If you live your whole life in one place, can you really complain of being unhappy in your surroundings? Actions speak louder than words. America is a nation of peripatetic citizens chasing job opportunities and warmer climes and better, more affordable, more accessible amenities. Americans graze at a moveable feast. What does that say about the people who stay behind, who stick to their roots, who do the heavy lifting to keep a community coherent?
I think Heaven loves them, and the rest of us should too. Any metropolis or crossroads needs someone who knows what things were like a decade or four ago. Every institution needs a memory. The yokels may be local, but someone has to keep tally of what succeeded and what failed. Someone must bear witness to what sprouts from the bedrock. There but for the grace of the angels go I. I am a gadabout observer, a gadfly, a happenstance, a mote that makes God's eye blink and thus miss my appearance. Those who stay forever have longevity. My responsibilities move when I do. Those who stay behind have their own burdens to haul for everyone who comes after them. Being cosmopolitan is a frothy way to get through life. It has no foundation.
Since I've lived in Dorchester, Mass., I've met plenty of middle-aged people who live in the three deckers their grandparents purchased. A new generation has already reached young adulthood. They continue their lineages on puddingtone-strewn soil. These families could have made the exodus to Quincy or another suburb, but they didn't. They stuck to the Dot, the way the Dot sticks to them. Do you want to learn how Dorchester remains a proudly independent part of Boston, both part of the bigger metropolis but distinct from it? Talk to a third generation Dorchesterite. You'll get your answer soon enough.
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