Gloria Ferris

While browsing at BFD today, I noticed this post and although I did leave a comment  I knew that  what I really wanted to say would be a full blown post and I should do it here instead of there. It is a bit left of center to the topic but does in a way address the living in the city vs. the suburban experience.

Our girls grew up in the city and attended school in the suburbs. Their grade school experiences were in Parma Heights with the Incarnate Word nuns.  Their high school years were in Rocky River with the Humility of Mary nuns.

The girls’ school experience was the direct result of intervention by Father Cregan.  He felt Maureen would benefit by her association with the nuns at Incarnate Word and the rich afterschool programs, namely sports.  Katie came a long a bit later, but she to benefitted due to her Art teacher there who saw talent and began entering her in Art shows at an early age.  Both of our girls are very competitive but in different fields.   

For the IWA nuns, Maureen will go to Magnificat, of course became the mantra.  Maureen never considered another school, and neither did Katie, but for a very different reason.  KT told me one day when we were deciding on schools that she had no choice Maureen would never understand if she didn’t pick Magnificat. I can’t say enough about our years at Magnificat the support and nurturing that our girls received to get them ready for the real world was invaluable.  

So, for approximately twenty years, we shuttled the girls from the city to the suburbs for school. Questions came from all quarters–our friends, the girls, our family.  There was a lot of time involved, but we spent a lot of quality time together to and from school. But there was always that little voice of doubt in the back of my consciousness wondering if we were doing the “right” thing if, maybe, we weren’t sacrificing our girls’ happiness for our need for an urban lifestyle.

 There were countless times that Mo brought up If I lived on a cul de sac, and then, Katie would always tell me that her friends were walking to Parmatown on Saturday for lunch and a movie and she HATED to ask but since she couldn’t walk she needed a ride. The implication to me was if only we lived in the suburbs…. High School was easier in a way there were buses to catch and friends who had cars, but that brought up a whole other worrying scenario.  

For quite a few years, I still didn’t have a clue as to whether the girls were okay with where they lived and how they grew up until last Thanksgiving. We were all sitting around the dining room table stuffed unable to move and there was not much else to do but talk to each other.  The conversatin began and  naturally it  turned to  remember when we were young  and we would go to Tower City the day after Thanksgiving or when we would go to the Museum of Art and Mo didn’t want to venture past the Armor Court or Playhouse Square where we would watch the Christmas Tree in The Nutcracker grow to gigantic heights, the waves at Edgewater Park during a winter storm, and on and on. 

 Until, Mo blurted out,  ”Are we lucky you didn’t listen to my pleas for a cul de sac?!”  Katie had been too little to remember our conversations in the car about suburbs, basketball courts, and friends on MY street and needed more of an explanation. As sisters are wont to do, she immediately told her sister that that was nothing because  she had wanted to spend her time walking around a suburban mall, for God’s sakes. 

I then admitted that I had worried for years that we should have moved and we should have done things differently.  The girls informed me that I must be kidding because they had had the best of all worlds. After all, they told me,  it isn’t about where you live, but about what you do  and how you live.  I don’t worry any more.