Last night I was a stranger to sleep. I think eventually I dozed off, but every time I had some moment of clarity I would reach over and check my phone.
No calls. Work emails and coupons I cannot use at stores in the States, but no calls. At 3:51 AM my father called and the elation in his voice was telling.
“We did it,” he said, “We won big!”
Overcome with relief and exhaustion, I fell back into bed after quick congratulations and slept well for the rest of the morning. Everything would be ok.
I have spent the past week using email and Facebook to do what I can about an election in my hometown. I don’t expect most of my contacts to really care, at all, about this. That said, I think it might come across as rather bizarre that, from halfway around the world, I was losing sleep over a municipal election in Long Branch, New Jersey.
I was born just a few blocks from my parents’ house in Long Branch thirty years ago. The day they moved into that house, according to my mother, was the day she realized she was going to have a second child (yours truly). For better or for worse, my parents still live in that house. It has changed colors, lost trees, endured a broken window from a ball or two, hosted many a party (whether my parents were there or not) and served as a sort of gathering place for friends and family over the years. This house will forever be home to my family.
Bigger, though, than that house is the City it lives in. You could say, to some degree, that Long Branch is the fourth child in our house (she could be further characterized as my older, wiser, weathered sister). My parents live to serve her, my grandfather lived to serve her, and yesterday when her future was on the table, I sat halfway around the world trying to escape the anxiety I had over the election of the mayor and council (who happen to be my father’s employer). Let me take a moment to clarify – this is New Jersey politics. This is not The West Wing. Throw in diversity, the state of the economy, various pending bribery investigations, arguments over eminent domain that go back as long as I have been a legal adult and add in a few crackpots for good measure and you have yourself a ball game, friends.
While the campaign was ridden with Willie Stark-like caricatures of politicians and the games that are played, the people on the good side of it all (forgive my bias, it is wrought with facts, history and most of all, acknowledgement of progress) are close to my heart. I am a lifetime supporter of the incumbent team, and the recent history of our town is fascinating because it tells the story of a town going from the kind of place I was mildly ashamed of to the kind of place I am proud to call home.
This is where my father comes in. Thirty years is a long time. My father, a patient man, tries to always tell me that things take time. Progress does not come overnight. When I was seven, my father, uncle and grandfather closed the family business on Broadway (this was mostly due to the growth of malls and the speedy decline of the economy in our town). I didn’t really understand what that meant until I realized I never really went back to Broadway as it was kind of a depressed place. Around that time, the amusement park on the pier caught fire and the damage was irrecoverable. I cried that day because my parents hadn't ever taken me there and it was gone so I'd never get to see it.
When I was in middle school, my father was appointed the City Business Administrator and his days and nights became consumed with the City. In high school, I was the school mascot. This pleased my parents, I think, because it kept me involved with sports (since my athletic abilities were on par with your average nerd). I loved it because I spent alot of time celebrating -- our town and our basketball team won two State Championships during my tenure as the mascot, so it was tons of fun. Clearly we were those people (my family) -- we were fans of this place and the people in it, despite the burned down pier, the crime levels and some other minor flaws.
When we went on college tours to big cities, Dad would always point out similarities to our town, speak incessantly about its future, about it being a destination, not something people would avoid. In fact, I avoided Long Branch myself as much as possible around that time. I would drive to the neighboring town’s McDonald’s when my best friend and I needed a hot fudge sundae (seriously they are tasty and cost like a dollar) instead of the McDonald’s in our town because of the “sketch” factor. There were a number of “sketch” factors.
During my senior year of high school or thereabouts, there was a master plan for the City's redevelopment that was slowly beginning to take shape. I left home at that point for college and came back a few times to see more and more progress each year: cleaner streets, new storefronts, beaches spanning for a few miles with no garbage and much less “riff raff” – and I am not talking about one neighborhood or two, but a makeover of sorts - a complete overhaul of different parts of the City. (Note: my parents both got much more gray hair during this time).
Seeing as this is my home, as far away as I would go, it still mattered to me. It still matters to me. Maybe a little too much, but that’s not a bad thing. Growing up with your parents so involved in your town (my mother's contributions are an entirely independent post), it is natural to have a vested interest in these things. So every four years, the elections are kind of a big deal. For one thing, who knows if the other guy would have employed my father?
Further, I didn’t want to see the progress come to a halt. I didn’t want this story to end. The people running against the Mayor (and the people behind them) weren't all that honest, weren't all that hard working, and they clearly didn't have a passion for my hometown. To take a job that pays very little but requires a ton of your time, you have to give a damn. All the time. You have to care ALL THE TIME. There are costs to this and most people aren't willing to do what it takes to do these jobs well -- to do unpopular things, to do things that cost money, to do things that people are afraid of to make progress happen. I didn't want someone responsible for my home that had no intentions of taking care of it and no regard for the progress to date. Our Mayor, amidst a negative campaign and armed with his record and all of those things that people who lead have to have, was steadfast, motivated and took nothing for granted. He asked the people to believe him, to believe in him and to vote for him to keep up the good work of the past 20 years. And they did. By a large margin. It was inspiring to hear my father telling me this news on the phone. It was inspiring because I remembered why I am here and why I do what I do.
I have never, in my life, known what I wanted to do with myself. I have never, ever been consistent about what I want to do with myself (the number of times I've changed majors, changed apartments, changed my mind about what to have for dinner, etc. is ridiculous). I never will be and that haunts me sometimes. On days like this, it haunts me because I have clearly made some decisions that have led me to be so far away from home and it is troubling when I cannot place the reason behind those decisions.
I will say this – I sit on a very corporate side of an industry that lets me travel the world to experience everything that I love about cities by contributing a small amount to them. And everything I love about cities I learned by sitting at a table in my parents’ house and listening to my father tell me about what was planned for our town and how it was going to happen, or on a call with him from wherever I was living, him telling me about some major step towards progress (an approval here, a contract signed, a groundbreaking, a successful event, a positive NYTimes restaurant review, etc.). I love knowing how these things happen and I love being a little, tiny, insignificant but excited part of it all.
So what the hell made me move to Abu Dhabi (or even Las Vegas before this) when I am so interested in what’s going on in New Jersey? Honestly, I fell into this job I have. I really “stepped in it,” as my Aunt would say. I applied for a marketing position on Craigslist in 2004 (when I think it was invented) and I got the job. Real Estate and Construction was cool, I had this love affair with developments and cities that I wanted to pursue, though at the time it was not really clear how that was going to work out. I was beginning to realize then that I was kind of obsessed with seeing something through – since I never finished anything myself – from concept stages to reality. I was no engineer, I was no architect – I never will be. But there are stories in cities. There are stories in buildings. There are stories in the people who see them before they are even drawn on paper (and let me tell you, some of those drawings change so many times your head would spin). There are stories in the people who build them, live/work/play in them, change them, and sometimes even the people who implode them. I just wanted to be the part of my own story, I guess, and go to new places.
There are also stories about the people who want stop progress, for one reason or another, in its tracks. In Long Branch, those stories are popular. In Long Branch, like any place, any story with controversy is popular. Unfortunately, there is also an untold story: that of the team of people who have spent literally, most of my lifetime, trying to make it a better place. My Dad is one of those people. My Mom is one of those people. The newly re-elected Mayor is one of those people. And their stories are not ever told from their own perspective because they are gifted with the kind of humility and grace that the people who have thrown some mud their way of late clearly do not know. You don’t hear about the long nights they spent pouring over ideas and plans and regulations and budgets to make things happen. You don’t read in the paper how much time and effort it took to plan events year in and year out and wait for people to come and worry that they wouldn’t – I think my mom has nightmares of empty shops and restaurants and poorly attended events on behalf of the town’s small businesses on a regular basis. And the physical progress is not just in oceanfront developments. Parks, cleaner streets, new businesses all over town, fewer empty and run down storefronts, more events, more visitors, more money flowing into the restaurant owners, more things for kids to do, more things for people to do. A better place, a better lifestyle, a better home.
Much to the contrary of the aforementioned respect and passion I have for this home, I have traveled further away from it than anyone in my family. This is silly to friends who spend a good deal of time patiently listening to me tell (long winded, disconnected, irrelevant) stories about home and how great it is, but to me it is the life I choose to lead. I don’t have to live and breathe home to know it, to love it and to miss it.
Of course I’ve discovered many great places on the journey that brought me from a little City on the coast of New Jersey to New York City (which you can see on a clear day from our beaches), to North Carolina, all around Europe, Washington DC, Las Vegas, and now to Abu Dhabi. I am no true world traveler (trust me, the people I meet here daily look at me cross-eyed because I haven't been to Thailand and I am like, "let me tell you about this little place in Jersey..."), but on a certain level, Long Branch is not altogether different from here or any other place. The pizza there kicks @ss and you cannot beat the Italian Ice from Strollo's or the hot dogs from a number of competing summer hot spots. But in the end it is a City -- full of some great people who want to keep it clean, vibrant and healthy.
The messy and equally frustrating part is what it takes to actually build (or rebuild) a city, which is what is happening in Abu Dhabi. It is not clean, it is not always “win/win” for everyone at every moment and it is not, by any means, happening overnight. There’s a plan. Some if it is going to work, some of it isn’t. People with money have power and people with power have influence and people with the vision to see it all through have hope. And still the cranes go up, skylines change, and time passes. In Las Vegas, the new skyline brings with it a good amount of political and financial drama. In Abu Dhabi, the new skyline is full of cranes. Down the street in Dubai the cranes have stopped moving but flying into the city at night, you see the tallest building in the world and wonder how they did that. This is what does it for me, I guess. And the stories of how these things happen continue to draw me in, like they did on those long calls with my Dad -- and I will continue to play my small part in places all over, get a little travel done in the process and see some cool cities evolve while I am at it.
I am infatuated with these stories, like a novel I cannot put down, I fall in love with city after city and plan after plan and I move on occasion to find a new story. But Long Branch will always be my first. It is, forever, my home. And I am happy to report that the heroes are still winning, progress is underway and the hope is still there. I heard it in my Dad’s voice at 4AM and it made me miss home, and him, more than ever. I’ll see it again on the 4th of July and I cannot wait.
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