How did I end up here?

Raised in inner city southeast Portland, one of the most liberal cities in America,  I left the city almost ten years ago when my husband and I bought a home in suburbia. This wasn’t just your typical suburbia, this place was fresh, it was new, it was young.  Large, cleanly landscaped lots, new craftsman houses, streets lined with young trees. A Starbucks on every corner. So attractive, so appealing. So new!  Soooo different from the old neighborhood where I grew up.

I had never lived in a brand new house. I only knew of homes with drafty upstairs bedrooms where closets were a luxury, small bathrooms had make-do showers, and family rooms were often a TV, a couch and a rug slapped on the floor of a cold, damp, concrete basement. But on the outside, the neighborhood that I grew up in was indeed charming. With block after block of early to mid-century houses with character, tall leafy maples in every easement that shaded mature landscaped yards and over-grown rhododendrons. Cool and shady in the summer.  Streets filled with endless leaves in the fall. It was somewhat of a status symbol to “move back in.”

I had looked at dozens of homes in my neighborhood, but I just couldn’t pull the trigger to put our money into a bottomless pit of repairs or a remodel. My husband certainly wasn’t handy. How could I ever think this would work for us? The high costs and the taxes, ugh! Property taxes keep rising and the schools keep getting worse? Is this really where I wanted to raise my family?  

So many who grew up in the suburbs yearn to move to the city for a more liberal urban lifestyle. I, who grew up in the city, found myself strongly drawn to this fresh new suburban community. The attraction of new buildings, clean streets, beautiful gardens, little traffic, low crime — away from the city, the concrete, the ugliness of the urban center.

Suburbia. This is where I wanted to be.

It took some convincing to get my husband to buy into the idea. His commute would be lengthy, so far away from our friends, and on the west side. I’d never lived on the west side. Would my friends drive all the way out here to see me? Would they still invite me back for gatherings, even though they considered me living in what they called “practically California?”

“You can look, but I want something closer in.”

Okay, but I kept looking.