project #10
Recently I mentioned the 52 projects book and my intention to try and do as many as I can, or as many as I find interesting. Some of the more intensive ones are out of the realm of possibility for me right now, but I think I can do this one without breaking a sweat:).
Project #10: Write the story of why you moved to the city in which you currently live.
Most of my childhood was spent in very small towns, very rural areas, and then semi-suburban areas that still had rural hearts. It still surprises me sometimes how deeply I've fallen for urban living, but it was a major shift in the middle of a pretty seismic period in my life.
I first moved to the Baltimore area when I started college at UMBC, which is not technically in Baltimore, but close enough. I did not take full advantage of my proximity to the city, though-- I was a typical college kid who only came in to go to Fell's Point or possibly an IMAX movie. In my junior and senior years, I had a dear friend named Jason Mahane, who I have since completely lost touch with, who took it upon himself to introduce me to some of the best restaurants in the area. We ate Chinese, Japanese, French and Italian together, and it was my first experience seeing Baltimore with someone who knew the city really well. He was a great guy, funny, smart, sweet and a really amazing artist. He ended up going to California to get an MAF in photography somewhere, but I still think about him.
Anyway, then I went to graduate school in northwest Ohio, where I met husband-to-be, who was a longtime Baltimore boy. Spike was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Baltimore when he was seven, and one of the first things we bonded over was really disliking the midwest-- the cold, being landlocked, the lack of racial diversity in our area, being far from our families and friends. Spike is not a small-town boy, at all-- he's a city boy all the way. He graduated at the end of my first year, and moved back to Baltimore.
We dated, then broke up, then tried to figure out whether or not we should get back together, and in the course of that thinking, he came to see me for a weekend in Ohio-- the weekend of September 11, 2001. That weekend we conceived our girls, which ended up being the deciding factor. I finished school that December and moved back here, to move with him in the city. We rented a house in Remington, with a pothead landlord and neighbors who raised and fought pitbulls. It was an interesting way to experience city living for the first time, heavily pregnant, mainly confined to the house, and incredibly overwhelmed and lonely. I read The Corner over and over again, napped a lot, ate a lot and obsessively checked the old hipMama message boards. I remember going out to my car one day for an OB appointment and seeing that the windows had been busted out, and just breaking down and sobbing on the sidewalk!
Despite the somewhat tramautic beginnings, I've really come to think of Baltimore as my home. It's hard for me to imagine living in any other place in the world, as much as we sometimes daydream about moving to foreign lands. From the green lawns of Guilford to the blasted concrete jungle on the West Side, Baltimore has worked it's way under my skin, and I don't think I'll be excavating it anytime soon.
Project #10: Write the story of why you moved to the city in which you currently live.
Most of my childhood was spent in very small towns, very rural areas, and then semi-suburban areas that still had rural hearts. It still surprises me sometimes how deeply I've fallen for urban living, but it was a major shift in the middle of a pretty seismic period in my life.
I first moved to the Baltimore area when I started college at UMBC, which is not technically in Baltimore, but close enough. I did not take full advantage of my proximity to the city, though-- I was a typical college kid who only came in to go to Fell's Point or possibly an IMAX movie. In my junior and senior years, I had a dear friend named Jason Mahane, who I have since completely lost touch with, who took it upon himself to introduce me to some of the best restaurants in the area. We ate Chinese, Japanese, French and Italian together, and it was my first experience seeing Baltimore with someone who knew the city really well. He was a great guy, funny, smart, sweet and a really amazing artist. He ended up going to California to get an MAF in photography somewhere, but I still think about him.
Anyway, then I went to graduate school in northwest Ohio, where I met husband-to-be, who was a longtime Baltimore boy. Spike was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Baltimore when he was seven, and one of the first things we bonded over was really disliking the midwest-- the cold, being landlocked, the lack of racial diversity in our area, being far from our families and friends. Spike is not a small-town boy, at all-- he's a city boy all the way. He graduated at the end of my first year, and moved back to Baltimore.
We dated, then broke up, then tried to figure out whether or not we should get back together, and in the course of that thinking, he came to see me for a weekend in Ohio-- the weekend of September 11, 2001. That weekend we conceived our girls, which ended up being the deciding factor. I finished school that December and moved back here, to move with him in the city. We rented a house in Remington, with a pothead landlord and neighbors who raised and fought pitbulls. It was an interesting way to experience city living for the first time, heavily pregnant, mainly confined to the house, and incredibly overwhelmed and lonely. I read The Corner over and over again, napped a lot, ate a lot and obsessively checked the old hipMama message boards. I remember going out to my car one day for an OB appointment and seeing that the windows had been busted out, and just breaking down and sobbing on the sidewalk!
Despite the somewhat tramautic beginnings, I've really come to think of Baltimore as my home. It's hard for me to imagine living in any other place in the world, as much as we sometimes daydream about moving to foreign lands. From the green lawns of Guilford to the blasted concrete jungle on the West Side, Baltimore has worked it's way under my skin, and I don't think I'll be excavating it anytime soon.