The Suburban Dream

Surburbia might be the greatest single thing that happened to me in life. It gave my family and I an opportunity to fulfill our American Dream and land us to the spot that we sit in now. Growing up as a child in Toronto, in an urban environment, I was never afforded the opportunities that I would experience in latter years as a teen/young adult in suburban America. We get caught up in the glory of cities and urban environments, the intrigue they create, the limitless possibilities that exist there. We sometimes lose sight of the reality of living in an urban center and the cost associated with this. In Toronto, we owned a modest 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house. No more space than what we needed was provided, Simple finishes, fixtures, the whole bunch. It was a space to call home, but nothing to boast about. We lived on the salaries of my parents, who both worked in manufacturing, making decent wages but nothing that they could really be proud of. It was at this moment where they felt they needed a change. Toronto was my home and I learned to make the most of what I had there, but my parents wanted to be able to provide my brother and I opportunities that they knew they could not financially do in Toronto. They jumped ship and hauled us down south to Atlanta, GA first where we got settled along side close family and eventually to Seneca, SC where they could really begin to take on their own American Dream. From the money my parents had saved and made from selling their Toronto home, they bought and took over a Shell gas station and still do that today. It's not work that they dreamed of doing but it's something to call their own. Their risk of leaving what they knew in search of something better was something not many families are comfortable doing. They put in their time, and still continue to do so, but have reaped the rewards of owning their own business. My parents have been able to send my brother and I through college, debt-free, which in today's world is a huge benefit for us. Moving from the city to the suburbs allowed for my family to afford this luxury. They could afford to first trade a house for a store and then buy a house after that. They could afford to provide us viable means of transportation. They could afford to provide us opportunities to pursue whatever degree and interest we wanted. They could afford to send me to Barcelona to study and live abroad for 4 months. They could afford to live a better life than they did in Toronto. At the end of the day, suburbia provided my family and I an opportunity. An opportunity that they were fortunate enough to be successful on. It's not the utopian way of life that we like to imagine, but it works. It gives good people a chance at a good life. It provides us a place to call home, and gives more people a fighting chance to be something. I am thankful for the conditions of suburbia, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.