You've Got A Friend In Pennsylvania!

June 17, 2014

I said something to myself on a little road trip that I took by myself this week. On the drive back home I saw the big “Pennsylvania Welcomes You” sign and said out loud “I’m glad I live in Pennsylvania”….then my jaw dropped to the floor of my car (which it has no place being because I have kids, my car is filthy. Not to mention all the safety issues).

It shocked me so much because I wasn’t even aware that I felt this way until the words came out of my mouth. I’ve lived in Pennsylvania for almost 19 years. You’d think I would have made a decision one way or the other by now.

But it wasn’t my choice to come here. I grew up in Amsterdam. What? Amsterdam you say? Isn’t that the most amazing city in the whole entire world? Yes, yes it is. And I lived my whole life there, (minus a year outside Chicago and 6 months here or there in Europe) up to almost 17 years old (that ‘almost’ really counts, it just sounds better than saying 16. Let me have this ok?). My parents were missionaries there for 21 years. We left rather suddenly. I’m sure there was a lot of thought that went into it on my parents end but I was a teenager that had no say in if I stayed or left, so for me it was sudden. I didn’t want to move. At all. But it was time to go and off we went.

I packed a lot of living into those “almost 17” years. I felt like a grown up. I had memories attached to almost every single cobble-stoned street in that city. I was a part of that city and it was a part of me. To move to a country that was technically in my dna but not in any part of my soul was the absolute worst thing I could have thought up at the time.

When we moved here my teen angst doubled, or probably tripled. Not only was I your typical miserable teenager, I also hated my new life. I swore to my parents that the second I turned 18 I would be on the first plane back home. But I never was.

At 18 I met my future husband. I met amazing friends, that thought like me. I had adventures and experiences and before I knew it I was married, had 2 kids, bought and sold a house, and found myself single again. I might not be able to walk around this town and see the sidewalk where I had my first kiss or the bus my sister and I took home the night I first got drunk or the canal that the drunk was pulled out of. But I’ve spent almost half my life here now so I have just as many memories in this place. Just different ones. Like, that’s the wawa where we would all hang out when we were too young to go to bars but didn’t want to go home yet. Or that’s the church that I got married in. Or that’s the hospital my second son was born in.

Throughout all the years “stateside” I’ve stayed fiercely loyal to Holland. Some might say a little too much (Een beetje te), I will shout from the mountain tops that I’m Dutch and proud of it and if anyone messes with Holland I’m the first to step in and set them straight. Something my friends like to do on purpose just to see me get riled up. I see now that I have many fierce loyalties to this place too. I love the town I live in now. I bleed Eagles green and I always root for the home team. If someone talks shit on Philly I will be the first, or rather third person probably, to step in and set them straight.

And I have 2 sons who are growing up here. They are making their childhood memories here and I don’t want to be so focused on a place that I miss, that I deem better than here, that I miss being involved in their memories. They might not be the same kinds of memories I had as a kid (mostly in part to strict drinking and drugging laws in this country…thank god) but they’ll be fantastic ones that they will cherish. July 4th fireworks, eating watermelon on a hot summer day, snow days and blizzards, vacations to a beach with huge waves, trick-or-treating, taking a school bus to school, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day parades, all things that I didn’t grow up with.

No, I didn’t come to this country or state or town by choice but I’ve made a choice to make a life here. And I intend on living it to the fullest.