Cincinnati reflections part 3

I realize its been months since we took our trip to Cincinnati, but I think I am a slow processor. I would not work well as the latest iPhone model for sure. I'm more like my 4 year old android holder phone that has to be poked 5 or more times to load a page.

I may have touched on this all before, but one thing I think Cincinnati did for me was stretch me in my thoughts of how we live. I used to think that since I lived in the city that I was an urban dweller, but really I still have a yard and a driveway and a whole house to myself. My kids don't have to go to a park to play outside they can run around in the yard or just walk to a neighbors house around the corner. When we were there I realized that even though this is the city of Cleveland, we are still spread out a ton. There is so much freedom and green here and I appreciate that immensely because of my experience. Now if we could only get rid of the mosquitoes so I could go outside and not be bitten 5 times in 5 minutes we'd be good. But we do live in a city that doesn't have a budget for that and in the end that's okay.

When we came back we were actually sad that we couldn't walk to everything, that things just felt more car oriented here and it was a bit of a letdown. But maybe we were also more adventurous when there and honestly Over the Rhine isn't as easily maneuverable by car as here is. There are a lot more smaller streets and a lot more one ways there, while Old Brooklyn, despite its million pot holes is pretty driver friendly. It's also pretty bike friendly too, and that we appreciate living here and liking to bike.

I am going to say that I may say this all very badly because I don't usually talk about race on the blog, but one of the major learning things from being where we were in the city compared to where we normally live was that we were no longer the majority race. My kids noticed it right away, and it called to mind that whole issue of being color blind. We really aren't color blind. Being different colors doesn't make one of us better than the other, but we are different colors. So my kids noticed that. And I think it was good for me to have to discuss that with them. I think also, even though I consider myself not to be prejudice about someone of a different color, I think I had to come to grips with what my comfort level was with being around people that were different than me. I think I learned that part of me was scared, and I needed to adjust that and get over it. My kids on the other hand made friends with whomever would willingly play with them and that pretty much meant everyone at the playground that was willing to run circles with them or run the slides backwards. My oldest even made friends with the playground attendant because she was super friendly, to him it never seems to matter if someone is different. He's going to ask you about those differences and in that form a bond with you in doing so.