I've lived in metro Detroit since I was four years old- a long time considering the fact that my parents were both, at one time or another, pretty transitory. My mother was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, the daughter of a carpenter in the long wake of the depression. My grandparents and their children- three girls, two boys- bounced around the country, from job to job, until finally returning to Michigan, the state where their ancestors had lived since the 1700s. My dad's family, during his youth, was a bit more stable; the Dowdings simply moved throughout the state, going wherever my grandfather was offered a job, as a math teacher. After getting his Associate's Degree at the University of Michigan, my dad travelled across the country with the U.S. Marines, going so far as Hawaii in his fifteen years of military service.

My youth was much more stable than my parents', though it started out rather rough with my family living in apartments or trailers on a military base. When we finally settled in Michigan, we moved to the same suburb that my dad had been raised in- a relatively large upriver city named Roseville.

The main road that runs through my hometown is Gratiot, and everything important- it seems- is located on that simple stretch that runs from downtown Detroit all the way out to the areas of the state that may, to those nostalgic old Michiganders, still be considered 'rural'. The rest of Roseville, the stores and factories and motels that held addresses in other areas of town, didn't matter to me as a child- even my Elementary School was only a block away from the road.

Perhaps it is not solely a metro Detroit phenomenon, but the dependence on main roads and highways seems to have defined my childhood. To this day I cannot tell you which suburbs are next to each other, after eighteen years of experience, but I can probably tell you which highway and exit number that will take you there. The city and its suburbs have simply, in my mind, become a disconnected list of places and things. Rochester Hills, Novi, Eastpointe, all of these places are accessible by highway, but try anything else and you might end up in Canada.

At one point, the fact that Detroit was the 'Motorcity' must have been a good thing, since the nickname stuck; nowadays, though, it just seems to be a burden. The loneliness of the daily commute, the hours we each spend singing along to our car radio, they seemed to have taken a toll on the city's residents. As I walk down the street lately, I notice just how many people cross the street instead of having to talk to me, and I notice my relief in being spared the 'how are you?' I would have had to expel had they not.

What is it that makes Detroit different from the rest of the world? Other cities- bigger cities- have their own brand of desolation and disconnection, but Detroit still takes the cake. The best and most frequent conversations I have these days, walking the dog in the streets of midtown Detroit, are those with bums asking for change, or drug addicts whom I can barely comprehend. The car companies really got us this time.

(I'm kind of fumbling for a direction with this one- I know I had it at some point.)