My family lived in New York, California, and Connecticut before moving abroad. In school, my kids have kids from 40 different countries. My husband and I have three kids and four pets, and we've moved a lot in search of the American dream .
We started in New York, but after our first baby's open heart surgery, we returned to the Bay Area , where I'd met my husband Lynn. We missed our laid-back, California progressive-style life, and we wanted our kids to grow up outdoors, around creative thinkers. We hoped for a lifestyle in which they'd see their dad most nights before bedtime, and I'd one day return to my career as a designer and art director .
Nowhere we went in the US made sense for our lifestyle Once in the Bay Area, though, we struggled to find a home, landing in a distant suburb where Lynn's commute from Marin County turned traffic-ridden and long. Trails surrounded us, but the lack of sidewalks made travel out of the car unsafe for kids. I had little time for my career or to leave the house after we decided to homeschool our oldest due to an exclusionary kindergarten environment and parent community that outside specialists said was harming him.
After eight years in California , Lynn got a job in Connecticut. We moved again, hoping Fairfield County's expansive lawns, award-winning schools, Rockwellian homes, and Lynn's new 10-minute commute would inch us closer to our dream. But in Connecticut, we again found no sidewalks to neighbors.
Parents were commuting hours to .