Recently, I have been on a bit of a small- town roll. On Halloween, someone gave me a “walking around beverage” as my children filled their plastic pumpkins with Twizzlers, Skittles and Nerds. When I went to feed the parking meter outside Baker Library in Hanover, where I go to write this column, someone had already purchased the maximum two hours. I got a free coffee at Dan & Whit’s in Norwich even though my purchases didn’t quite complete the necessary criteria to earn it. When my Wi-Fi went on the blink, I called my service provider. After one ring, a man answered, helped me and, an hour later, called me back to make sure everything was working as it should. All together, it was like an early Christmas, a series of little kindnesses and surprises that together make a community stronger.
As I live in the town in which I grew up, none of these presents surprised me. While I do not necessarily expect them, they have been part of life here for as long as I can remember. I try to do my best to understand and respect the responsibility that comes along with the niceties extended to me and my family, and, of course, to reciprocate. The fabric of our collective Upper Valley life works best when all of us contribute a little thread now and then.
As wonderful as life here can be, it is sometimes difficult not to peek over the fence to see if the grass is indeed greener somewhere else. Like many of our neighbors in this area, I left and came back to the Upper Valley. In between my childhood and my return as a 40-something “grown up,” I spent a lot of time in cities. I felt clueless around my friends who hailed from Chicago and New York. They had a set of skills I had never encountered: how to hail a taxi, walk in a crowd, cut a line or stand on a subway without losing balance. They were masters at keeping an expressionless, grave, slightly hostile face when walking in sketchy neighborhoods at night. Initially, I tried to emulate them, but eventually gave up and settled into becoming City Me. A year in San Francisco, a couple dozen months in Washington, D.C., and two years in Paris were all a prelude to a decade in Boston.
In each place, there was, at first, wide-eyed awe at the size and diversity in the world. City Me saw a lot of things that Upper Valley Me had never encountered. In San Francisco, on the border of the Castro neighborhood where I lived, men kissed men and held hands in public. In surreal moments in Washington, I found my own name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and looked at a $5 bill while standing directly in front of a giant marble statue of Abraham Lincoln. In Paris, I lived for the first time without a comfort zone, so baffled and nervous about how to interact with locals in their native tongue that I would practice ordering a coffee or buying a newspaper for five or six minutes before actually going into the cafe or newsstand. In Boston, I worked in the governor’s office, where I learned how to listen to homeless people, prison guards, victims of domestic violence, parents fighting for custody of their children, people who were delinquent on their taxes, unemployed immigrants, families convinced a judge had wrongfully incarcerated one of their own, and citizens upset about beavers on their property or planes flying over their houses. Convincing these disparate populations that talking to me, White Guy From Vermont, was just as good as talking to the governor, that I was authorized to speak for him, was a challenge. Proving to those populations that we genuinely wanted to help and then sensing their relief that they had finally been heard remains a treasured professional accomplishment.
Beyond the staggering human diversity of cities was the pure excitement of stuff to do. Tasting menus, professional sports, celebrity sightings, concerts, aquariums, street performers, the vibe on the sidewalk on a Saturday night, when the whole world seems to be in the exact spot where you are. Once you have tasted those things, it can be difficult to control your appetite for more. Cities have a remarkable ability to make their residents forget where they came from.
Some days, back here in a state with a single area code, especially when I have recently visited a metropolis, the pull of city life can be hard to ignore. I confess that I miss that excitement. But then my drive to Campion Rink takes the same 15 minutes it always has and always will. City words disappear from our day-to-day life up here. When is the last time you heard “siren,” “commute” or “gridlock” in Hartland or Lyme? For thousands of us here, taking a walk in the woods doesn’t require a guidebook; it requires stepping out our back door. Motorists stop and let me jaywalk, waving me along with a smile instead of an urban honk. Librarians — plural — know what type of books my sons like.
I consider all these factors all the time, the different things that make me happy and fulfilled. As I do the calculus, I notice the tension and conflict there, of course. I will probably spend a lot more time in cities in the years ahead. For now, though, the grass in the Upper Valley is green enough for me.
Mark Lilienthal lives in Norwich. He can be reached at mlilient@gmail.com.