Faced with a brood of young children entering their teen years in the 1960s, my maternal grandma and grandpa decided to move the family out of New York City and to the country.
As writers and artists, the idea was simple enough…
We had had the city. Obviously, our markets were there, but we couldn’t have cared less. The peculiar brand of writing and illustrating we do could be just as easily be airmailed to Kansas as carried by hand down to midtown Manhattan.
Getting away from the hustle and bustle, the construction and the crime in order to live a quieter life close enough to The City to make regular trips to agents seemed like a solid option. The move would offer a larger house and a safer environment, and the kids could still make their own occasional trips to the city.
…the one thing I suppose our family has shared with almost all others who have tried to exist for years, raising several children in a great city, is the conviction that almost everything would be solved, simplified, made bearable, if only the whole complex snarl of personalities and problems could be suddenly translated to a large house in the country. I can tell you straight off that that is not what happens.
The slower pace and physical space of living in the country offered much distraction for my grandparents instead of focused time in devotion to their crafts. As someone who made the move from a city (a decidedly much smaller city) to the country in my adulthood, I fully understand the balance of work and life that flips itself on its head and happily takes you with it.
We have found it costs us more to live here, and it’s hard for us to make as much money as we did in the city…life itself is so fascinating and absorbing that it takes deliberate effort of will to do the work necessary to support it—to earn the cash, that is. It seems logical and sensible and “right” to take a walk around outside on a spring morning before settling down to the typewriter or the drawing board. Three hours later the distant noon whistle breaks into the trance, we rush inside guiltily, eat an enormous lunch, are unfit for anything but a nap, and suddenly the children are home from school. Our agents in New York are obviously not going to be able to market the carrots I have weeded or the rustic fence my husband has just invented to keep the hedge from falling down the bank into the road.
It is not clear to me how long they stayed in the country, but they did make their way back to the city. While the country lifestyle seemed easy enough to adapt to in theory, it didn’t prove an easy transition for any of them. My grandparents resumed their previous schedules with the city’s sounds and concerns around them and the kids-turned-teens left their schooling behind them (my mom never did attend high school, though I don’t know the reasoning for this) and re-built their social lives.
Despite building their careers in large cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City), Grandma and Grandpa were raised in rather small environments in Indiana and Missouri. While their 1960s country stint was short lived, they apparently dreamed of living out their older years in a quieter setting.
Oral history tells me they had dreams of moving to New Mexico once the kids were grown.
Unfortunately, my grandpa died from lung cancer before that could happen.
Never-the-less, after his passing, my grandma made her way back to New Mexico after all and spent most of the next ~20 years living in rural areas, largely in tiny mountain towns.
All four children followed her shortly thereafter.
The quotes I’ve shared here are from a 10-page document, half typed, half handwritten, that appear to be the beginnings of their country story. I don’t know how it ended or what happened in the middle, I just know they took a chance on a different lifestyle and decided it wasn’t the right timing for the family.
Having done something similar with our own city-life turned farm-adventures, I am grateful to have a few small glimpses into my grandma’s experiences and know intimately the challenges of rural living needs vs. the convenience and proximity to everything held within a bustling city.
And yet, it seems Nature keeps calling us home.
Onward,
Melissa