Living in Reloville

Last week, Peter Kilborn published a book called Next Stop, Reloville: Life Inside America's New Rootless Professional Class. It describes the "relos" for whom relocation has become a way of life. The classic relo family has a father who works for a large corporation that transfers them every three or four years, a mother who stays home in a high-end subdivision, and kids who have to re-establish themselves in new schools. They're affluent, and rootless.

For thirteen years, I moved a lot for career reasons. I didn't work for a large corporation, I had a series of museum jobs. In some cases, I knew they would be transitory. In others, they just didn't work out. But every three or four years, my husband and I would uproot ourselves and start again somewhere else.

By Kilborn's definition, we were not classic relos. My career drove the process, not his. We don't have kids. We never lived in a subdivision. But we did have to re-establish ourselves, over and over again, and our lives had no context. No one knew who we had been before. They only knew who we were then.

You expect to leave your friends and family behind when you relocate. What you don't think about is that you have to reconstruct every detail of your life: new doctors, dentists, drycleaners. One of my favorite jackets, a spectacular designer piece I had found in a thrift store, was shredded-- literally shredded-- in a dry cleaner that apparently employed Edward Scissorhands. I carried it around for years, in the apparent belief that I would find a faith healer who could wave his hands over a mangled jacket and make it whole. I hunted for bakeries, places to eat breakfast. I stopped strangers on the street and ask where they get their hair done.

As we left each town, we left what was best about each of them. Orlando had Cuban food, a dog park with the best swimming lake, wonderful birdwatching and canoing. Harrisburg had great crafts shows, an amazing jazz piano player at a local bar (really) and a group of terrific women ("Women with Attitude") who met once a month for drinks. I made two really close friends in Pittsfield and it has the incredible cultural richness of the Berkshires.

Three years ago, we came home. Reloville is an ok place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there forever.