miles of abbie

Another Matador U assignment, edited after receiving feedback

“They’re finished building the new elementary school over on Sunnyside Road,” my mom told me as I was reading the Smyrna-Clayton Sun Times.  I was back for my once a year visit, and I had to catch up the latest small town news – a new restaurant, another person I graduated high school with had a baby, and of course the Smyrna football team lost to Caesar Rodney, like usual.  Some things don’t change.

A few minutes later my mom turned and asked, “do you want to go to the grocery store with me?”  I fold the newspaper and set it on the table. “Sure, I’ll drive.”

I can close my eyes and completely map out the town where I grew up.  Sure, the roads are the same, but the town in my mind is no longer there.  That town, where I lived for 22 years, is no longer home, and the reminders are everywhere.  When I left, I think I expected time to freeze and everything to be the same when I got back.  But my friends have moved, my brother just graduated college, Happy Harry’s is now Walgreens and Eckerd’s is now Rite Aid.  There are new housing developments popping up everywhere, covering what used to be empty fields.  There’s not one shopping center, but now two shopping centers out on the highway next to the new pancake house and the relocated Smyrna diner.  Driving around town feels really… weird.  I’m an outsider now.

Then I ask myself – do I really want to come back to the same town that I grew up in?  I left for a reason, several reasons in fact… I left to get away from the small town atmosphere, to go to a place where not everyone knows me and my family, a place where there are mountains, a place where the population isn’t quite so homogeneous.  I wanted to see what life was like somewhere besides Smyrna.  And so for the past four years I have called Anaheim, California home.  When people ask me where I’m from, I don’t say “Delaware” anymore.  And I’m okay with that.