Kate Maeda

I was born in Seattle, Washington in 1953 while my father was in medical school there. When I was two we lived in Albany, New York where my dad did his internship and my sister Robin was born. Then we moved back to Seattle where my other sister Tamia was born. I went to first grade there. My dad went into teaching medicine instead of the make us all rich route and in 1960 we moved to Catonsville, MD while he took a position at the University of Maryland Medical School. A year later we rented a house in Towson, MD and a year after that we bought the house across the street. I start having real memories in Maryland. At sixteen I started going to school in Annapolis, staying with a family down there. My mom and sisters followed. I went to Stockton, CA to begin college, thinking it was as far away as I could go. I finished a couple of years there, but I wasn't motivated and dropped out.

That is the beginning of my travels. It's why it's hard to place my accent. When asked I list Annapolis as my home town. It's where I was most comfortable and where my dad and step-mom live now. My mom is in Glen Burnie for now, she likes to move around, last year she was on the Eastern Shore. One sister is on the Shore and one lives in Millersville. I live, for now, in North Carolina, but the small town I moved to... one fast food restaurant, two gas stations, a slew of churches, one grocery store and about three traffic lights. Now we have our own Target, WalMart, Dick's, Kohl's, movie theater, Lowe's Hardware, Home Depot, a dozen grocery stores and uncountable traffic lights and fast food restaurants. Some call it progress, some call it convenient. It is convenient, but it isn't progress. I'm looking for something new to me, but old. I'm looking for a small town so far from any metropolis that it will not grow over 400% in fifteen years. If it grows more than 100% in my lifetime, I'll be disappointed. I'm looking for something closer to my family. Since right now it's about six hours, closer covers a lot of ground. The areas where they live are so convenient to Baltimore and Washington DC that even if I could afford to move there I wouldn't. I choose an arbitrary two hours as my maximum commute. Close enough for a day trip, far enough away to be isolated from big cities. I chose Hancock MD and Berkeley Springs (Bath) WV as my targets. Now I have to get the house in condition to sell. I may track that in my blog. katemaeda.wordpress.com.