Room to Roam

The NY Times ran an article earlier this week about the latest problem with apartment tenants: their noisy children. Apparently more parents of young children are choosing to remain in the city, and replacing formerly aging, quiet tenants in very expensive digs. The downstairs neighbors are understandably upset. A furor has ensued pitting parents of young kids against all others: empty nesters, bachelors, dinks (does that term even exist anymore?), and the crotchety of all ages who just don’t like to be bothered.

I love reading the NY Times, and this isn’t the first time I’ve come across an article that’s made me really stop and think, because even though I side with the parents on this one, I can appreciate the mean-old-neighbor side. I don’t really like to be bothered, either. Occasionally, in the NY Times, I also stumble across an article about the east coast that makes me yearn for the years I spent there. As a young adult, I was certain that my life would be spent in New England, that I would raise polite and preppy children, and that even if the New England thing didn’t work out, there was always the other coast. I would simply never live in the middle. Why would I?

Well, you know of course that life doesn't always follow our plans for it, and here I am in the middle and I have been for almost ten years now. One of the huge upsides is that there’s plenty of affordable housing out here in the middle, so we don’t have to shush our kids when they’re hurt and crying, or tell them not to drive their Matchbox cars across the wooden floor, or scold them for running down the hallway because we’re worried that our neighbor will complain. We have yards and trees and parks galore (although NY does have that one really BIG one).

Although I can’t claim to have fallen in love with the Midwest, I have certainly like it, and have come to appreciate its finer attributes. There are some absolutely gorgeous places, like Sleeping Bear Dunes and Mackinac Island, that I never would’ve seen if I hadn’t moved here. Did that make leaving San Francisco easy? Nope. Do I still miss Seattle? Yep. Does Boston pop into my dreams on a regular basis. You betcha.

But God must have known that I’d have three boys who love to run and jump and play. And He put us in the perfect place for them to do just that.

So here’s to no downstairs tenants and lots of room to roam!