For the first 21 years of my life, I lived in the West; I'd never been east of the Rocky Mountains. I lived mostly in California, but we also spent time in Nevada, Utah, and Arizona.
I moved to New Jersey in February of 1988 and met my BFF Patrick a few months later. We got married in 1990 after my church mission to Montreal, Canada; I've been here in the East ever since. We lived in Manhattan for 11 years and have been in the Hudson Highlands for the past 6 years.
So. All my time in the West was as a young single person; all my time in the East has been as an ever-aging married person. I'm so different from the eager, shy, confused girl who grew up in the West that I almost don't recognize myself. It doesn't seem like a very apples-to-apples situation to me.
What do I miss about the West? One on-ramp for every off-ramp. The smell of manzanita bushes in the hot summer sun. Mother's Circus Animal cookies. Henry Chung's Hunan Restaurant in San Francisco. The Pacific Ocean (SO much better than the Atlantic). Highway 1. Road trips through Nevada from California to Utah. Joshua trees. The green Livermore foothills in February, windmills and all. A relative lack of humidity. But most of all, proximity to my family of origin.
What do I treasure about the East? The ubiquitous green; miraculously, there are trees everywhere. The changing seasons. The sunsets that always look like a Frederick Church painting. The mysterious, inimitable smell that comes up from the subway grates. Ready access to local, organic everything. The Metropolitan Museum; everything about Manhattan. Being near the roots of our American heritage. The comparative lack of urban sprawl. But most of all, the history that I've built here with my husband and children.
I love to visit the West, but I don't know if I could ever leave the East. How's that for a non-answer?