Settling down in St. Louis

by Mary Poletti

St. Louisans like defending St. Louis. We are a fiercely loyal crowd. If you insult our city, it’s  not outside the realm of possibility that one of us will make your mouth look like Jaroslav Halak‘s after a particularly rough game against Chicago.

And what better way to defend St. Louis than with our lives?

The eastward view from Market & Tucker.

St. Louisans like settling down in St. Louis. Many of us never leave. We may spend our entire lives in one neighborhood or even on one street, or we may come up as city-dwellers & escape to the suburbs for any number of reasons, or we may pass our formative years in the suburbs & eventually become part of the optimistic migration back to the ICSL. For whatever reason, many of us never get too terribly far from the Arch. Perhaps it’s family ties. Perhaps it’s inertia. Or perhaps it’s loyalty.

Loyalty would seem to explain the siren call St. Louis puts out for its children to come home. So many people leave St. Louis, looking for something — work, education, glamour — and so many of those people find their way back. Perhaps it’s just their default setting. Or perhaps it’s loyalty.

For me, it was loyalty.

When this blog got its false start two and a half years ago, I was living in Columbia, Mo., earning my master’s degree. I soon found myself in Quincy, Ill., with the dream job my master’s degree helped me earn. I was never too far from St. Louis, but I never stopped dreaming I’d come home. It was simply where I belonged.

On June 11 of this year, I became a St. Louisan again, after spending eight of the last 10 years away from the city I had never stopped loving. It was a dream come true. It was a realization that the dream was about so much more than the dream job. It was my loyalty to the Gateway City, finally rendered in flesh & not just in emotion.

In the last two months, I’ve remembered so much of the stuff St. Louisans like, and so much stuff I like(d) about being a St. Louisan. And I think, finally, I’m ready to put it into words again.

Mary Poletti is a marketing professional in the financial industry & a resident of the City’s St. Louis Hills neighborhood. She is slowly re-learning how not to suck at blogging.