The Elm City

I LOVE New Haven. When we first got here we heard so many warnings about the danger and crime and poverty. We were honestly nervous to walk down our own street at night. We were skeptical, suspicious and scared. Now, I feel intimately acquainted with this place and I love that. I love that we don't have a car and that we need to walk everywhere. I love taking the city bus to run errands and I love meeting strangers at the bus stop and hearing all about their day. I've never been good at talking to strangers. Living in Santa Clarita and driving a car everywhere didn't help that. I know plenty of people in suburbia who are outgoing and friendly to strangers but it took a place like New Haven for me to learn that I love to meet people and that it's not that hard.

There is so much diversity here. New Haven is not just a university town. Downtown and Yale are all mixed in together.....it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. I love the bustling Green in the middle of town. I love to cross it to run errands and I love that the more I walk around town the more I see some of the same people over and over again. Like the sweet old man who reads the paper at Dunkin' Donuts every morning, or the nice homeless man who sits by the bus stop on Broadway St. and helps lost looking people figure out which bus they need - or Sal, who lives on the bench at the northeast corner of the Green.

I like that I actually know and talk to the owners of a few of the little stores we shop at. I love that on a typical day of walking to and from work and maybe running an errand in the evening I usually see a couple people from church and several people I know from work or from the Div school. I also now have so much admiration for some of the hardest working yet least appreciated people - like the bus driver who picked us up at the train station after we got back from New York at 1:00 in the morning on a Tuesday. He probably had to work all night and didn't have childcare so his two children tried to sleep on the front seats of the bus. We watched people get on and off the bus and accidentally bump into the poor tired kids over and over again. I know of two other bus drivers who have to take their kids to work so unfortunately this situation is not uncommon.

We're moving this week and while I'm excited for what's ahead, I am so so sad to leave New Haven because I adore this place and in a strange way it helps me feel more human. I see more of the raw beauty of life and people here even in the midst of poverty and racial tension and class distinction...I do hope this place has changed us.