Cranford

I just finished watching the first part of Cranford, and despite it being entirely British, it reminded me so much of home. Home - which to a military family has its own unique interpretation. In fact, there are many ways in which I have come to consider myself a refugee- a citizen of Nowhere, USA.

I guess what it made me think of is nothing entirely new, in and of itself. I couldn't wait to get away from Maine; I've spent countless hours riddling why. It was certainly beautiful enough, and when people ask me where I am from, my answer is always the same. And they say home is where your heart is. Then why was it I couldn't wait to leave?

Family? Circumstances? History? The confines of a small town? The gossip? The lack of opportunity? It wasn't really one thing so much as it was everything. I just wanted more. And now, fifteen years later, I still don't know what that more is.

I guess what has me thinking is that every other time I have watched a show about a small town like Edgecomb, I've always been reassured of my leaving, as if it validated my decision in every way. But somehow tonight was different. It reminded me that although I have spent a lifetime, or at least what feels like it, running away from that place I always feel most comfortable, and even gravitate towards a place just like it. There are parts of it that are intrinsically me.

Instead of seeing a gossipping, crazy, small-town nature where the nothing that makes up every day life becomes the very something that makes up every day life, I saw it as the true meaning of life. That to know people and a way of life that well that you feel an intrinsic connection to them is a blessing - not a burden as I had always perceived it in the past. That to know the good and bad in someone at their very core, and still care for them is what life is really all about. That these friends and neighbors become a family unique unto themselves, to that place and that moment in time is an extraordinary blessing.

Why is that I had to travel so far and for so long to finally figure that out?