Having spent the majority of my last twenty-eight years living in Overland Park, Kansas, it's finally starting to feel like home. Not quite like Dorothy feels. And certainly not like San Francisco did as soon as I inhaled my first whiff of the Bay area air during a one week trip there more than a decade ago. Since I can't convince my comfortable Kansas born and bred husband to move to the coast, Overland Park appears to be my plan B. I still don't understand it. He loves seafood. He's a big hippie progressive let's-all-treat-each-other-decently-despite-our-differences kind of guy. He'd fit right in in San Francisco. He says, "No, let's stay here so we can influence others to become more progressive." I think he has delusions of grandeur. I don't get it, but I let it go because no matter where I live I want it to be with him.
I stopped asking him why he likes living in a suburb of Kansas City, surrounded by conservatives, terrible public transportation, and not much to do culturally except visit the various ethnic restaurants that pop up from time to time. He always said the same thing, "I just like it. It's a good place to grow up and I know everybody."
It's true. Hank's family moved to Overland Park when he was six. He has lots of good memories here. We can't go inside any store within a five mile radius of our house without hearing someone call out, "Hey Hank!" Stella will go to the same middle and high school as Hank did if we don't move by then. That's important to him, these neighborhood roots. I act like I want to move to San Francisco, and if Hank changed his mind I'd be on the next flight heading west. But I have to admit these twenty-eight year old roots are starting to wrap themselves around my ankles too.
When Dad got the new job in Overland Park and decided he wanted to live closer to work, he immediately put the house on the market and it sold that weekend. Mom claims it was because of two things: She had been baking a roast in the oven and I had just returned from crawdad fishing at the creek a block away. The couple who bought the house had a two year old and the wife looked about eight months pregnant, so when they sauntered into our open house, smelled the home cooked meal and saw a kid in overalls with mud on her feet and a bucket of crawdads walk through the door, they made an offer. In this one glimpse of our life in this house, another family coveted our existence. How weird. If only they knew about the mice traps and the roots in the sewer line and the other siblings left out and the shouting followed by the terrible awful silence I wasn't supposed to talk about. We put up a facade. We had to present our house as if a happy family lived in it to get the highest bidder.
Since the house sold so fast, we didn't have time to buy something else, so we rented a duplex in Overland Park. It was the first time I had lived in a rental property. It nearly drove my mom insane not being able to paint murals on the walls during the three months we lived there.
My dad now had a fifteen minute drive to work, but my mom had an extra twenty minutes added to her commute. Not including taking me back and forth to school at first.
It was two weeks before my last day of sixth grade at Renner Elementary school when my parents got the key to our new duplex. They hired movers and within days all our stuff had been hauled to the duplex. So I wouldn't have to transfer two weeks before the end of the year, my mom drove me to our old house each morning around 7:30 before she headed to work and then she picked me up every evening around 5:30 after work. School didn't start til 8:15, so some days instead of waiting for the bus to pick me up like I was supposed to, I'd walk to school. I strolled up and down the neighborhood blocks to soak in as much of it as I could since I knew I wouldn't live there much longer.
I got out of school at 3:15. My old Barbie friends were all one to two grades ahead of me and in middle school so they didn't get out of school until nearly 4:00 and then they had debate practice and track and dance lessons. Hazel had been moving in and out of our house since she was a senior in school and lived with Walt and Adrienne. But she and Keith had recently bought a house so she was out for good now.
I'd skip the bus again and walk home, thinking. Although I had walked these neighborhood blocks so many times these past six years, especially the year I was anorexic, I felt lost. My family had started out seven of us in one house and now we were down to three. And one of them was unfortunately my dad. The end of my elementary school days was near. I was moving away from all my friends who'd distracted me from the yelling and silence with their Barbies and Ataris and kick ball and night games.
I walked alone, taking the scenic route because I still enjoyed the creek even though it helped sell our house before I was ready to leave, but also because it took longer to get "home" to the emptiness. When I'd finally make it to my street, I'd scan the area for other kids. If I couldn't find anyone to play with, I let myself into our old empty house and sat on the newly shampooed green carpeted floor in the living room and waited. And thought. I couldn't believe he was doing this to me and she's always just standing by, letting him get what he wants, what's only best for him. I hate Overland Park and those fucking snotty rich people luring my dad to them. All he fucking cares about is money and his house and cars. He'll fit right in and I'll fucking hate Overland Park. Walt even said I'd hate it. He and Adrienne lived there for a couple years and he said I'll think everybody's stuck up.
Hearing my mom's horn honk, I'd snap out of my internal rage, gather my things, and go ride home with mom, talking about how we were glad "Benson" was on tonight but how we both wished "Soap" was on.
When I heard Mom's horn on he very last day of school, I gathered my things and stepped onto the front porch. As I'd turned to shut the door, I took one last glimpse of the green felt wallpaper at the entrance, the ugly wood paneling on the family room wall, and the clean spot on our family room floor where the television hadn't been moved since 1977.
I had many joyous moments in this house. Playing Barbies with my friends in the living room, sister talk late at night with Hazel, warm soapy baths in the green tub, watching TV with my mom, hanging out with our dog Tiger in his cob-webby dog house. That's what I remembered about living in our house. Not Dad shoving food down my throat til I gagged. Not watching my grandfather shrivel up and die in our home while I was anorexic and my dad had just had triple-bypass heart surgery. I once caught a glimpse of my mom giving Grandpa Joe a sponge bath. I could see each of his ribs and I suddenly realized I looked like him and he looked like death. Mom was taking care of three people on the verge of death. But those thoughts weren't on my mind when I looked inside the house and locked the door for the last time. I longed for what I'd grown to know and the joy that made it worthwhile.
Now I've lived in Overland Park for twenty-eight years. My parents have long ago divorced and moved to different states. I don't have to live here. I happened to fall in love with a great man who wants to stay here, and I have an amazing job that keeps me here, but I could leave if I really wanted to.
But I kinda don't want to. I don't know if it's that I've changed or if it's because Overland Park has changed. Probably both. Overland Park's changed drastically in nearly three decades. It has changed as much as I have changed. Lots of immigrant families from Russia and Latin America and Africa and even from across the state line in what had changed from a predominately white neighborhood to a predominately black neighborhood during the white flight of the 60s. But now the suburbs of Kansas City are getting more diversified and the inner city is finding small groups of white hipsters popping up.
I used to think I wanted to be an anthropologist since I've always had a fascination with cutures other than my own: mainstream, middle class, mid-size midwest suburban, white non-church-going American. In third grade when I befriended an Iranian girl at school who had just escaped with her parents during the revolution, I didn't understand why other kids in my class were afraid to play with her. I thought she was nice and really interesting. And I was so excited when a black girl, well half-black because her mom was white, joined my class in sixth grade. I was fascinated with her. I was also drawn to her because she was even bigger than me, taller and wider. She looked like she was about eighteen. I felt like I could be myself around her because she wasn't like the people in my mainstream culture who made me feel uncomfortable. In Junior high it was the gay kids and alternative kids and anyone different. I wanted to spend time with them partially because I'm a culturally curious person, but also for the enlightenment that there are other ways to live your life. I was amazed to realize that I'm not stuck being anyone I didn't want to be.
I love taking Stella to the mall now. I never would have dreamed I would some day say I actually enjoy the mall. I still hate all the blatant consumerism. But now it's almost more of a community gathering place. Instead of someplace where the preppy bitches hung out when I was a teenager, it now has an indoor children's play area Stella loves. Each time we go, it's like a mini UN right here in my formerly homogeneous hood. Parents from Russia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, India, Eastern Asia and who knows where all speak to their kids in their native tongues and then these little kids, under age 8, talk to me and Stella in English. Perfectly without an accent. I love it. It makes me so happy to see little kids have such a magnificent ability to segue into a new situation.
When we moved to Overland park in 1983 there were a couple Asian kids and a couple Latino kids in my class, but only one black boy and one black girl. By comparison, when Hank and I took Stella to kindergarten round up the other day, it reminded me of a Benetton Ad. I would have made a joke about it to the other parents sitting around the table, but they all looked about 10-15 years younger than me and probably wouldn't get it.
So yeah, I've become a suburban mom, but I still tred against the mainstream. I love our parks, our dog park, our sidewalks, our libraries, our schools. But I will always be a mother of "advanced maternal age" since I was thrity-five when Stella was born, so at least I'll have being the oldest parent in the group to cling to in my need to be the odd one.
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