My Ariel Moment

I hate Disney. World. Land. The conglomerate. The princesses. The mouse sans shirt. The duck with the speech impediment. The happiest place on Earth slogan.The fairy tales turned into blockbusters.

My most hated Disney blockbuster is The Little Mermaid. The gist of this story is girl meets boy. Girl doesn't fit into boy's world. Girl changes for boy. Boy reaps all the benefits. The moral is  what exactly? Girls, go right ahead and change yourselves for a boy? What a fabulous moral to share with the youth of America. Yes, little princesses (an absolutely irritating thing to call all little girls under the age of five), by all means, when you meet that boy who is oh-so-dreamy, leave your world behind, sprout your legs and run into his. Feminists must wince each time they see a little girl decked out as Ariel for Halloween.

And yet, ten years ago, I found myself doing almost exactly what Ariel did. (Go ahead and shout hypocrite from the mountain top, it is only fair.)

Ten years ago, I was living with my sister in a fabulous Oak Park apartment. I loved Oak Park. If I could have acted as a spokesperson for the village, I would have. It had everything a twenty-something liberal could want...diversity, art, quaint shopping, hippies, and Erik's Deli. (Well, maybe the deli doesn't count, but good food is good food.) As a bonus, it was minutes away from the city, so I could easily enjoy all Chicago had to offer. Oak Park was home.

By the time I moved to Oak Park, I'd been dating my boyfriend (see the post The Degree I Didn't Earn in College) for five years. Couples were moving in together. Some were getting engaged, and a few were actually married. And, then there was us.

There was absolutely no promise of anything committal on the horizon. So, for a while, the word moving became part of my every day vocabulary. Moving... to... well, the place that was top on my list was Arizona.

The heat intrigued me the most. Oak Park pools were only open for a few short months, and in Illinois, tans fade too quickly. One night at a bar, over loud raucous music, I shouted to one of my best guy friends. I wondered if he'd visit me if such a move should happen. He tossed his head back and laughed. Peeved, I stomped my foot. He said, "Sure. You move, I'll visit, but you ain't moving." With arms crossed, I stomped away.

In the dark bar, only to myself, I admitted what he'd declared. He was right, deep down, I knew he was right. I wasn't leaving. There would be no U-Haul taking me across the country. There would be no move across the Great Plains, into the Wild West.

In fact, I moved. Just not across the country. I moved to my boyfriend's town, not far from Oak Park, but far enough from what was me, and right into what was him. I was Ariel.

Girl was leaving her world for boy's world, because he wasn't going to do it for her. Somehow, it was all justified in my head, though now, I couldn't explain it to you if I tried really, really hard. 

Now, in that move, I did find many things and wonderful friends and a job I love.But, I also lost part of me, the part of me that felt settled.There weren't roots, and I am a person who longs for roots.

Nearly ten years later, I wonder if I'd summoned up all the courage inside me at that moment and walked out of the bar and packed my stuff, if things would have ended up differently for me. But, when you spent too much time thinking, "What if?" you forget what is.

What is is that I am a mother and a strong woman. Even with the lemons of life, and my Ariel decisions of the past, we still have what lies before us. 

On that May day when my world fell away, I knew deep in my heart, it was my chance to come back to Oak Park. The absolute best thing of it all was that my children would be able to stake their roots there, and they would know it and love it as I once had.

Just recently, we moved back to Oak Park into an old house, converted into two apartments. We live in the "blue house", or "Mama's new house" now. My sister, my Claw, lives a few short steps away. There are tall, old trees lining every street and urban gardens and the sound of the "El" squealing day and night. There are people bustling, and new friends to meet, and Erik's Deli for lunch. There is life here, it is our life, not anyone's but ours. Life is good and getting settled.  And no one around here is acting like Ariel anymore.