City Mouse/Country Mouse

I was up in Vermont this past weekend, visiting some old friends from college, seeing their brand-spankin' new house, meeting their second child, and reuniting with their first one.  It was a nice visit, albeit a quick one.  In the past few years I've grown beyond appreciative of the friendships that allow you to pick up right where you last left off, no matter how much time has lapsed since your last reunion.  So it was with these two friends of mine.

Vermont is nothing if not picturesque this time of year, and the drive north early on Saturday morning was particularly soothing even with its misting rain and foggy views.  Despite all of my annual qualms about the heartbreaking transition out of the warmer summer months, even I will admit there is something calming about these late fall, almost winter days that I like very much.  Mostly, I think I just appreciate the quiet.

There are moments - their urgency growing or waning depending on my mood - when I am tempted to pack every thing up and head to the mountains of Vermont, or the woods of Maine, or the farmlands of my youth, never to return to city life.  It is no secret that there is a country girl within me, with a voice all her own.

And yet.


Many years ago, when I was probably 12 or so, my family and I were in Manhattan around the holidays.  We'd spent the day strolling through mid-town, taking in the decorations, the window displays, the holiday sights.  At some point we wandered into a Crate and Barrel - a store that was then not nearly as common as they can be now.  Inside the store, I split up from my family, wandering among the kitchen appliances and holiday decor on my own.  While eyeing a bin of ornaments, I noticed a woman shopping.  She was older than me and looked so professionally pulled together with her long black coat and scarf bundled around her neck.  Her hair was smoothed back, she was wearing a dress with tights, and as I watched her fill her shopping basket with ornaments I imagined she'd come directly from work - what was surely some glamorous, exciting job - and was positive that when she finished shopping she would head back to a cozy little apartment of her own, high up in the sky.

That's what I want, I'd thought to myself in that moment before that woman walked away and I headed back to my family.  As sure of it as I was anything else in my world, I knew that some day that's the kind of life I want to live.

Of course, we all eventually grow up and we realize that life isn't always exactly as easy as the movies or novels might make it out to be - and that there are no guarantees.  It's usually a long, long climb through some annoyingly tedious jobs, apartments are far more expensive (and smaller) than one would think shared with too many roommates, and there may or may not be a Prince Charming waiting for you back in that expensive and small apartment.  With city living comes parking hassles and public transportation woes and rodents and drunken homeless men and at times too close for comfort neighbors and an overall sense of grittiness.  It is noisy and crowded and expensive and can at times, for some tiresome living.

But it also provides an energy unlike anywhere else.  There is a hustle, a bustle, a feet on the sidewalks kind of frenzied passion that I love.  It often seems that anything can happen in cities.  And this sense of wonderment, excitement, and a sort of game of chance is probably what has kept me living an urban life as long as it has. 

Last night, after an extremely long day at work, I hauled myself over to the Crate and Barrel in Back Bay, determined to get a little bit of Christmas shopping done as I am woefully behind.  I wandered among the three levels of the store, stopping here or there to peruse gifts and kitchen appliances.  Ornaments were on sale so I stopped for a moment to pick through their bins, looking for a few potential stocking stuffers.  At one point in my searching I happened to glance up, catching my reflection in a nearby hanging wall mirror.  And suddenly there was that long-ago glimpsed woman from Crate and Barrel.

Except this time, that woman was me.