This only makes sense if you have been aware of the discussion of What's Wrong With Suburbia --
among other things, it's been described as a colossal waste of money, cheap ugly sprawl that gobbles up productive farmland and engulfs small-town communities. It necessitates long commutes; encourages consumption and credit-debt. It was designed by developers instead of growing from common participation. It segregates business and family; traps people at the end of concrete runways, dependent on cheap oil and automobiles. It creates/reinforces a culture of isolation. It's ugly; big houses on small lots, monotony, acres of car-lots followed by acres of apartments followed by strip malls and labyrinthine, cookie-cutter neighborhoods.

As someone who grew up in suburbia, I can see these problems. I find many other places more attractive, better designed, more wild and scenic.
Yet I loved about my place, growing up; and I honor what's still right and good and flourishing in my old neighborhood.

Tonight I went with my mother to see our local high-school play. It's been ten years since I graduated. My mentor, Carol Coburn, passed away almost as many years ago, and there have been at least three directors for the Aloha High School Theater program since then. So it was more an "old times sake" gesture, than a current connection.
Or so I thought.
Our community takes pride in supporting this high-school theater program. Retirement homes and elementary schools take field trips to attend the plays and dress rehearsals. Lacking "professional" or even "community" theater, we come together as parents and community volunteers, to help our teenagers learn the myriad skills that come with any drama production.
(Carpentry, electrical, design, budgeting, salesmanship, teamwork, artistry, and technical specialties like acting, singing, dancing, running a light-board, sewing period costumes, building durable props, creating special effects with make-up, light, space, etc.)
At its best, our theatre is about hundreds of community members, mostly adults but sometimes also schoolchildren, coming together to create an environment in which the high-school students get their turn in the limelight, and we all get to enjoy each others' skills and company.

When we got there, the current director was greeting people as they bought tickets from the parent volunteers at the table. He proudly let us know that this was their first-ever "green" show - they recycled everything, the only thing they threw away in producing the show was sawdust. I shook his hand.

We sat, not in the right-center corner where Coburn used to sit, but a little further up in the center of the front section. Looking through the program, we realized we did recognize two names -- a boy I'd baby-sat years ago, and another from a family that was at my brother's wedding. The older woman next to us knew my mother -- and me, by extension, from when I was small, at church.
At the dimming of the lights, a student actor came out into a spotlight at the front-left exit of the theatre, and pretended to carry on a silly cell-phone conversation about how much he hates cell phones in the theater..."noticed" the audience...and cutely ended the skit, "no, you hang up first, no, you, okay, 'bye mom."
The show was high-school theatre -- as I know it. Effective, sometimes excellent; but the rough edges still visible.
The sets had lovely, grand, elegant elements, yet some sections ended oddly in straight lines, emphasized by tiny contrasting strips of trim.
Lighting nearly flawless, from the visible "period" fixtures to the theatrical spots and timing; still, at one odd moment, an exit was backlit during a blackout-scene change. Revolving bookcases revealed "secret passages" with credibly spooky smoothness, real books and glass and globe stocking them, yet their plywood joints were visible through the oddly yellow paint. Costumes were well chosen for line and color, the total effect nicely balanced, yet there were odd touches like a masculine black tie on the maid, or sloppy alterations to skirts. Make-up was used to indicate age; some characters had sloppy dark lines, others had smooth, subtle illusions.
The acting included some moments of excellence, not only exquisitely delivered lines and comic timing, but also the actors' responses to onstage accidents such as a breaking glass that required some improvised cleanup and commentary. Stiff or contrived gestures in the opening scenes gave way to convincing personalities, swiftly-flowing action, and effective comedy and drama.

In other words, it was a good night's entertainment, some true talent was on display; and, more importantly, there was no sign that student participation had been sacrificed on the altar of perfection.

At intermission, the theatrical audience mingled with the basketball boosters at the concessions stand. We ran into the mothers of both of Our Boys, and caught up briefly on family news. We refreshed ourselves, returning the can for recycling.
After the very satisfying ending (including a twist, in which one of Our Boys masterfully executed a switch from an Irish, to an Italian, to a German accent within the space of about 5 minutes, followed shortly by his exit as a corpse) we made our way slowly out of the auditorium.
We met the cousin of my step-mother, who also went to That Church... we passed through excited clusters of high-school students who had come to see their friends, both onstage and off... we gathered to congratulate, and re-acquaint, ourselves with Our Boys.
We watched a circle of their friends perform a strange dance, involving a sequence of hand-holding, turns, finger-waving, accompanied by choruses of strange near-random unison sounds. "It's a cult thing -- they have to have a ritual" said Our Boy, and I observed, "Yes, but it has organization, and symmetry, because it's a Theater Cult." My mother tasted the phrase, "a Choreographed Cult."
Of course, it was nothing of the kind -- it was a silly routine, created at some point by the group, and sure to dissolve at some future point in favor of another creation.
and, of course, it was a Choreographed Cult -- because gathering for shared expression is at the core of any community that goes beyond physical sustenance. Religions show many large-scale examples, and this a tiny one: silly rules and rituals are part of how we bind ourselves together.

So what's right with Suburbia?

People live there.
People live there, because they care about their children.
People get together, help raise each other's children, and make something happen that's larger than themselves.

You can grow roots there, and go back years later to find them still in place, connected, sometimes growing on their own.

If you're weary of living in boxes, on a grid without public space -- it's suburban real estate developers who are experimenting with curves, slowing cars down and give children a place to play. There are even a few back routes that cars don't travel, sometimes.

On my bike ride home, and in my garden, I notice other things:

There's still mud here.

Instead of sidewalks, some places, we have ditches. Along the ditches grow: willow, wild roses, duckweed, grass, moss, ferns, cottonwood, reeds. Nutria. Ducks. Herons, even.
You know another word for ditch? Bioswale. That's what they call it in the city, where they are now adding them back in to remedy the stormwater problems, caused by channeling every living stream of water into the sewers.

Our neighborhood, my childhood neighborhood, was divided into half- and quater-acre lots. One of our neighbors remembered when the next street was a lake. (I can tell you where the water went -- I can show you three streams within my childhood range.)

In our yard, we inherited plants from our predecessors. When they sold the house, they planted their garden in ryegrass, to boost the nitrogen while it was waiting for the next inhabitants. We had 8 varieties of fruit trees, over a dozen varieties of blueberries, raspberries, grapes, hazelnuts, crops of blackberries, rhubarb, and wild plums that came up on their own. In a yard that size, you can have all that, a dog and cat, and still have room for a lawn, fort, and garden.

You can grow a big enough garden to feed a family with seven kids (our neighbors did.)

Your friends and neigbors share the bounty -- we paid for dryer-repairs with blueberry pies more than once; the repairman bought those bushes when we left that house.
We had the clean baby grape-leaves our Persian friend needed to make "dolme." She thanked us with trays of Hiroscht Saabs Gourmee, exotic dried lemon and other flavors making a mysterious magic out of stewed beef, rice, and greens. (I still hope to learn these recipes.)

Diversity includes several dozen tables of exotic specialities prepared with pride for the churches' International Food Fair. Various nations of Asia, India, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and the youth group selling hot dogs, share tables, marked by national flags from a family friends' complete UN collection. Dancers from three continents, and a dixieland band composed of musicians recruited from the high school, provide the entertainment.

The same church serves as a center, a few years later, for donations to re-establish a group of locals, most of them from the same Mexican village, who have lost their belongings in an apartment fire. Sofas, beds, cribs, and cookware are outside under a borrowed tent; food, toys, and other necessities provided from routine collections. I follow my mother as she translates.
Years later, I have the chance to stand beside her again, and follow the conversation en Espanol without her translation.

From my house, where I grew up:
There is a park two blocks west, along quiet streets.
What was once a grassy field has become sports fields, basketball courts, dog off-leash areas, with perimiter space left scraggly for grass and brush. The blackberries like this; we eat them, and sometimes cull them out.
In the off-leash areas and around them are the spindly Christmas trees, planted there to retain the definition of "farm" for the property during a neighborhood transition.
The forested stream still lies beyond. A winding path follows the stream through oak and hawthorne and cottonwood trees, between little swatches of lawn and horsetails and undergrowth, over two bridges, to another park with sturdy wooden play equipment, tennis courts, and a marshy back area.

From the top of the hill overlooking the park, twenty yards from the corner of our lot, you can watch the sun set.

When you are a teenager, you can sneak out at night to watch the stars (like me) or to escape to the city's busy delights (like many.)

There is a grocery four-and-a-half blocks east; you can walk or bike there, get ice-cream or pizza with a friend, window-shop the ever-changing occupants of the strip-mall.
Shari's is open 24 hours in the center of the parking lot. Though you rarely go there at other times, this is where your friends eat together after an exhilarating night in the high-school theater. Your parents know where you will be, and it's better than waking them up with your exuberance.

When your sister's bachelorette party arrives at another strip-mall hangout, you suddenly realize where you have met that charming bartender before: when he was six years old, in footie pajamas, and you were sleeping over with his big sister.

There used to be a path through the apartments to the store; the neighbors closed it off, so now you cross, or walk in the ditch along, the busy road. There is a path on one side, but not the other.
A mile down the road is another grocery, with more organic produce, across from the middle school. That strip mall also has food, liquor, movies, craft supplies, gas, and a back road to the high school.

There are four schools within walking or biking distance -- two elementary, one middle, one high-school, all within about a mile.
There is a swimming pool at the high school that runs lessons and open hours in season.
The high school marching band takes over the middle-school football field for a week, and the back roads for a few hours a day, in season.

It is to our parents' houses here that my friends return, and their friends, for the holidays. My brother and I, eight years different in age, have attended the same New Year's Eve parties with the former Aloha Theater crowd. These parties celebrated life without endangering it. Elegant masquerade costumes, food, drink, dancing, theatrical improv, flirtations, and other entertainments, give way to pajamas and pillows at the stroke of midnight (give or take an hour...).

There are restaurants here, though we do sometimes drive into The City for our evenings. There are Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, Italian, jazz bars, country pubs, cafes, diners, sports bars, chains -- dotting the main roads, peeking out of the labyrinthine strip malls.
Some of the restaurants are pretty good.
Some are exquisite.
Like their city counterparts, some are intergenerational institutions; some flicker in and out of existence without ado. The lunchtime and dinner crowds find them all.

There are places to work -- industrial campuses, stores, offices. My sister worked in the strip malls, first serving customers, then taking commissions for custom murals and window-art. I rode transit to city jobs, or borrowed the car to indulge in the delicious back-country landscapes en route to Hillsboro. My father biked to work most summers, a few miles to one job, and later into the city twenty miles distant, carrying spare inner tubes along the glass-strewn arterials.

The strip-malls do have their grey swaths of parking, dedicated to the convenience of bargain shoppers. Artful facades can't hid the monotonous roofline. The busy streets do push pedestrians to the margins. It is true there are suburbs where poor planning, steep landscapes, and hurried drivers combine to make life hazardous without a car.
But that was not what I noticed growing up.
I saw the trees, yellow poplar and red plum and silver-green cottonwood and dark Doug fir, waving in the wind above all our flat roofs.
I roamed my neighborhood, a patchwork of friends and strangers.

At 3 am last Wednesday, I rediscovered that it is possible to have a conversation while riding a bicycle. Until that quiet night, I hadn't realized the sheer noise that cars create, as much an impact on our quality of life as their speed and mass and ground-glass grit. I have never in this country slept beyond the sound of traffic, though I have elsewhere.

If the cars stopped running tomorrow, I don't think my suburb would die. Not for that reason alone. It would be terrifying, of course; incomes tossed to the winds, supply-lines cut, debts to reckon with, medical emergencies and hunger.
But I can see my neighbors calling each other for support. Trading seeds, growing gardens, repairing each others' fences, sewing and wiring and plumbing for each other like we do for our church festivals and high-school theater. Holding our garage-sales with old clothes and trinkets, jams and jars and recipes. Converting that barren parking lot into a market square. It would be a lean few years, but we know how to work together.
Where the strawberry stand and the fireworks booth and the Christmas-tree and the carnival now do their seasonal trades, we might keep each other company in the business of life.

Long after I flew the nest, half-convinced that Suburbia was a Blight on Humanity...
Home still calls me. The older women who knew my mother, the younger ones who knew my sisters, find me in the city, on the train, in the store, at work.
"Are you a Ritter? [I know your family.]" they say.
"Remind me, which sister are you? [Don't I know you, too?]"
Our families connect. My sister's friends, my brother's wife, are related to my own friends.
It's been ten years since I graduated from high school, and moved on. My face, my clothes, my strongest relationships have changed. But the connections remain.

Maybe this happens to people who grew up in the Dense and Vibrant City; maybe it happens among people who have Small-Town Character and Values. Maybe it would be better, if they didn't have to ask -- if we knew each other more deeply. I can commit to knowing a few people more deeply, maybe many.
But wherever I might go, no matter how deeply I commit myself to a new community, I can't create another place where people know my sisters and brother and parents as well as they know me. These connections are lost with distance. To leave home looking for something better, and settle far away, weakens our power to make things better, together, here, now.

The City, the Suburbs, the Country -- these are abstractions. If you're looking for community, you need People. You are already connected. Follow your friends, your sisters, a schoolmate, a parent. You find where the people gather, you go there, you work your heart out at something you love, you give and take and celebrate, and wait your turn, and take your turn, and fly away, and come back home again.

Over time, something grows in that rich ground that will outlast all the urban plans, and stage sets, in the world.