A Piece of My Thoughts About Newtown, Connecticut

Between the summer of 1975 and the summer of 1993, Connecticut was the only place I knew as home. Between two towns I went to school while being raised by two New York City bred parents. Some kids took advantage of the rivers and hiking available around the state. I, on the other hand, most vividly remember visiting family in New York State. I lived in the part of the state that I, and others, joked wouldn’t exist without New York. I had very few friends that were actually born in Connecticut, and was always surprised when I met someone who was. We were all the offspring of New York parents who moved to the country looking for a quieter life for their children. If you know me or follow my posts you already know when I graduated high school I flew far and fast. I could go on and on about my CT childhood, but instead I provide this to you solely as background information.

For two years I grew up down the street from Newtown, albeit a long street, but I was only a street away.

Like residents of Newtown, CT I do not like the idea of Newtown becoming a Columbine or Jonesboro. A town synonymous with a school shooting. I have “liked” a group on Facebook called “We Are Newtown” that in addition to providing information about the horrific events and ways people around the world can help they post pictures of what “their Newtown” really is. I was a street away from a town that offered (and still does) $2 movies at The Edmond Town Hall and a flagpole situated right in the middle of an intersection. Directions in or through Newtown always contained the words “at the flagpole….” It was also the home of Fairfield Hills, a mental health hospital, that was the occasional butt of teenage insults.

The media has coined Newtown a quaint New England town. Yes, it has white clapboard buildings and is as picturesque as any small New England town, but the word “small” is such a relative term. Yes, it’s smaller than New York City where many of these reporters are based out of, but it makes my dad, who lives in a border town, “laugh” in confusion. Many towns in Connecticut are much smaller than Newtown, but to those out of the state; yes, Newtown is small.  Heck the entire state of Connecticut is small! The town is not small in the same way a Midwestern town is small. I doubt that everyone knows everybody and it is not small in the sense of farmland and country folk that rarely leave town. It is small in the sense that there are only two (that I can think of) shopping centers in town. It is small in that I bet everyone knows somebody who knows somebody. But, in that area of Connecticut a large part of the population live in large tree surrounded homes that they are proud of and able to afford as a result of commuting on average of an hour to work every day. 

Every time I visit my dad, about once a year, visiting my dear friend takes me traveling through Newtown, or I eat at the diner in Newtown, or I stop in town to buy bagels at the nearest bagel shop to his house. I have memories in Newtown, they are not many, they do not consist of long visits, but they are there in my mind vividly enough that the thought of the events that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School make my stomach turn just a little bit more than the random person in my Wisconsin small city. My heart aches as a mom, for all the parents, and my heart aches as a school counselor for all of the children. My heart aches because I have physically been in the town. I cannot describe this ache as anything more than my feet have been there so I ache; in the same way my heart ached when the F5 tornado ravaged Tuscaloosa, Alabama; the place I called home after I moved away from “small town” Connecticut.

For my running friends across the nation there is a memorial 5K run in Newtown, Connecticut tentatively set for March 23, 2013. They plan to have a virtual component to it and whether I am here or there on that day, my daughter’s 6 ½ half-birthday, I will run!