More Ovaltine, Please!

Port Washington, Long Island

As a born New Yorker with a metropolitan solidarity complex, confronted deeply and many times over, I have always found it impossible to conceive of people having affection for the suburbs. My mother grew up a Long Island baby boomer in a town called Bellmore—her memory set is littered with stories of toy trains, milk men, weekend excursions to other parts of Long Island to see cousins with distinctly ‘50s names (Howie, Stewart, Dale), and her stay-at-home mother—with her many cocktail parties, her homemade trail mix, the year she decided to go to night school only to resign to the notion that her husband’s Mercedes dealership was sufficient to fund the family, her bridge games.

As soon as high school wrapped up, my mother fled to New York City and never looked back. Her brother, upon graduating law school, married and also moved to New York City—14th street (in the ‘80s), actually, a far more adventurous move than my mother had made. But as soon as the first child arrived, he and his wife moved promptly to Port Washington, Long Island, where they would buy a backyard swing set, two cars, a Wheaton Terrier, renovate the basement into a play room, and send a boy and a girl to a school with an emphasis on Hebrew Studies.

It’s understandable—considering the critical mindsets of so many like myself—that DJ Waldie feels he must make a case for the suburbs as pleasant living. Though expressed with a heavy-handed poetic device of muted, yet descriptive nostalgia, Waldie even apologizes for the notions we have so deeply engrained in us about the wasteful sprawl of the suburbs, and their capitalization on a rapidly dwindling American Dream. And yet, some really hold deep respect and admiration for the kind of lifestyle the suburbs have been able to afford their families. My uncle certainly thrives in his environment, even relishes in his daily commute to-and-from his law offices, located in New York City’s Midtown. And though I personally don’t see the appeal, many would.

Granted, there are some suburbs that (now approximately 60 years after their origination) do anything but cultivate an air of happy living. Some suburbs are pockets of immorality, promoters of crime and drug usage, places where kids hang out in 7-11 parking lots, operating under the (sometimes correct) assumption that it’s a more pleasant place than their own home. But my cousins, and everyone I know they know, are happy going (yes) to soccer practice, coming home (yes) to a table of milk and cookies, and doing homework in the family room with one short break to (yes) play fetch with the Terrier in their gated-off 20x20 foot backyard. Albeit routine and subdued, they live the kind of austere, monk-like existence that Waldie so clearly outlines. And they’re happy.