About The Snow?

A few warnings I received when we were planning to move north: it's colder, they have more snow, and it's cloudier. Compared to the awful weather, including hurricanes, experienced by my dowstate neighbors in the last six years, I can't say that we have it worse. Being a couple of hours from the ocean has its benefits.

So I'm first going to start by discussing the cloudier weather. It's true. I often look at the sky and wait for the meatballs. We're wedged in between the Catskills, the Berkshires, and the Adirondacks. We feel the aftershock of the lake effects. It may be my least favorite part of the area.

And we do get a good amount of snow. But is a foot of snow here worse than five inches in New York City? No way. And after speaking with relatives downstate after a storm, I don't usually find that there is that much of a discrepancy in the measurements. We usually get closer to the same, a little more so, but our snow doesn't melt as fast. That's okay with me. These people up here know what they're doing. I've found the roads upstate in the populated area quite clean and safe, regardless of the weather.

As for colder temperatures, I don't know that we can complain. This winter of 2014, so far, has held record lows for the whole country. I've never minded wearing a sweater under my coat. As long as I'm not walking around wind whipping skyrises I know I'm not really feeling bitter-painful cold. Coop City, Bronx, I love you, but your tall apartment buildings and open spaces made walking to work in the morning something akin to hell gleefully being frozen over by the devil. Wind like ice daggers, I tell you.

However, if you don't enjoy winter sports (I don't), you may find upstate winters a bit claustrophobic (I do). And you have two choices on that front: take up bowling or get over yourself. I'm going to try the latter. My son, the baby of the family, turns three this spring. I think next winter we should be just about ready for some family snowshoeing, ice skating, and skiing adventures. (Not too often on the skiing: holy money!) Yes, the children will do circles around me. Yes, my balance is as good as a 7 month old's, but my family is worth my giving winter sports a good old try. New places, new faces---though I'd prefer to stick to the bunny trails. Anyway, I'm always willing to try to learn something new, and that's not a bad thing.

Learning to Love

As a woman with almost seven years' experience as a classroom teacher, I'm not going to lie: The educational opportunities in my current neck of the region were a major factor in my decision to move north. It bodes well for the capital of New York State, where the Board of Education is housed, that many of their schools are, at least as I've seen in their more moderately-sized communities, doing a great deal right---regardless of the chaos political edicts may sometimes bring (and regardless of the messiness of the mandate or, at times, excessive panic felt by the public).

Indeed, in a limited way, I can attest to the strength of these schools as both a parent and a tutor. Though none of my children are in the public school yet, the schools seem large enough to have excellent programs, and the communities small enough that children probably less often get lost. I also like the sense of ownership that I've seen many parents take in their children's learning in the younger years. This may be due to having sent my first child to a cooperative nursery school that is funded and run by the parents. However, as a secondary-level tutor I'm sensing that this team effort progresses into the later years of public education as well. (By the way, I have absolutely nothing but wonderful things to say about Glenville Cooperative Nursery School for preschool education.)

Anyway, after working in New York City for many years and seeing my teaching team accomplish great things despite our unbelievably large numbers, I know I'm not reinventing the wheel by saying that you can do more in smaller environments in the younger years.

My first child is starting kindergarten this year, too. We've been testing and screening with the school district for two years, and rather than feel that they are trying to track, peg, and label my child, I've found the school district to be wonderful communicators, aware, conscientious, and compassionate enough for me to see the hearts of most educators worn on their sleeves. I have no doubt that many people I've encountered in my own school district, from the superintendent's office to the classroom, are centered on the well-being and success of my child.

And it's my job to do the rest. When I say my husband and I moved north, first and foremost, for education, I mean it, and I do not even primarily rely on the schools for it. Indeed, simply put, we moved here due to the lower cost of living. Being home to raise my children each day was my top priority in planning for my family. My husband and I, pulling our two salaries' savings north from downstate and with some evening tutoring and waitressing jobs on my part, have made this possible. We have made my being an active part of their daily lives and education our main priority in life at this time. It's a shame that neither my husband nor I were smart enough to make this a more fair and balanced plan. Our biggest regret is what my husband misses. I think it's fair to say that we both wish we could equally work a bit more part-time and share the job of raising children during the day.

Anyway, with the circumstances being what they were and are, this has been the right decision for me, and this area has been the right place to do so, not just due to the lower housing costs. From museums, colleges, and athletics to hikes in the Adirondacks and weekends splashing in lakes, from snowshoeing through parks to barbecuing under the old majestic oak trees in my own backyard, from farms and farmers' markets to cities, fairs, and shows, I recognize that living in this region, simply by right of location, gifts its inhabitants with ample opportunity to share special times with family and friends in a wondrously rich and beautiful country.

Upstate is undeniably a part of New York that offers a cornucopia of the best life has to offer. If you know where to look, this new home of mine thrives with fortune for the whole person and family by way of its natural bed of emotional, physical, and intellectual vitality and health. Like I said, my backyard is full of good soil. Or as my neighbor puts it, "It's a great place to grow kids." This is true, of course, of any place with love. And this area has a lot.

Homeward Bound

I've lived in the capital region of New York since February of 2008. I have yet to call it home.

It's nothing personal. I moved here with no reluctance whatsoever. In fact, though an impulsive move, I was decisively bent on it being the perfect one at the time. But things being as they were six years ago: suddenly moving away from all friends and family in downstate New York, less than eight months later giving birth to my first child, and then two and a half years after that having my second child, I haven't taken much time to let my roots sink into the earth of upstate New York and grip. Or so I thought. My home is built on what is said to be old pig farming land. Good soil.

I chose to move to upstate New York for lots of reasons. Good reasons. But at the time, unbeknownst to me while under the potent influence of pregnancy, I thought that upstate New York might defy the time-space continuum as I knew it downstate. I thought upstate might work on a different, preferably slower, clock. I was wrong about that. Time moves at the same exact pace upstate, and when you add children, it officially runs at ludicrous speed, presumably both upstate and down. I was, however, right about the "having more space" part.

To put it plainly, I've been busy. Busy raising young children, busy settling into a home, and busy trying to do an assortment of odd jobs to supplement my husband's income and keep my professional ego from shriveling like a half-eaten apple on the orchard floor. In other words I've been too busy to be as reflective as I'd like—and as is in my nature to be. Too busy to more deeply get to know new people. Too busy to realize that as of this month, I've lived upstate for six years.

Revelations like that are the stuff that force a person to decide that not a decade will go by before she wakes up to realize where she's placed her roots. And so I've decided to keep this little blog for a while to ground myself in the now.

The impetus for this decision came suddenly last week. My oldest friend from downstate, the one I grew up with in my childhood neighborhood and have known since I was a year old, is getting married, and I've been invited south to attend a wedding I cannot miss.

In planning for the big trip home to see many beloved people from my past, I first felt great joy that my oldest friend found someone to love and one who will, in turn, love her forever. I also felt a rush of pride in the honor of being invited to share in her special day, especially after having limited contact with her over the last six years. And then, as they tend to do for me, Woody Allen, and a few other downstate New Yorkers I know, anxieties promptly followed suit. First, what will everyone think when they see that I've gained twenty plus pounds in the last six years? Second, what on earth is a person who's gained twenty plus pounds and also seemingly, beyond reason, shrunken an inch or two in the last half decade—going to wear to said wedding? Third, when people see me and ask in their downstate NY accents (as they always do), "Yo, whadda hell did ya move all da way up there foa?" will I have a few succinct and honest sentences prepared as I make my rounds among all those familiar, quirky, beloved faces I've missed so much?  

So I suppose this blog is going to be a little study of myself at thirty six years of age, and a study of my new (or at least newly recognized) home.

And finally, I suspect it will be some long-deserved recognition for this beautiful space in upstate New York and this fabulous place I now call home.