Detroit adopted me
Detroit didn't raise me, but it did adopt me.
In 2011, when I moved here, I was a high-functioning person who was very lost, and lonely. I was a great yuppie, but I lived in only two dimensions: work and going to bars on the weekends.
But then when I moved here, I started to grow a life with more than two dimensions. In the past 15 years, this community has given me more than I could ever give back.
Detroit gave me my first grown-up job, a good one at that. I expected to go to DC — I'd interned there every summer. But I stayed because I wanted to be close to my parents. Even my father thought I was crazy to forgo the opportunities of a larger city.
Detroit gave me friends, when we were all figuring out our twenties in a place that was already showing glimmers of magic and resurgence. And it's kept on giving: more friends along the way, whether by luck at a bookstore or through our sons playing sports. I get to live in a place where I know people around town. Just last week, Robyn took the kids to the Rocket Mortgage Classic and bumped into a neighbor and two of Robert's soccer teammates.
Detroit is an amazingly interwoven big city, where people actually live in community.
Along the way the city taught me to serve. First with pro bono work for non-profits. Then working for the City at the Police Department. Over those years I went from a boy with hubris into someone with a greater understanding that service requires humility and listening more than achievement.
And at the most unexpected time, I met my wife here — through the friends I made when I first moved here. The old St. Cece's in Corktown is where we met, on a St. Patrick's Day pub crawl our crew organized, the day I was so happily drunk I started imitating a toothbrush. The city helped us find our way to dating, then let our young love grow and blossom. We married at a beautiful church downtown — Ss. Peter and Paul — and had a barn burner of a wedding reception; still the best party we've ever been to.
As a child, this was my American dream: to have a family and live in a place where neighbors cared about each other. Detroit gave us this dream. We have a sturdy old home with a yard that fills with fireflies on summer nights. And we know our neighbors, we stop on our walks with Riley, we trade desserts, and have had them in our backyard for pancakes.
Detroit has given our kids something that seems like it's on its way to becoming extinct: a childhood. Our culture puts adult pressure on kids way too fast. But this City has given us a shot at giving our kids beautiful family memories. They'll remember walking to Good Cakes and Bakes together and playing soccer in art parks filled with graffiti, or under the Ambassador Bridge. They'll remember going to a school in our own neighborhood where they're accepted even as an unlikely racial minority. They'll remember playing tennis and seeing the police horses at Palmer Park, and having a charcuterie picnic on the Riverwalk every summer. This is Detroit's magic.
Finally, Detroit gave me a spiritual home. I was wandering for a long time. Gesu welcomed me as a non-Christian for years. I didn't take communion, but people cared about me anyway. Our children were baptized there, and people look after and pray for us. Eventually, I was baptized there too. People embraced what I carried with me from growing up Hindu, and told me how Christian communities have coexisted with Hinduism in India for centuries. This is a place where I can pray as a man whose Hindu roots and Catholicism coexist. Gesu is where I have peace, can weep, and have fellowship over coffee and donuts. I spent over 35 years trying to find this. Detroit just gave it to me.
I can't claim to have been born and raised here. For Detroiters, that distinction matters. But the City took me, a lonely lost twenty-something, in anyway.
So many people here gave me the care and guidance to build the simple life I dreamed of. Detroit adopted me before I even knew I needed looking after.
Detroit is a city defined by its people and its neighborhoods, more than its buildings or its statistics. It's a hard-working place that finds a way to make it, and to make beauty out of nothing but grit and a prayer. I am grateful that y'all took me in 15 years ago, and let me become part of this community.
Thank you for giving me more than I could have hoped for. I am proud to be an adopted Detroiter, and become part of this place. Thank you for being my neighbors and letting me be yours.
