My Kids Are Easterners

Whenever someone asks me where I'm from, I have a hard time answering. Well, my parents were born and raised in Arizona, but I've never lived there. (Always wanted to live there, though...) I was born in California, but spent a grand total of about 4 1/2 years there (ages birth to 3 and ages almost 9 to 10 1/2). I also lived in Denver, Colorado for a couple of years, Houston, Texas for about 3 1/2 years, and spent a year and a half as a missionary in North Carolina. Then there's Utah. We moved there when I was 10 1/2 years old, and with the exception of the time I was on my mission, I lived there until I was nearly 29. I guess Utah qualifies as "where I'm from" more than any other place, since I spent by far the most time there and did most of my growing up there. I should probably make it easy on myself by saying I'm from Utah. But I can't! Why? Well, that's another story. Suffice it to say that the first 10 years of my life had a profound impact on my view of the world and that when I moved to Utah I was shocked to discover how different I was from all the kids who had lived there all their lives.

Amy & I with Pew grandparents in Arizona

Easter in California--Me, Amy

Amy & I on our 4th birthday in Denver, Colorado

So what do I say? Well, lately I have settled on saying I'm from "the West". I figure that's about as accurate as I can get. I never even made it East of the Mississippi River until I was 21 years old! Yes, I grew up in the West, and I remember as a child having a great desire to see "the East"! What was it like out there, anyway? It seemed to me that all the interesting places to see and all the fascinating things to do were all far, far away in the the East! Pictures were not enough--I wanted to see it all for myself! I wanted to stand on the coast of Maine and view the Atlantic Ocean. I wanted to visit all those fascinating historical places I'd read about--Boston, Philadelphia, Williamsburg, Gettysburg, Valley Forge--to see for myself where our nation was born. I guess it was all so fascinating to me because it was so "inaccessible".

Well, now I've been living in "the East" for nearly 12 years, so all that has changed! I've stood on the coast of Maine, I've seen the Atlantic Ocean, and with the exception of Valley Forge, I've visited all those places I mentioned above. The East is home to me now, but I still consider myself a Westerner, albeit a transplanted one. So it seems completely amazing to me when I realize that my children are Easterners! As a matter of fact, Jared and Seth have never lived anywhere else (Jared was born in Delaware and Seth was born here in Maryland). Scott was only 2 1/2 when we moved to New York and Tanner was only 5 months, so even though they were both born in Utah, they remember little (if anything) about living there.

Here are a few things I've noticed about my kids that make me think "Wow! They are Easterners!"

1. Snow--We'll see a few flakes start to drift down, and the kids will ask "Are we going to have school tomorrow?" School gets closed at the drop of a hat out here. Not so in Utah, where I remember school getting closed early once--when it snowed 3 feet! I still shake my head over school getting closed over a minute amount of snow. (Frank calls it my "Utah attitude"!) But for my boys, that's all they've known so it's what they have come to expect.
2. State size--We'll be in the car for about 15 minutes (on a long trip) and one of the boys will ask "Are we still in Maryland?" This is not a question I would have ever asked so soon after leaving home! It takes hours and hours to drive across most Western states (when we lived in Houston, we would leave home really early in the morning, drive all day, and barely make it to El Paso by evening). But in general, Eastern states are much smaller. So my kids are speaking from their own experience! When we drive to Brevard, North Carolina, we are in Virginia within about 20 minutes of leaving home, go into West Virginia about 2 minutes after that, and back into Virginia about a half hour after that! That's when we head west / southwest. If we leave home and travel straight south, we are in the District of Columbia within about an hour. If we head north, we get to Pennsylvania in about 30 minutes. When we lived in Delaware, it was even more apparent. We could leave our house and drive in any one of three directions for 10 minutes and be in another state--west (Maryland), north (Pennsylvania), or east (New Jersey). We notice the nearness of other states when we play the "license plate game", too. I remember trips in my childhood where we'd play this game, and it was always exciting to see a license plate from another state! Now we see plates from other states regularly, just driving around town. It's not unusual to see plates from nearly half the states within the first 30 minutes of a trip. (When I was little, it was the ultimate excitement if we saw a license plate from Rhode Island or Delaware. Now seeing those plates is common; my kids get really excited when they see a Wyoming license plate!) No wonder my kids expect to be in a new state so early in our trips! A drive across the western states would be an eye-opening experience for them.
3. Moisture--I didn't really realize it at the time, but I grew up in the desert. Not my kids! They think sprinklers were made for the sole purpose of kids cooling off on a hot & muggy summer day. That's mostly what we use ours for. If I told them to water the lawn, they probably wouldn't know what I meant. (If the lawn needs watering, it means we're in a drought and under water restrictions, so we're not allowed to water it.) Not me, at their age--I remember setting up sprinklers a couple of times a week. I don't think they fully appreciate how green it is here, either!



The lawn in spring--no watering, and not even at it's greenest.
4. Historical sites--We live smack in the middle of Civil War history. There was a small battle right in Frederick; we've visited the Monocacy Battlefield more than once. Gettysburg is 30 minutes to our north, and Antietam about 20 minutes to our northwest. Non-Civil War historical sites abound, as well. Fort McHenry, Washington, DC, Harper's Ferry, C&O Canal, etc.! The only "history" we got out west was pioneer sites,"geological" history, and Spanish missions!

Gettysburg, March 2005

Washington, DC November 2007

Cove Fort, Utah--June 2005

Bryce Canyon, Utah--June 2005
5. Mountains--Things I consider hills, my kids consider mountains. I grew up surrounded by huge, bare, rocky structures. My kids are accustomed to the older, gentler, tree-covered (and greener) slopes of the Appalachian Mountains.

Utah mountains--July 2005

Appalachian Mountains (Blue Ridge range)--August 2008

My kids are Easterners!