Working In A Small Town/Living In A Big City - Alternately, I Think I Miss My Hometown
I got my first 'big kid' office job, and every weekday I drive out of the big city to a little suburb, a small town, a world of winding neighborhoods and one high school and competing Easter egg hunts happening across the street from each other. The office in which I work is along the main street of this little place, and every morning I pass by the elementary school with its gray and brown playsets and the town museum that I'm confident can't hold more than three rooms' worth of artifacts.
The office itself is mostly just two big rooms with little closet-like rooms that line the sides, my desk softly occupying the corner of the biggest room, directly across from the big window that has a view of only the empty, grass-filled lot that sprawls multiple blocks across the street. I'm usually alone in the mornings. I connect to the speakers in the office and listen to music, and I work, and I draw, and I drink my coffee.
Around eleven every morning, I get up from the chair and desk that is my world for forty hours a week and I make my way to the little bakery and general store that are to the right of the office, walking along the sidewalk instead of crossing the parking lots inhabited along the edges by little birds and in the middle by broken glass.
The bakery is this oddly-shaped building that juts up from the landscape, emanating a stately and all-knowing presence. I've always thought that it looked almost like a steamship that had run aground and lost its smokestack. There's an entry way, a set of doors before another, and there is this wooden, musty smell that permeates everything within that small space, and I am reminded of the old farmhouse in which I grew up every time I go.
The only words that accurately describe the interior are cluttered and homey. A large espresso machine takes up half of the counter, glass-fronted fridges are squeezed up against the wall, holding pre-made lunches for those that work along the main street, like I do, and every possible place that a display table could be, there is one. The items change out regularly, and range from homemade breads, fresh-baked muffins, ceramic dishes, decorative metal chickens, block-printed kitchen towels, and farmhouse-themed signs. I usually gravitate towards the breads first.
The ladies who work at the bakery are nice - at least, most of them are. I've heard conflicting things about all of them, but they've only ever been nice to me. There's one who's about my age that I see often, and she remembers my name and my coffee order and compliments my outfits. She asks about how things are at the office, and she asks about the Easter egg hunts, and she asks me if I've seen that stray dog again, and if I left out the treats she'd given me for him.
Once I've gotten my second latte of the day and my pre-made lunch (it's usually chicken salad of some sort), I leave the bakery, and make my way back to the office, always taking the crack-ridden sidewalk, careful not to step on the worms and bugs that like to join me on my journeys.
I think I miss my hometown.
I think I miss something that isn't quite the simplicity, but rather the feeling that whichever coffee shop I went to, they always knew my name, and they'd ask about my grandmother, and they'd ask about my teaching job, how it was going, if the museum was so cold I always needed a sweater, if the rumors they'd heard about the renovations were true. I think I miss the brick-lined roads and the old Victorian homes and the church bells that would ring out in the morning, cutting through the fog and dawn-lit hours of the morning.
I miss careening down those dusty country roads with my best friend in my old red truck, and we'd always laugh because it was so funny that instead of some teenage boys in that truck, it was two teachers in their twenties. And it was funny, but it was also clandestine and fated and by God, we knew we were on borrowed time, on stolen time, chasing the summer air as if it was something that we could catch but I knew, and I think that I always knew, that the first winds of fall would catch us by the split ends of our hair and force us to fall backwards and scrape the palms of our hands.
I saw that friend earlier this week, and it was like no time had passed since I last saw her that summer. I think I laughed so hard I cried. But near the end of the night, I saw the bags under her eyes and realized that she'd gotten older - that I'd gotten older.
We've all gotten older.
The small town in which I work is frozen in place, frozen in time, reminding me of the time that I stole from God himself and placed into the hand of my friend, closing her fingers around it and begging her not to forget me as I jumped off the deep end. And when I jumped, she didn't forget me, even if everyone else did. I jumped, and I jumped, and I jumped, and I landed yet again in small town Kansas, though a different town than the first one, and yet she is still here, holding onto the time that I stole, waiting for me to come take it back from her.
