I do not like the sand between my toes.
To be honest, I'm not really a big fan of the beach in general. I don't surf, don't boat, and get physically ill at the whole process of "fishing." Besides, I've seen enough things jammed into people's feet over the years in the ER to keep my own away from the mysteries of that murky water. Yet strangely that very beach is, in more than just a metaphorical sense, what's bringing me back to Galveston after the utter chaos Hurricane Ike brought to the city and our lives last September.
I came to Galveston to train in Pediatrics at UTMB in 1993. My primary reason for choosing Galveston was to live and work somewhere that was the exact opposite of the Cleveland Ohio area, where I had lived my entire life up to that point. Cleveland was a sprawling urban wasteland with a huge impersonal medical center and endless traffic jams; Galveston was a self-contained small town with a friendly mid-sized pediatrics program and a 5 minute drive to work along the Seawall. More simply put, in more ways than one: Cleveland was cold and Galveston was warm.
After marrying my wife Amy, a Galveston native (careful...don't call her a BOI...she was born in Spain), the sensible and easy path was to remain at UTMB after residency, buy a classic old Galveston house, and enjoy the small town Island life. I would often half-jokingly call my off-Island dwelling colleagues "sellouts" for choosing to live in and commute from League City or Friendswood instead of being part of the Galveston community where they worked. But as our three kids grew older, the usual issues about good schools, safe neighborhoods, saving for the future loomed larger as each day passed. For the past several years I had been pushing to become one of the "sellouts," trying to convince Amy that we should move up the road...maybe even very far up the road, like to the suburbs of north Dallas where I had interviewed for a terrific job. But we always came to an impasse. For every benefit I could rattle off about leaving - greater housing value, better schools, lower taxes, utilities, and insurance, safer neighborhoods and so on, Amy would counter with a very intangible but heartfelt and convincing "But Galveston is home..."
Following Ike we thankfully found that our house had escaped much serious damage, but nonetheless for several weeks it was unclear if or when Galveston would be habitable again, or what long term damage its infrastructure had really sustained. At my insistence we snapped up a year lease on a house in an established part of the South Shore area of League City, enrolled the kids in school in CCISD, with plans to sell the Galveston house and make the move permanent. Ike was the last straw for me...what possible value was there in going back to Galveston after this disaster? All the same old Island problems would be largely exacerbated. It was time to start the good life in the suburbs with exemplary schools, fewer expenses, little fear of hurricanes, and a brand new house in a cozy safe neighborhood.
We have indeed experienced many of those perks over the past year. We were pleased as could be with the way the teachers and principals at Hyde and LCIS welcomed and made made our kids part of their school families, and the kids made great new friends and enjoyed all the trappings of a prosperous school district. We immediately came to appreciate our quiet cul-de-sac neighborhood where the kids could play in the street without junkies wandering by, and could leave their bikes on the treelawn and find them still there the next morning. We made good friends with wonderful people in our new neighborhood, and didn't worry so much about locking up and closing the garage door all the time. We looked at homes for sale and new construction in the same vicinity and were often amazed at what kind of home we could get for the money in new subdivisions with names like Victory Lakes, Tuscan Lakes, and Harbour Pointe. The prospect of hundreds rather than thousands of dollars of windstorm and flood premiums was very appealing. Seemed like the sensible and easy path was to find just the right home to buy and stay there - even Amy started to agree.
But after a few months, things seemed...well, not quite right. Although we lived "close to everything", as my experienced suburban colleagues would always tell me, it took forever to get anywhere. For example, Cinemark 18 is six miles away but would sometimes be a 25 minute trip after twisting out of our windy subdivision and negotiating the 518-270-Nasa Road nightmare. And what is "everything" really? The mall? Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Half-Price Books? A thousand restaurants we'll never eat at that aren't really all that kid friendly? When it comes down to it, 99% of the time all a family like mine needs to be "near" is Target, Kroger, Home Depot, and iHOP. The other side of the suburban sprawl coin is the absolute absence of anywhere to go or anything to do that doesn't involve planning ahead and piling into the car. There's no spontaneous "let's walk up to the Seawall, get a slushy at Murdoch's, and build a sandcastle" or "let's ride bikes to the Spot then go bowling or the skate park". You can't walk or ride bikes to anyplace, and there's no real thrill in the ongoing exploration of a "master planned community" as opposed to the never-ending nooks and crannies of Galveston. Sure we could go on a bike-ride on the beautifully landscaped trails around one of the man-made "Tuscan Lakes" and admire the backs of the many homes and their "waterfront" lots...there's just no "there" there. This became especially apparent during the stir-crazy days of summer when keeping the kids entertained turned into a series of artificial and expensive adventures at Chuck-E-Cheese, Max Jumpin, Kemah Boardwalk, and Main Event...or trips to Galveston...
We attended League City events analogous to our favorite activities in Galveston: Movies in the Park, Evening Band Concerts, Carnivals and Parades. None of them had the same feeling of community that such events have in Galveston. Surely part of that was because we were "new in town" and didn't know as many people, but I had the distinct sense that I could attend these sorts of events for the next 10 years and always feel detached from the kind of genuine camaraderie I was used to in Galveston. It was as if the attendees converged from all over the sprawl of League City, absorbed their compulsory family-sized dose of fun and enjoyment, then packed into the SUV right on schedule and headed back to the subdivision for the night. Felt a little Bizarro-world. I also came to appreciate the pure honesty of "customer service" employees in Galveston who roll their eyes and with a heavy sigh ask "Whatchyou want?" rather than the Stepfordesque friendliness of kids at the counter in LC who politely stifle their sighs and eyerolls, but are undoubtedly just as disgusted with you and probably spit in your food anyhow.
And about those subdivisions and houses...which I began to cynically refer to as McMansions. Yes, they seem on the surface to be a great value for the money. But the pre-owned and newly-built-in-a-minute Perry homes and their like all felt very "hollow", or to borrow a phrase from a friend of a facebook friend, "dead inside." Not to mention that the "newer" home we rented had more issues to address in one year (thankfully by the landlord) than our Galveston house has had in 12. Our one-of-a-kind 96 year-old house in Galveston, with all its creaks and leaks even as it presently stands empty, seems very much alive...as does our neighborhood and even the city itself. I started thinking of Galveston like a coral reef, each family, each home, alive and vibrant with history, each contributing to a living community. Like a reef there are parts that are healthy and parts that are dying, there are threats from the inside and out. Galveston is both beautiful and ugly, it's cozy and a little scary, it's thriving and struggling. No offense to the many wonderful people we've befriended up here, but the suburban "coral reef" is more like what you find inside the Moody Gardens Aquarium...everyone in their own separate tanks with their own beautifully created habitats, the inhabitants are blissfully happy, safe and sound swimming about in their windexed and algae-free containers, but disconnected from each other and at some level missing the value of what a little dirt and grit...and sand...can add to their lives. The Island life, embodied by the Seawall, sand, and water, as well as a good dose of history, eclecticism, and grime, is undeniably real.
So pick your favorite cliché...The Grass Is Always Greener, Don't Know What You've Got Til It's Gone, There's No Place Like Home...they're all good. People who've listened to me carry on about getting off the Island the last few years now "shake their heads and look at me as if I've lost my mind" (thanks John Lennon)...unless they are from Galveston themselves. Those folks just give a knowing smile and say "Good to have you back." I may have lost my mind, but I'll be in the company of a wonderful community of good friends who can relate. I can now understand Amy's inability to put all this into words, and I'm not so sure I've articulated it any better than her old "But Galveston is home..." defense. We're headed back and I am very satisfied and resolved with that decision. After 16 years I can now proudly say, for the first time, that I am an Islander By Choice.
And I might even get some sand between my toes this time.
- kpb 7/28/09
