Small Town Girl

Santa Barbara is not exactly small town U.S.A., but it's definitely not a booming metropolis either. I enjoy visiting big cities, but I've always considered myself a small-town person. While I grew up just outside of Chicago, my little suburb had not much more than a main drag; we didn't even have a movie theater. It's expanded quite significantly in recent years, what with the conversion of an old Naval Air Base into a strip with some restaurants and shops, but the community is small. It feels like everyone knows everyone, and people like it that way. There just aren't that many places to go, so you wind up bumping into people everywhere. I didn't go a single place in Glenview this weekend where I didn't bump into someone I knew, a fact that reminded me of my roots, of why I am who I am and the piece of this midwestern girl's heart that loves community in the ways that make you feel totally connected to where you live and who you're living alongside.

I picture my "someday" life off in the hazy daydreamy world of the future, in a small (usually Southern) town like the ones you sometimes see on tv and movies or read about in books. Where people all eat at the same three restaurants and attend town festivals and live within five square miles of the solitary and picturesque main drag. Whether or not these cozy towns exist in reality doesn't actually matter, although I've visited enough of them to firmly believe that they do. Like many Americans, I've romanticized the idea of living where everybody knows your name and I like to keep the fairy dust on that mental image. Of course the proximity of this town to a city large enough to provide good shopping and a wider variety of incredible restaurants is a must as well.

Santa Barbara is described decidedly among locals as having a small-town feel. I would venture to say that it feels even smaller to those of us deeply entrenched in the Westmont world, but really everyone here is more or less connected through six (at most!) degrees of separation. I've found it's generally more like two to three degrees of separation tops. I do love that about this place. I see the same people at farmer's market, down town, the pharmacy, the beach. I recognize people on my lunch break, and more often than not can find a point of connection with anyone if I try hard enough. I enjoy the times at work or church or when I'm trying to come up with the name of that-one-person-from-Westmont-who-did-that-one-weird-thing-and-dated-that-girl-who-lived-in-page-and-sat-here-in-the-DC... (you know the conversation) and other people actually know exactly who I'm talking about.

But last week, for some unknown reason; this quaint-ness, connected-ness, this three degrees of separation was making me feel more claustrophobic than anything else. It was a surprising turn of events. I'm going to play the Jesusita card, because I think I can. This town started seeming amazingly small as you could feel the energy being wrung from this place as we collapsed under the stress of our collective state of emergency. Everyone knew someone who was being affected-a fact that was a source one moment of solidarity the next of anxiety or sadness. The size of our medium city shrank even more to me this week as I realized how deeply I have become rooted here-almost but not quite against my will-as my heart was totally caught up in every shift and change the fire made. But that was really just a springboard for the rest of it, the personal, hard to put your finger on, not-totally-good-or-bad-or-easy-or-hard stuff.

Really, there have just been a handful of normal everyday things snowballing, propelling me toward a need to return to Glenview and see my family, see my old friends, visit the Dairy Bar, catch up with my ever-changing cousins, meet the people my parents are taking to Haiti with them, and take a deep breath. Relationships, changes, stress, celebrations, good-byes, moves, and everything in between. So I took a moment to breathe in the midwest this weekend. Bought a last minute ticket and soaked up a few days of good old fashioned midwest springtime, and it was just the right amount of time and totally worth it.

I mean, look at them. That's Sophia, my cousin and god-daughter swinging on the elephant tire swing in my backyard, and then Sophia, Mia, Nick, Bella, and Riley doing a coreographed dance to "hoedown throwdown" in the driveway. Just your average Sunday with the Walshes.