So Many People

One of the most striking differences between living in London and living in Washington is that here, you're living next door to all of humanity -- in all its life stages. In the States, you're much more segregated, always with your tribe of the time. In most places anyway.
In our neighborhood here, in west London, there's everyone pretty much. Suburban families, with kids in strollers up through secondary school. Older people, either couples or singles, living alone. Young people just starting out on their lives sharing flats.
Not to mention from every country. Americans. French. Polish. Italian. Middle Eastern. British, even. Colin Firth even. All right here. All ages of them.
In downtown Washington, where we lived for the last six months we were in the States, we were surrounded by young people. Our neighbors were mostly young adults in their late 20s or early 30s, just starting out on their careers, sharing apartments with others like them.
Washington has become THE place for East Coast kids just out of college to start their careers, since the job situation is better there than many other cities in the U.S. The federal government and all that.
And the neighborhood we were in attracted lots of young people, more and more each year.
It was nice -- lively, noisy, especially after the suburbs. But we felt old there. Didn't really fit in.
Before, for a dozen years while we were raising our boys, we lived in the quiet suburbs of Washington, where lots of other people were doing exactly the same thing as us. Raising kids in the suburbs.
Where the public schools were good. And there was room to play. And it felt safe.
But we outgrew that. Our kids grew up anyway.
New, younger families started to move in.
I like that there's such a mix of people and ages here -- that everyone lives together in the same neighborhood.
That's what American urban planners are trying so hard to achieve these days.
I just wish I had more of a connection to them.