Our suburban life

The community we live in is much more suburban than we're used to. It's great in many ways - children happily zipping along on scooters, deer grazing at the side of the road, turkeys wandering around the parking lots wondering if they have the right color permit - but the one big adjustment right now is navigating what's walkable and what needs a car.

I've been lucky for the past 5 years to have an employer who subsidizes T passes. So my public transit has been free. And living in J.P., I could walk so many places.

Here, there is stuff to walk to. But it's all strip-mall flavored. Many of the shops are still local, small businesses, but the strip mall arrangement emphasizes the suburban feel.

In Boston, we usually used the car for grocery shopping, crossing the river, or visiting the niecephews. The latter two are easily doable on public transit, but driving is significantly faster.

So I think of driving as saving time. If it's 45 minutes on the train, or 20 minutes in a car, then take the car. (I generally don't mind taking the train to a destination, but having to also make the return trip - and waiting forever late at night at Downtown Crossing - always changed my mind.)

But that's city thinking. 20 minutes gets me from J.P. to Central Square in Cambridge. It feels sooooo far away sometimes, because there's so much I can do right near home, or a quick trip downtown on the T. It's not that far. But it takes twice as long as anything else, and I found myself going to Cambridge less and less.

And now we're living in car country. I look at the map and I'm like ugh, why would I go to a yarn shop 20 miles away? (There is one a short distance from where we live, but I don't like their selection of washable wools.) But the reality is that it's a straight shot on the highway and it takes 20 minutes to get there. 20 minutes! That's not that far! That's the time it took me to get to work on the train every morning!

But it feels so much further because it takes 20 minutes driving just to cross the few miles over the Charles, right? So going several towns north just to find a yarn shop is ridiculous!

I'm definitely needing to recalibrate. Here, 20 miles really is only 20 minutes (mostly), if it's outside the city. I can hop in the car, drive up to the yarn shop, browse for 20 minutes, then drive back home and that's the equivalent of a lunch hour. That's it. Heck, it's 20 minutes to the UU church (okay, it took us 30 because we kept hitting traffic lights).

Then again, that sort of demonstrates the issue. At home, we could walk to the UU church in 20 minutes. Here, it requires a car. It's in the middle of nowhere. 20 minutes via highway. Highway! Quite discombobulating. And it's normal for things to be this spread out.

I think I need to spend the next few days sticking to errands that are walkable, or on the student shuttle. I need to feel a sense of place beyond the car.

For instance, there's a pie shop across the main road. Coincidentally, we think it's the same pie company we use online to ship pies to Lisa. (Most people get cookies. Lisa gets pie.) That's a small world moment ;)

There are bookshops in town (Josh introduced us to them last fall), which are walkable from the shuttle. I've been avoiding them because, well, unemployed.

Tomorrow's a community potluck. I'm looking forward to it. That should also help me feel centered.

But, to remind myself of the great things that are within walking distance (even if it still feels like suburbia):

• Yarn shop
• Indian restaurant & spice shop
• Grocery store
• Panera (i.e. chocolate brownie fix)
• Several bakeries/cafes
• Credit union
• Town library (I *think* the branch is walkable; I will test it out tomorrow)
• Pie
• Hair salon
• A few chain restaurants
• A couple of local restaurants
• Middle Eastern restaurant/shop

Getting out and meeting the neighbors at the potluck will be good. I will buy their love with COOKIES!