Our Town

Ryan is our resident conversationalist. He is keeping us on our toes as he hears new words or understands new concepts. Recently, he's been using the term "our town." When we drive somewhere, he'll ask if we're in "our town" yet or he'll say, "we have one of those in our town" in reference to a number of things-chain restaurants or stores.
It hit me the other day that while it makes sense to Ryan that this is our town, I have not allowed it to become my town in my own head. In fact, I kind of think of the Montgomery Gentry song "My Town" when I hear him use the phrase. While the specific storyline of the song doesn't fit me nor the town I grew up in. The essence of the song hits home. That you spend so much time one place that there are certain feelings associated with it. While the song goes on and says that things have changed, there's still a consistency, an understanding of the town itself that is just there in your subconscious. At least, that's how I feel. I could tell lots of stories about growing up where I did. Part of who I am comes from where I grew up, how I was raised and the things I've taken for granted as being part of an ideal hometown. 
What's even more interesting is to compare that to Oliver's sense of "my town." In his entire life, the longest he's ever lived in one town has been these last 10 years. He grew up moving every 2 or 3 years to a wide variety of exciting and not so exciting places. His family learned that it didn't matter where you lived, but how.
It's a little sad to me that I've not allowed my head or my heart to accept the fact that this is our town. We've lived in 7 different "homes" in this city. When we were dating, we walked all over the blocks near our apartment complex and alot of areas not so near our apartment complex. Oliver worked on Downtown Center Street for a while. He secretly found and bought a ring in our town to give to me as a symbol of the commitment he was making to me. We found a great basement apartment to live in when we were first married. Then we quickly found another one 14 blocks further west that was just as great, if not greater. That led us to visiting new parts of our town that included a river and a beautiful walkway. We were blessed with two beautiful sons delivered in our town's hospital where Oliver himself was born many years before. We've discovered most of the parks in our town. I've discovered many roads that don't have adequate sidewalks for stroller pushing. Our town has grocery stores with differences: one serves up Kong Kones and one makes muffin tops. Our town holds doctor's offices. Our town has a preschool that Evan's attended for 2 years now. Ryan has his own "school" that he talks about whenever we drive past. There's a beautiful library that I have a card for. There's a temple that shines at night and mountains looming over it all.
And then there's the campus of BYU. The reason I'm here to begin with, the reason we've lingered, and the reason I've struggled finding peace with this being "our town."
BYU's population is roughly the same size of the town I grew up in.
BYU provides almost everything a college student would ever need to survive. There's the housing. There are jobs. The classes. The entertainment. It even has food, a fitness center, churches in the classroom buildings, a health center and lots more. Everything is enveloped into a small space if you don't have a lot of needs(or a lot of transportation options). I took to this university bubble easily. After being a student for so many years, I learned and felt comfortable in being a citizen of the campus. It felt (and can still sometimes feel) like mine.
Basically, the point of this rambling and run down memory lane is to point out that I need to be better about being a citizen of our town. Ryan needs it. I need it. I need to feel comfortable with where I'm living. I need to take advantage of the opportunities available to me, even if I struggle with the fact that with a "population at the 2010 census of 112,488, Provo is the principal city in the Provo-Orem metropolitan area, which had a population of 526,810 residents at the 2010 census."(thanks wikipedia).
This is our town. Will we be finding a new town in the next year or two, yes. But that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of things I can be doing to let this place feel like mine. One more thing for me to learn from my son.