Place Making

Mark keeps telling me I need to write to the newspaper and tell them why I want to move/live downtown. Apparently, he doesn’t realize how much that feels like an assignment from tenth grade English, “Write to the theme of what I did on my summer break.”

He also doesn’t realize that inspiration for that move, and for writing about that move, only comes in small doses, when I allow myself the luxury of thinking about that home, and not dwelling on the fact that I am not going to have my wood floors refinished this Spring because of an overlap in the kids’ breaks.

He even told me that other night he had a dream about our roof falling down. It was unclear in the dream which roof he was referring to, but my infinite expertise allowed me to judge him and our life, interpreting that dream implies that the we need to take care of the home we are presenting living in. He countered, that perhaps he was more concerned with putting the roof on our dreams, meaning secure the contracts that will lead us down that path. Half-empty, half-full. Backward thinking, forward thinking.

But that is the trouble, when dreams and reality blur. Because that is exactly how life feels these days. While watching Opening day from the stoop of the house we'd like to purchase in OTR, I imagined a time in the future when I would host many of the spectators. They would come to the same spot year after year, knowing I was baking bread, handing out OJ and coffee, popping popcorn. I hope however that the many of the politicians would have changed by then, and that the Reds would be carrying another World Series banner as well.

But then, I returned to my home in Loveland, the one where I sleep at night, however restlessly these days, due to allergies, dogs and kids up at all hours of the night. The roar of the crowd had dissipated. The smell of burnt coffee too. The Reds were no longer on the radio, and a hush returned to my life.

While I can articulate the many reasons for moving downtown, I would do so at the cost of diminishing the life we have had here, where I have raised my son since he was two, though pitcher’s mound is now overgrown. Our oldest daughter had her high school graduation in this back yard. Our four sets of grandparents (to the children) have all been dinner guests here on our back patio, surrounding by the warmth of a fireplace and family, sitting atop patio tiles named cappuccino. The Italian theme I worked so hard to replicate I would have to work hard for again.

But the purpose of moving to the city was to minimize our desire to be homebodies to grow old without moss so to speak, to be out in the city, such as Charles Baudelaire once conceived of in his meaning for flâneur—that of "a person who walks the city in order to experience it."

Ok. So the word also means loafer, but I like the idea of experiencing it. And I having been doing so for so long, that perhaps I don’t need to write about why I want to live downtown, we already do.

We read the blogs and papers connected to city events and development. We are keenly aware of all sides of many of these conversations. I am keeping tabs on A Tavola and the CityFlea market and everyday salivate over the offerings at Tom+Chee.

In support of the arts, we already do. We recently attended the gender-bending version of Julius Caesar. I attended the Cathedral for Ash Wednesday, because I wanted to feel the glory of the 40 days we were about to enter into. In support of city restaurants and businesses and markets, we already do. I have made special trips just to buy prosciutto at Findlay Market, and have sipped a light-hearted white French wine at City Cellars in the middle of a warm day in March, just because I could.

We attend OTR Foundation fundraisers and Mark drinks Bock beer. I donate a dollar to the Streetvibes vendor and sometimes stalk them if I cannot find them right away. I open the paper to read it with the vendor, usually because it is their writing, or their son’s writing or art. That is only the beginning of how I want to deeply listen to what is going on in the city.

Each conversation we have with each other, family or friends, yields a reference to downtown, the city, urban living, even when the evening news and op-ed pieces contain multiple references to drugs and shootings in downtown. Each response yields surprise, and curiosity, that we could envision a lifestyle different from our present.

Our kids, the ones around often enough to hear us speak, understand that is only a matter of time before their memories of “home” change. When my parents moved our family from a small three-bedroom ranch to a two-story six-bedroom home, I recall my mother often wishing for the confines of the smaller home despite having achieved bigger and better and newer. Both houses I still consider “home” and have written homages to the time spent in each.

My mother always had a dream home. One not related to the American Dream. She imagined living on a farm (yes, a woman who wore lipstick everyday!). She could also easily see herself living on the shores of Lake Erie. She even fell for Oregon, the way I did, gradually, deeply. But she always stayed put, a placeholder for her children. I loved her for that.

But there is a difference between being a placeholder and a place maker. For now, we will settle for the home in OTR holding our place, a contract or two will bind us to a life in the city. But with each step we take in that direction, our actions are shaping the place we will make home.