change can be exciting

In elementary school I would befriend the new kid out of fascination.  Andrea Deber had come from an exotic place and she had red hair.  I don’t remember where she had moved from, but when I learned she had been born in England I made her teach me how to count to ten with an English accent, in exchange for my Spanish version. 

I was bored with the story of our lives – the fact that my parents lived on the lands they grew up on.  Blah, blah, blah.  Our ancestors came from Sweden and Norway and we have relatives named Olaf and a dog named Ingamar.  So why haven’t we picked up in over a century?

I left Minnesota right out of high school, moving to New Jersey.  Throwing myself wholeheartedly into creating a new beginning, I sunk my heels into the flanks of my community as a live-in nanny for two children while putting myself through college.  I was twenty minutes from New York City, where it all happens.  I loved the energy of New York’s streets, the variety of people on the East Coast – the heavy accents and loose opinions.  People were more expressive, more outspoken, more ambitious.  The reticent life of fields and faith were run over by yellow cabs and cloaked by long, finely brushed, wool coats.  It was more my pace.