two kids, two cars, life insurance, credit cards (365-143)

Day 144 of 365: a year in songs and photos
Song: Lagwagon, Raise a Family

This place is making me claustrophobic lately.

By this place, I mean my Long Island.

I've lived here 46 years. In all those years, I moved three times, all of them within the same town. I live five blocks from my parents. Five blocks from a zillion relatives. My sister is five minutes away. My other sister lives upstairs.

It's been nice. This really isn't a bad place. Growing up surrounded by cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents is a good thing. A lot of people don't have that, and I'm grateful I grew up in a family where I could go to Grandma's every Sunday for dinner, where my cousins were my friends, where holidays meant 100 people. And I'm ever grateful that my own kids got to have that experience as well.

Long Island is a nice place. But it used to be nicer. Suburban sprawl has made so much of this area look urban. There used to be wide open spaces, now I'm surrounded by turnpikes and strip malls where half the stores are for rent. Four lane roads used to be single lanes. Everything expanded outward and upward, for better or worse. You can't travel a road even at 3am on a Wednesday night without hitting traffic. Too many people, too many cars, too many Walmarts and Walgreens.

Nassau County has the second highest property tax rate in the nation ($7,000 as of 2005). Our electricity and car insurance rates are among the highest in the nation. The cost of living here has skyrocketed so much that a death squeeze is being formed around the people that made this county what it is - young working couples with kids. Suburban families, Levittown style. There are at least two "for sale" signs on every block. And when those houses don't sell privately, they are sold to McMansion builders who erect monstrosity sized houses that dwarf the little homes next to them. The rich move in. The middle class moves out. Everyone I know is struggling to make ends meet. Everyone lives check to check. Two salary families who in the past would live comfortably on their incomes are checking out and heading to other states.

I want to live somewhere else. It's not just the money, it's, well, everything. I no longer want to be where everybody knows my name. I don't to keep seeing the same faces I've seen for 46 years. I don't want to drive the same roads. I hate driving past another strip mall knowing that there used to trees there. I don't want to look at another tight space on my block that some developer thought would make a great place for a split level house.

I love my family dearly, I enjoy their company and I love that we have such a great relationship. But I need to get away. I lived at home until I was 26, didn't move out until I got married. I'm feeling restless and itching to move on.

I used to love this place. I'm starting to hate it. I hate the cookie cutter houses. I hate that what should be a ten minute ride to work sometimes takes me half an hour. I hate that there's nowhere to get Ethiopian food or Vietnamese food or Mongolian barbecue. Our ethnic cuisine runs from Italian to Chinese. I hate that every street looks the same. I hate the lack of color; everything is brick and cement and the same five shades of aluminum siding.

There are definitely things to love. The school district I'm in is excellent. We're just a 40 minute drive from New York City. I'm five minutes from where my New York Islanders play. We have beautiful parks and beaches. But I don't live in the parks or on the beaches. I live in a little development with little houses that are being overtaken by houses where you need a Sherpa to get up the front steps. I want to walk out my door and see something different for a change. I want to live in a place where I don't have to sell a kidney to pay my property tax bill.

We really have our sights set on moving to Sacramento in three years. I've already written why I love that place, why it's so different from here. I'm ready to go NOW. It's not feasible now, but I am so ready. My love affair with this place has ended. It has become unaffordable and damn near unlivable. It's making me claustrophobic.

And now I have three years to work out the guilt that my family will make me feel for leaving their suburban nest.

About the song: I think this is the third Lagwagon song I used. You can listen to it here on one of those home made videos. It's pretty good.

Maybe i'm just thirty and i don't want to go to parties anymore
only really need a few close friends
i'm just tryin' to keep the hair on my head
i think it's time we tie the knot and you and
i can make some babies
marriage, mortgage can't afford it
we are destined to fail lots of time,
we are late what the hell
smashing through the boundaries
lunacy as found
me gotta have a family
boys will tell you they'll take care of you
but i can tell you, girl, that there is only one thing that you're after
we ain't got no money, honey, it's true
ten thousand vacant in the place where elvis said "i do"
"love me tender" four kids, food stamps
trying to make words count endless days of minimum wage
love is ours, food's a dream a better day
two kids, two cars life insurance, credit cards
carry on the legacy it's time to raise a family