For Everyone I've gotten Away From

My son has always suggested that I write a blog.  Perhaps this is so he can just cruise a website rather than log into his email.   But maybe he also hopes to connect me to people I've left behind.

Jesus Christ, in the flesh, never traveled farther than 200 miles from his birthplace.   In contrast, my parents took me back to their native Michigan when I was 17 months old.  Thanks, US Army.  I've always been the one who got looks when I answered "Where were you born?" with "Texas", when the rest of the family said "Michigan". The next 'big' move occurred when they bought their first house, when I was 3 1/2.  I attended school at Reeths-Puffer Elementary, outside Muskegon.

When my dad's brother was killed in an industrial accident, my parents chose to move closer to his widow and 2 sons, in Whitehall.  The jump from elementary to junior high is a big deal, but when you change school districts too?  I had to start over with a new set of friends and acquaintances.  At least I graduated from high school with them.

The next move, at least, was my own choice:  college.  Michigan State was the big pond for this little fish.  Lyman Briggs College made a home-y corner of State for a lot of students besides me.  I followed one of them to California, hoping he'd change his mind about breaking our engagement.  How dumb of me.

So I've spent the biggest part of my life in California, first attending grad school at San Diego State University, working at the University of California, San Diego, and living in San Juan Capistrano as a professional mom. 

(My husband Bob, who I met at UCSD, was even more paranoid about moms staying home with their kids than I was.  I figured that since my mom ended up working when my kid sister hit kindergarten, I would be too.  But Bob thought women only work to buy luxuries.  Well, this move to Pennsylvania proved to be a luxury for which my wages should have paid.  He went into hock to do it while I was in nursing care for the accident, and we're still paying now.)

When Bob's  mother died in 2006, he inherited her house in Chester County, Pennsylvania.  Since it is virtually impossible for a family on one income to afford buying real estate in California, unless that one income is 6 figures, we thought that our standard of living would improve here by owning this house.  Ha Ha.

News Flash #1:  Medical insurance consumes a third or more of our income.

News Flash #2: Real estate taxes are billed for the whole year at once. (county, city, school)

                               If all three of them billed simultaneously, we'd lose the house.

News Flash #3: Food doesn't get any cheaper here during the summer, in spite of Amish farms 

                               being so close.  In the winter most of it still comes from California.  $4.00 gas

                               still applies?

Chester County itself is not so bad; there are Amish farms in the east and the Main Line Philadelphia suburbs in the west.  I consider "California east with snow" to begin at Downingtown, 7 miles east of us. 

 However, we live in Coatesville, which has made the national news lately with a rash of arson fires.  How many crazies are out there??   Plus this town has mixed ethnically and racially since business at the local steel mill tanked in the 1980s.  On my street are Blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and whites.  A nearby cheesesteak restaurant is owned by someone Chinese - or are they Vietnamese?  I heard someone call Coatesville "Philly east".  We may get Philly TV stations, but Philly is 45 miles away - almost in another world.

So here I sit,  between remembrance and old age; between my daughters and my husband, who want different things (my son having stayed in California); between wanting a job because I don't have enough credits for disability, but wondering if the family will free up their demands on my time, cooking skills, sewing skills, and organizing this house which still bears the stamp of my mother-in-law.  Between Philadelphia and Lancaster, new and old, cheesesteak and shoofly pie.