upstate as much as he loves his family. He has been invested in our community every since I have known him, and he moved Upstate before I did.
I want to know from our native neighbors, when will you accept us as one of your own? Will you ever? Is there a specific amount of time we have to pass before we are in the club? Or, because we didn't give our first cries here, and as kids, didn't ride our bikes down the very streets we now ride on with our daughters, we can't ever get in.
Is it me or do I see coded signs that read, "Outsiders Need Not Apply"?
Like I said, I get the reasons for staying Upstate, especially if you have family nearby. Nobody appreciates family like me. I also get the desire to give back to the community that raised you. Yet, if we took away all of The Outsiders, we wouldn't be able to staff our hospital, our schools. and many other major organizations that allow the people in this Upstate community to be safe and healthy, protected and educated.
This is our home. We are going to stay here and we ask you not to fault us for something we couldn't control- we can't choose where we are born (and honestly, I wouldn't change it if I could!) But, we can control how we can be good neighbors and citizens in our current home and we promise we will be. Don't be afraid of The Outsiders. We don't bite. Just let us in.
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