As a little girl I'd frequently go shopping with my mum in town on Saturdays, or during the summer holidays and would always be astounded by the number of people she knew. She worked then as a cashier for one of the high-street banks, in the days when the staff in each bank knew all their customers well, and so got to know what seemed to be about half the town.
It was common to walk down Chestergate, a pedestrianised shopping street in Macclesfield, and take over an hour to get from one end to the other - and it wasn't a long thoroughfare - simply because of the quantity of people who stopped to say hello and have a 'quick' chat to my mum - she even knew the people who owned the town's local sex shop and said they were 'lovely men', (something that made me stop and reconsider my opinion of her when I first heard her voice that belief). Anyway, I'd hang around at her side, half listening to yet another conversation, bored witless and wondering how soon it would take us to get away and continue our short journey to where we were going. I must've looked quite sullen standing there, wishing to be elsewhere, or sometimes crossing my legs and bobbing up and down whilst tugging on mum's skirt to tell her that I really needed the loo and couldn't hold on for that much longer and please could we go right now.
Despite my negative feelings of these experiences as a child, I find now that I'm enjoying being in a similar position here in El Entrego. We have over 200 students at the academia, so I know that many people, plus the mothers or fathers who come to collect them. It's almost impossible for me to walk down a street in town without coming across someone I know - frequently a mother without her offspring, who I will recognise but embarassingly am unable to remember just who her son or daughter is. This is particularly a problem if they stop and want a proper chat, but fortunately that doesn't happen too often yet. And then there are the students themselves, the younger ones of whom will often shout 'Raaay-chelll' all the way across the park and wave their arms madly simply to say hello.
Then, as well as all the people I know from the academia you can add to the list my self-defence teacher and his girlfriend, the cashier from my bank, the manager too, the postman, the electrician, the nice men who work at the farmers' suppliers where I often go to buy vegetable plants, my neighbours, and lots of assistants from various shops around the town. They all say hello.
Even if it's just a brief communication it's a great feeling to walk around town and know people I can greet and who'll return my smile. It makes me feel as though I belong.
It was common to walk down Chestergate, a pedestrianised shopping street in Macclesfield, and take over an hour to get from one end to the other - and it wasn't a long thoroughfare - simply because of the quantity of people who stopped to say hello and have a 'quick' chat to my mum - she even knew the people who owned the town's local sex shop and said they were 'lovely men', (something that made me stop and reconsider my opinion of her when I first heard her voice that belief). Anyway, I'd hang around at her side, half listening to yet another conversation, bored witless and wondering how soon it would take us to get away and continue our short journey to where we were going. I must've looked quite sullen standing there, wishing to be elsewhere, or sometimes crossing my legs and bobbing up and down whilst tugging on mum's skirt to tell her that I really needed the loo and couldn't hold on for that much longer and please could we go right now.
Despite my negative feelings of these experiences as a child, I find now that I'm enjoying being in a similar position here in El Entrego. We have over 200 students at the academia, so I know that many people, plus the mothers or fathers who come to collect them. It's almost impossible for me to walk down a street in town without coming across someone I know - frequently a mother without her offspring, who I will recognise but embarassingly am unable to remember just who her son or daughter is. This is particularly a problem if they stop and want a proper chat, but fortunately that doesn't happen too often yet. And then there are the students themselves, the younger ones of whom will often shout 'Raaay-chelll' all the way across the park and wave their arms madly simply to say hello.
Then, as well as all the people I know from the academia you can add to the list my self-defence teacher and his girlfriend, the cashier from my bank, the manager too, the postman, the electrician, the nice men who work at the farmers' suppliers where I often go to buy vegetable plants, my neighbours, and lots of assistants from various shops around the town. They all say hello.
Even if it's just a brief communication it's a great feeling to walk around town and know people I can greet and who'll return my smile. It makes me feel as though I belong.
2 comments:
It is nice to feel as if you belong somewhere, and by the sounds of it, you belong where you now reside.
I felt the same at Trinity Beach. I loved the fact that I was a 'local' but I also loved the fact I was pretty anonymous too - not like in the home town. I rather hate the fact that everyone knows your business...
It's nice to live in a small town; I experienced the same thing living in Kenwood. I think there were only about 200 people living there, maybe a little more, but few enough that I knew all the dog-walkers and people who worked out in their gardens in the corner houses or tended their vines if they owned a plot of grapes. It was a nice feeling.
At the same time I agree with Melody, I don't necessarily like living in Santa Rosa, where I do now (even though it's 10-15 minutes by car from Kenwood), because this is where I actually went to Junior High and High School, and worked several jobs for the best part of ten years after I cam back from college.
Since the town is much bigger (about 150,000 people or so), that increases the chance that I can get about anonymously, which is what I prefer, because running into old school mates or coworkers, for me, is more stressful than anything; I hate the inevitable, "So, what have you been up to all these years" question or the "Let's have lunch sometime" suggestion that neither person really means (usually). Even when I shop I'm like a shopping ninja, trying to avoid crowds and meeting any gazes or eliciting any conversation, except when at the checkout or someplace where to not say anything would be impolite. I still do run into those old mates, and it happened all over again in a virtual sense when I joined Facebook, but I try to minimise the occurences. I don't like to think about the past and wish it wouldn't intrude on my present life.
But yes, a small town full of strangers, who you then begin to form a present-tense relation/recognition with, is a nice thing. It's wonderful to live in a small town and know the baker, and the woman at the feed store, and the guy who grows those huge watermelons. Or to just wave to nearly everyone as they pass. It increases the sense that you belong there, and in a life when I've lived in twenty-one different houses in ten different towns, feeling I belong anywhere is very comforting. One thing that was such a bummer about getting divorced was, in addition to all the usual bad things about a divorce, I left the town I probably loved more than any other in which I've lived. I can go back an visit...it's only a stone's throw away, but now it's not the say. Some bad memories are attached, and the people seem like strangers now. It would be the past again, and thus awkward. So I'm making do the best I can in my not-Kenwood but still very pretty southeastern corner of Santa Rosa, and while the people are more in a rush and the pace of life is a bit faster, it's nothing like a big city, and there are parks and natural beauty around me into which I can escape.
So, just play the hand dealt to me. Thanks for the post, it was a good one. :)
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