It does not escape me that, living in one of this country’s oldest cities, I spend a lot of time considering the country.

Upon finishing the second issue of Taproot magazine, steeped in the values of living simply, slowly, heart-full, back-to-the-earth, I thought: this is me, this is not me.

I believe in sitting out on the porch, shucking corn. I believe in long walks through green places. In white flashes of deer tails, rabbit tails, and rusty, shaggy foxtail.

I also, believe in escaping the bumper-to-bumper to hit up the ice cream counter. Barely comprehending my luck that this planet holds things cold and milky, vanilla with peanut butter swirls.

I’m a child of the suburbs. Beachtown creaky, my younger years held splinters from Jersey Shore boardwalks, screams from the top of the crickety, wooden ‘coaster. Paper tickets from ski-ball and wack-a-mole games that I traded for spider rings whose cheap plastic pinched my fingers.

The city has me, the country attracts me.  In between, I both rue and appreciate the Christmas-light palaces of the ‘burbs.

It’s my lot, I think, to refuse claiming -or being claimed- by one, the other, or the third.  I’d rather find value in them all.