Our days at the Shome are coming to an end. We’ll be moving
next week, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise. To the casual reader, it may
seem like we just moved in. But to me, the past 784 days (give or take) have
felt exactly like 784 days. My baby was newly three when we moved in; now she’s
starting kindergarten in a week and a half. A lot of living has happened at the
Shome. So what will I remember? What will the kids remember? The lack of space?
The long commutes everywhere? The line of five whiny people at the bathroom
door? Probably, but I hope we’ll focus on these memories instead:
- The girls becoming master
rollerbladers in our family room.
- Eating donuts and watching
the hot-air balloon launch on Labor Day weekend from our rooftop.
- Walking to the Family Dollar
store across the street. How many people can do that?
- The kids using our bed as their
“outdoor play area,” and us being laid back enough to go with it.
- Sword fights with
dipsticks on top of the building next door.
- Daily visits from Grandpa,
who works downstairs. Every kid should get to see their grandpa each day!
- Camryn opening her eyes in
the morning and seeing her dad sitting at his desk right across the
hallway.
- Christmas caroling in the
’hood with 80 of our suburban friends.
- Getting creative in
the minivan. We used it for doing homework, eating, napping, reading,
playing games, changing clothes, and having some really great
conversations.
And what about what we’ve learned during these 784 days? I’m still processing, and
probably will be for a very long time, but here are
a few things I know today:
- The poor are not just who
you think they are. In our neighborhood at least, they are old ladies who
live in small houses with lots of pets. How can we all do a better job of
taking care of these forgotten women?
- Our city is much more
diverse than we think it is. In any of the stores near our house we see
people with turbans, women covered in robes, people with no limbs, and
every race imaginable. Some day soon the kids won’t know this is normal.
We’ll go days and weeks and possibly months without seeing someone in a
wheelchair unless we’re intentional about where we walk and shop and hang
out.
- Kids are so much less
fragile than we think they are. Why is it that when a scary-looking person
walks down the street, I step aside but kids look up and smile? Or that a
7-year-old can talk so intelligently and compassionately about
homelessness? How can they all endure a middle-of-the-night break-in and
be completely unfazed the next day? Nope, not as fragile as I thought.
- And here’s the big lesson
for me: If you’re going to radically change your life, you’ve got to jump
in with both feet. You can take baby steps—maybe even teenager steps—in
living outside your comfort zone without completely detaching from the
world as you once knew it. That is what we have done, and I’m so glad we
did. We are better because of it, even if the ways are small. But we
didn’t fully commit. For several reasons, we kept our kids in their overachieving
school in the “nice” part of town, which meant their playdates, sports
teams, and really their hearts, stayed there as well. This also left me in
the car three hours a day, and it’s hard to invest in your community when your
most meaningful fellowship is with a steering wheel. Baby steps are good
and important, and I’ve done things here that I never imagined I could do.
But to anyone considering uprooting to a different kind of lifestyle, I
would say you’ve got to pull those roots all the way up.
