My friend Barb came to visit this weekend with her mom and her brother, Joe.

     It was a lovely time.  I really enjoy Barb and her mom.  Barb’s mom is my model for what a mom should be.  One I regularly fall far short of, but she is the mom that I want to be someday.

     One thing our visit did, though, was illustrate just how much I don’t miss living in a small town.

     Barb and I were going for an after-dinner walk, when she mentioned that her mom caught a ride down to the cities from Bemidji with the mother of another friend of ours.  Let’s call her “Battleship Ellie”.  Anyway, Barb, Barb’s, mom and Ellie were at dinner, when Ellie mentioned that she hadn’t seen much of my mom since my mom and dad moved up to and even smaller town two hours north of Bemidji.

     Ellie mentioned in a rather prompting way that she didn’t see my mother in church anymore.  The implications sounded to Barb like Ellie was concerned that my mom might not be attending church at all.

     Barb replied with something letting Ellie know that she didn’t know my mom very well, and wasn’t familiar with her church-attending habits, or why they might have changed.

     The family-style communities of small towns have their upside.  No argument.  But they are a double–edged sword.  Yes, everyone takes care of each other in a small town…but on the other hand EVERYONE TAKES CARE OF EACH OTHER.

     It’s like having a couple hundred sets of parents keeping track of your church attendance, whether or not your working, how your garden/yard/house/ are looking, what your children are up to, etc.

     If your behavior isn’t up to community standards, people assume there is something wrong, and bring you casserole dishes and call you up to offer a helping hand, or use an errand to ask another mutual friend’s children to explain your lapse in church attendance.

     This is great if you need help….but torture if you just don’t feel a lot of pressure to measure up to community standards.  I don’t need a big garden.  If the plants are healthy, I don’t worry too much about getting every little weed as soon as it pops its head above the ground.  Flowers bordering the house:  EXTREMELY optional.

     On the other hand, in the big city people don’t feel the need to let you know kindly and helpfully and hintingly if you’ve fallen below community standards.  Ellie’s son lives in Minneapolis, and has recently had a LOT on his plate.  So he’s more behind than usual on home maintenance and yard work, in addition to being in the middle of a number of projects.  This neighbor let him know by leaving a nasty, swear-word laden note on his door.  Casseroles may be passive aggressive, but at least you can eat them, and it saves you time having to cook dinner while you work to put your life in order.

     Still, I prefer (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) the suburbs, where you can live next door to someone for twenty years and exchange five words with them a year…mostly neutral peasantries.  They don’t know you, they don’t want to know you, and they’ve got enough business of their own to want to get into any of yours.

     Yep, there’s something to be said for our disintegrating society’s slow slide into the snake pit of individualism and isolation:  I like the quiet.