Across the street from my sister-in-law’s home in Anna Maria Island, Florida, there sits a wooden bench under a palm tree – a school bus stop. Reaching beyond the bench is a white sand trail lined with tropical greenery that leads to a wide beach and the glittering blue-green sea. I carry that bench with me (figuratively) every time we leave Anna Maria. It symbolizes a simpler, quieter life that I sometimes yearn for when things get too hectic, too irritating, too hard living in Chicago.
It’s a small (not-so-funny-to-my-husband) joke in our family that every time we travel somewhere I imagine us living there. This is odd because I love our life in Chicago, most days. I think it speaks to the wanderlust in my heart that is always thinking, “Why not?”
I am always incredulous when I inevitably ask of my family during any given vacation – sometimes just as we drive through some sleepy little town, “What would it be like to live here?” and they answer, “Oh, I don’t think it would be right for us. It’s too quiet. It’s too remote. It’s away from our friends. It’s away from our school.” Or my favorite, “We’d be bored.” They always have some reason why this town, this city, this country is not the right place and only Chicago will do. I then gaze out at the snow-capped mountains or the rolling vineyards or the tree-lined boulevards or – most recently – the wooden bench under the palm tree, and realize that my yearning to try these new places is not shared with anyone in my immediate family.
I don’t know why this is. I traveled a lot before I got married. I took seriously the sage advice of older friends to “sow your wild oats” and, fortunately, a lot of my travel was associated with my work and allowed me to visit such far-flung places as Australia, South America, Africa, and many jaunts to Europe. I would frequently tack on extra time before or after these trips so that I could wander around – always alone and always on foot – to generally soak in the locales, all the while wondering, “What would it be like to live here?”
In Anna Maria, the pace is slow. People ride their bikes a lot. There is no Starbucks. No fast food chains. No taxis. No movie theatres. No malls. There is one elementary school, one high school, and one grocery store. It’s Quiet.
There are also manatees living in the canals and dolphins frolicking just off-shore. There are wide, nearly-empty, white sandy beaches. From May to October, there are turtle egg nests dotting the shoreline and all of the establishments located on or near the beaches (restaurants, homes, etc) turn off their lights after dusk lest the baby turtles, upon hatching, accidentally mistake our man-made, electric lights as the moonlit sea. It’s hard to believe my family wouldn’t be happy living here, no matter what they say. I envision my husband home for dinner every night, more relaxed in this new environment, with more time to “smell the roses” in the most literal way. I envision our children becoming avid sea kayakers, marine biologists, enviromentalists. I imagine them sitting on the wooden bench under the palm tree, waiting for the bus to take them to school, the ocean breeze fluttering their hair.
My husband rolls his eyes at these reveries and tells me I’m a dreamer, unrealistic, crazy. He is, no doubt, correct. I’m on vacation, after all, and not actually living in these idyllic places. And yet, why not? People move every day. People work and go to school and live their lives in a multitude of unlikely places. Pick up and move. Pick up and move. We do it all the time, albeit, in Chicago proper. Until I convince the rest of my family otherwise, the bench comes with me.
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