I’m still thinking about place.
Where I am now, the overwhelming majority of businesses are national chains. Their existence is described approvingly with definite and indefinite articles, e.g.: “We got a Target,” “The Wal-mart has the cheapest coffee filters.” To urbanite me, these businesses are uniformly bleak and depressing. There’s nothing unique, nothing local, nothing to tell you where you are. You could be anywhere.
But when I ride in the car with my mom, that same generic landscape is inscribed with specifics: “I walked to elementary school on this street.” “There’s your great-grandma’s house. We’d go there on Sunday afternoons and listen to One Man’s Family.” “That’s where the hospital used to be. When your great-grandpa had his heart attack, he could see the store from his hospital bed. Well, no one had opened the store by 8:05, so he got up and walked across the street to do it.”
It doesn’t make me like the chains any better, but it helps me see why Mom wants to live here.