Coffee Musings - 031207

The idea of home and geography. I always think of myself as a Jersey Girl, but I haven't lived in New Jersey for over 20 years. When I hear a steady, but not too rough rain on a parking lot, or the sound of cars driving over that rain, I think of New Jersey. Also, any bagel shop, if it's good, makes me think of New Jersey. I always think that one day I will end up back there as it's my home.

However, when I lived there it's not as if I felt in place. I remember my last year of high school I scheduled my classes so that I could go home early, not so that I could hang out in the school cafeteria with friends. Part of me always wanted to hide. Is that belonging, is that home?

I grew up in Ridgewood NJ which is very cute, safe to walk around, and family oriented, but it is also homogenous. It's like I grew up in a microcosm. All the news of the world really focused a lot on NY, which was like a monster, but at the same time where everyone wanted to go.

There were two sections to Ridgewood as I saw it; George Washington and Ben Franklin. They were the middle schools, as we all went to the same high school. In fact, families would move to Ridgewood just for the good education, and then once the kids graduated, you couldn't keep those empty-nesters in town. It was like an annual exodus. Anyway, at the GW section there was Heights Road, and from there we could see the "heights" also known as the New York City Skyline. The place all things happened, and yet, I knew so little about it because it seemed so dangerous.

If I went back to NJ, and lived there, what would it mean after 20 years of thinking about it, if I wanted to leave again?