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Tuesday, March 24, 2015

a little american dream

I love my parents and extended family, I really do, but lay off the politics already. I'm not going to delve into their political views, or even mine, but why can't I ever see them without getting into a debate I don't want to be in.

So yeah, if you haven't guessed it yet, my family and I flew home to New England for vacation. 

It's funny how, since we currently live in San Diego, the first question most people ask is, how cold was it? 

Yes it was very cold.

They then proceed to tell me how people who live there are crazy. But, to be honest, I miss it back home. Sure the San Diego climate is fairly stable and mostly mild, but I miss weather patterns. I miss seasons, and rain, and the smell of cold. I may hate the cold, but there's something special about snow. Standing outside in the silence of a gentile snow fall is calming and beautiful. Every time we go back home for a visit, I wish I lived there. I'd even live half a days drive north in Maine, where some of my family lives. It may be cold, and an hour from the nearest small city, but it's beautiful.

I joke with people from San Diego that you guys don't have trees down here. The immediate reaction is, Of course we have trees! I usually pull up a satellite photo of the area I grew up in and show them how we cut holes in the forest to fit houses. That always garners a response of, wow that's a lot of trees. SoCal is beautiful in its own right, but I miss that small town New England, windy tree lines streets kind of beauty.

I sometimes wonder how my position would change if we weren't alone out here. Family is very important to me, so if I had family living out here, maybe I would feel different about the situation. But, in the end, I want my kids to grow up around family as I did. I want them to know their cousins, when my sister has kids, and their second cousins, who are about their age. I want to go to big family parties and be the adult hanging out watching the younger kids running around for hours.

I want the American dream, and I know how difficult that is.

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