In concord in Concord

After what seemed like months of deliberation, we have finally settled. Concord is, and will continue to be, our home.

In the end the Town of Amherst could not comply with Peter's conditions. They need a land manager now, and we simply can't pull up our roots that quickly.

It appears that our roots have grown quite deep after five years. We thought they were dispersed and superficial, like a cactus, surviving off of limited resources and ready to be transplanted at a moment’s notice. But as it turns out there is a tap among them. Perhaps this house is actually our home, and this hamlet, Our Town.

I was raised in a city and evolved to value all of the riches a city offers: access to culture, unlimited resources, diversity, variety, possibility, anonymity. The finitude of a small town never made sense to me. I have lived in small towns, but usually in other countries where the exotic easily compensated for the insular. Without giving it a thought, I always assumed I would end up in a metropolis.

And then I married a naturalist. When I fell in love with Peter we were on a ridge overlooking a small New England town ablaze with autumn. The air was so silent we could hear the beating of the wings of a flock of geese as they migrated past us. When I chose to pursue and finally to marry him, I understood that we would need to live in just such a place, a place with access to silence and overlooks and long walks at dusk where you don’t see another human being.

So we “ended up” in Concord. I have always lived in here with the presumption that we would one day leave. I have maintained the attitude that Concord is not “enough” for me. I need more. More culture, resources, diversity, variety, and possibility. (I can live without the anonymity.) I must admit, I have felt “better than” this place.

Now The Valley, Western Mass, that would be the proper compromise. It has access to lovely vistas and solitude, but is dripping with enlightened liberalism. With five institutions of higher education, I would have access to everything my city heart needs and deserves: dance classes, lectures, music, theater, writing groups, play groups, co-ops of every kind, not to mention Trader Joe’s and the Haymarket Coffee shop. In a place like Northampton I could finally be complete and satisfied, and realize my true potential as a grown-up in this world. Peter and I could even take Tango lessons if we wished.

However, in this brush with possibility, in considering Peter’s job offer to finally work and live in The Happy Valley, we have stumbled upon an essential epiphany. Life in Concord is wonderful.

We live in an old house at the top of a dead end street abutting town land. We can step out our door and walk for three hours through the woods without leaving town (or seeing another human being). We also live next to a block with fifty subsidized housing units, each with at least two kids, kids who Jasper will grow up with and who will be my students. These families are our neighbors and make me realize I don’t need to live in a city in order to feel the diversity of the human experience.

We live in a state that makes headlines every four years. A place where we were able to meet and chat with the President of the United States, and a handful of other aspiring presidents, and no one thought much of it. A place where everyone feels like their vote counts, where politics is personal and not always predictable.

We have a little history museum, a little planetarium, a little pub, a good bagel shop, a decent Native American museum, a good Indian restaurant, and we know the people who run them. We have a library, a YMCA, a trolley, a community theater troupe.

I teach fifth grade in our neighborhood school. In a few years my own children can come to my classroom after school, eat their snack and do their homework while I prepare my lessons for the next day. You don’t get much better than that.

We have been forced to admit that it is possible that we are just where we should be.

It feels like deciding to get married. We have been in a relationship with Concord that has been working out. We like each other, maybe even a lot. But we haven’t been ready to commit. There have been the lingering “what ifs.” What if we get bored? What if we don’t fully satisfy one another? What if there is that better place out there where we are truly meant to live waiting for us? What if we never find that other place? What if we are stuck here… forever? Because of these doubts we have been reticent to fall in love. We can appreciate the mountains, and the coast, and the orchards, and the foliage, and the political encounters, and the trips to Boston, and the evenings around the fire in our backyard with friends… But don’t love them. Falling in love would be too dangerous.

Maybe it’s time to fall in love. Maybe it’s time admit that we accept Concord as our home, in spite of its faults, for all of its graces, because we understand that loving the place where we are is better than not. With commitment comes opportunity previously unimagined. Let me throw open my arms and embrace this place, as imperfect as it is, and say, “I do.”