"So, How Are You Liking Living in Utah?"

Returning to New York last week for the first time since we moved to Utah in August, the question on every friend's lips was, "How are you liking Utah?" The short answer is, We love it. Here's the long answer:

I would certainly prefer not to have to scrape the frost off of the car. But at least I have a car that the little girls can wait in, engine idling, warming slowly, while laughing at mommy through the window as I get the car ready for the five minute drive to school. I can forget the mittens one day, the layered sweater another because I know we'll just be hopping in and out of the car, not sloshing through gutters of slush or maneuvering an umbrella while trying pushing the double stroller across the uneven flagstones of our Brooklyn street, like I did all last year. No one will catch her death of cold if mom neglects to zip up jackets or layer socks beneath the snow boots. What a relief for this mom who had to endure Auden wearing only her yellow flowered bathing suit outside for most of last November. 

The car is a blessing, but of course a curse too. I daily struggle with knowing my kids' lives are in my hands, at 10 and 2 on the wheel, and in the hands of Honda which made a machine of which I am completely ignorant. When using our feet to get around, I had more control over keeping my kids safe: I felt confident I could pull them away from an oncoming car and, more importantly, that they were learning to keep themselves safe from present and unseen dangers. We're listening to far more music in our car than we ever did walking to the soundtrack of the street, but I also miss looking into my girls' faces as we walk and having them observe their surroundings in a way that car windows won't allow.

The girls' school, in contrast to the car, has hardly any downside. It is an absolute joy for me to deliver my two oldest into the hands of their teachers each morning. I feel utter reverence and respect for what their teachers do in their classrooms, probably because I'm so not good at little kid play myself. In September, just after school started, I found any excuse to go hang out on the school's 46 acre campus: Parent Association meetings, uniform sales, book fair, information sessions regarding any such thing... At the first Parents Association meeting of the school year, an administrator explained the vision of the liberal arts education and why it's important. I was in heaven. It is a profound blessing in our lives to know our girls are part of this school's community.

After school, it's not uncommon for me and the girls to visit one of the grandmas, grandpas, great grandparents, uncles, aunts or cousins we have nearby. Living near family is not for everyone, but for me at this stage of my life is has been a source of unmatched joy to be near my mother and my mother-in-law, in particular. There is no contention in our family about whose house we are going to when and how many times and for what special occasion and how we're going to pack it all into a short vacation. Being near my mom has brought a miraculous completeness for both her and me; her, in a very real physical sense as she feels healthier than she has in three years since being diagnosed with MDS, and me in helping me gain an eternal vision for the work I'm doing with my children.

Our after school hours also include runs to Costco or a quick run into the grocery store -- so easy! no more buying only what I can balance on the stroller handles and stuff into the bottom basket! -- and inevitably we marvel at the amazing scenery around us. This valley, protected by the Wasatch Front on the east and the mysterious Ochre Mountains on the west, feels so nest-like to me. The mountains themselves rise up as fearsomely imposing gates keeping out the rest of the world, while at the same time alluring with with ever-changing intrigue of their beauty.

On Thursdays after school, Esme has her violin lesson with a teacher whose quality I would have been hard pressed to match in New York. Or if I had found such a teacher, he would have had a three year waiting list and an exorbitant price tag. The thing about this place is that -- because of the Church or the skiing or the sheer mystery of the place -- people come. Skilled, talented people who have lived and studied elsewhere but who want to be in Utah. For a city of its size, Salt Lake has remarkable resources. 

Making it my goal to patronize non-chain businesses, I've found a surprising number of high-quality bakeries and delicious restaurants. I desperately miss walking down the street and popping into boutiques for unique stationery, outfits or creative gifts, but once in a while I find time to visit a newly discovered store, tucked away in a strip mall or standing proud in a rare pedestrian shopping district and I find great treasures. My book club, started with mutual friends from our San Francisco and Harvard days who have also made the choice to settle here, meets at a restaurant each month in an effort to discover more of this city's richness. 

Between my family and my transplant friends from other areas of my life, I feel little need to make new friends. That said, I'm trying not to become -- in the words of one friend -- the girl who has "her mother, her sister and her best friend from high school" and is therefore uninvolved in anybody else's life. There is a strange diversity here which is not apparent to urban dwellers from the coasts. In the neighborhood we lived in in Brooklyn, for instance, people are attracted to the area so that they can live with other people who are like them. There is most definitely ethnic diversity and sexual diversity, but there is an underpinning of sameness in the way people think and expect others to act. (As a simple example, free of any further implication, every single person -- adult and child -- at Esme's New York school voted for Obama in the school's mock election last year.) Here, there is less ethnic diversity, but people are all over the map in terms of education levels, political leanings, and lifestyles. There is tension between people who see this place belonging to the Church and those who don't. There are neighborhoods that are known to be gay-friendly, family-friendly, non-Mormon-friendly, Mormon-friendly, old people-friendly, but as a whole it creates a far more fascinating collection of thought and action than some urban enclaves. Much of the thought and action here, I believe, is detrimental to the Church's success and to the success of both American and LDS culture, but at least the back-and-forth pull going on between various groups of people is vibrant and engaging.

I don't see my love of Utah life as a betrayal of my city commitment. I loved being back in New York last week. I love San Francisco and Boston and the whole concept of a large group of people living in small spaces, with design and beauty and taste packed into shops and restaurants in the crevices. I look forward to returning to that life some day, and I'll continue working hard to instill a love of that life in my girls. But for the meantime, this "half-off sale", as we jokingly refer to our less-expensive life here in Salt Lake, is fulfilling in its own way and I am sincerely grateful this is the right place right now.

Comments

[Teresa Whitehead]

Love this, Neylan. Wallace Stegner commented that Utah has an odd pull on its people--that no matter how far they roam in their lives, they find themselves back in Utah. (If the book weren't already packed in a box, I'd find the exact quote.) Apparently that holds true even if you didn't grow up in Utah.

But I had to laugh, because growing up in the middle of Idaho potato fields, Salt Lake was THE city to me as a kid. I remember thinking that the only difference between SLC and NYC was that NYC happened to cover more acres. Once you reach 100,000, everything is roughly the same, right? :-) And you don't even consider SLC a city. Ha!

[Julie]

All I have to say is..I love this post! I am so happy for you and your family. But our bus rides here in Park Slope are missing 2 girls to sandwich Peterson. I so had visions of Dalloway and Chase having the same experiences. All the best!