Moving to Timbuktu

I should point out that Timbuktu is actually a town in Africa. One of the countries that my friend Katie is in at the moment. See my previous post. But anyway, the point is, we are still seriously considering moving to Traverse City. Which, I guess, qualifies as "Timbuktu." Last night, as we were entering DC via Route 50/New York Ave., I mentioned that a girl in my French class had gone to the big warehouse club there, now called LOVE, and I said to her, "oh, you mean the place with all the stabbings?" She was surprised, but I wasn't. So my husband says he's not surprised either, and then after a pause, the question again.

"So, do you want to do it? Do you want to move?"

I said, "Yeah." I used to go through this turmoil when we talked about moving even just outside the city, into Virginia. Which is why we don't live in VA now. But yesterday I just felt a sort of absolution/resign/relief. I do have some serious concerns about what our future kid(s) will or will not be exposed to there. My brother noted the fact that there is virtually no diversity in schools there. And, though luckily there are two small Jewish congregations in town, they are both reform and I doubt they do services or hebrew school in hebrew, which I think is a really great thing for kids to learn.

But I also wonder how kids survive in cities... if we had a child in our apartment, ignoring the fact that we couldn't fit in the apartment, who would its friends be? This may be a product of the way Ben and I live, or my being mostly completely unmotivated to meet people, or the fact that our neighborhood is populated mostly by gay men and very few twenty-somethings or young parents, but in the past three years I have made just one new friend that I talk to on a regular basis. Luckily this friend lives in DC and is having a baby in January, so if we were to stay I'd have her, but she's not in our immediate neighborhood. Getting together involves cars. But, funny enough, she is just as attached to Northern Michigan as I am, having spent all of her summers in Charlevoix. So, if we moved to MI, I would probably still get to see her.

So, why even live in the city if the conveniences don't apply? We do regularly go out to eat in Dupont or U Street, but all of our friends (the "rugby crew" who started out as Ben's friends) live in VA. And most families live outside the city. And my job has undergone changes that I am trying to deal with but am not exactly loving. So, it would make sense to attempt my freelance thing now, and in a place where the cost of living is low relative to here and other big cities.