Massachusetts State of Mind

Well, we are here in western Massachusetts for the month of July. I am sitting in a Panera, the least local or interesting place where there's wifi and coffee, but it is close to the movie theater where certain minors are watching a movie on the most glorious sunny day imaginable. This is not the Allison Park Panera, where it's very folksy and familiar (as familiar as an overpriced chain can get) but also very homogeneous. I have managed to find things I like and people I who share lives and interests. There's a kind of adjustment that seems inevitable, but takes work.

Here's there's a set of grandparents, three kids, and a mom with a t-shirt that says "You know what's SO gay? My family..." So, yeah, you would not get that in western Pennsylvania suburbia (maybe in the city; just maybe).

Getting here has been like a bumpy landing while traveling on a propeller plane: it's scary before you're sure it's going to work out. The landscape is the same, though: it's beautiful, it's a bit too precious in its funkiness, it's familiar, and it's clearly not where I live any more. The house we still own is falling into some serious disrepair -- from simple things like broken light fixtures to less simple things like a deck that is completely rotted and sliding glass doors that barely work -- and it makes it hard to live there, especially when I go up into the attic to retrieve items for us to use as furniture while we're there and I see all the things I just left there, unwilling to deal with them when we moved, still unable to deal with them when I come back. Someone reminded me that lots of people have attics full of crap they don't want to face, roofs that need to be re-shingled, and a lack of time to fix even simple things. Coming from the pristine and intensely shiny suburbs, in the glare from their perfect lawns and clean porches, I have forgotten that this is true.

We are imperfect and it is okay.



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