{"id":17889,"date":"2025-08-08T10:27:26","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T15:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/?p=17889"},"modified":"2026-02-23T15:15:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T20:15:07","slug":"subdivisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/subdivisions\/","title":{"rendered":"Subdivisions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"An<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Justice had spent Saturday strolling around her lovely new neighborhood, marveling at the luscious lawns and tree-lined streets.<\/p>\n

She had been walking on a concrete sidewalk in the shade of old trees. She could reach out and touch the feathery pink tufts of a mimosa tree. She could drag her fingertips across landscaping bricks. A soft breeze lifted her short curls and she could smell flowers and barbecuing and chlorine instead of cow shit. She could hear motorcycles and cars, screeching and splashing, lawn mowers and sprinklers.<\/p>\n

She lived in a subdivision<\/em> now. She felt something welling in her chest she couldn\u2019t identify. It was almost<\/em> too good to be true, but this wasn\u2019t surreal like graduating from school to half-million-Monopoly-dollar job offers. It was normal<\/em>, living here. Ordinary<\/em>. Like the new clothes that fit well and flattered her and lifted her out of the realm of poor country girl. Their plainness<\/em>, this ordinariness<\/em> was a gift Knox didn\u2019t know he\u2019d given her.<\/p>\n

When she came upon the clubhouse with the pool and the attendant asked for her address, then gave her a pass to the gate, she found herself choking up. \u201cThank you,\u201d she whispered, looking down at it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Rush lyrics play a large part in The Proviso<\/a><\/em>, so much so that the female counterpart of the title-ish character calls it out:1<\/a><\/sup> \u201cNeil Peart wrote my hymns and Rush is my choir.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet \u2026 as much as even the most poverty-stricken among us can get the message of \u201cSubdivisions\u201d thanks to ubiquitous teen TV dramas, kids who grow up in subdivisions aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Poor, I mean.<\/p>\n

Poverty and people who think in Poor also have a large presence in The Proviso<\/em>. Only one of the six leads grew up with money, and he doesn\u2019t find money interesting or important, which is a manifestation of his privilege. The only other one who didn\u2019t grow up poor grew up in \u2026 a subdivision. In San Diego. In the 80s. In the exact misery of the song.<\/p>\n

\"AEven though I referenced \u201cSubdivisions\u201d in The Proviso<\/em> consistent with its intended message (Chapter 22 \u201cMisfit So Alone,\u201d Chapter 87 \u201cFar Unlit Unknown\u201d), I also<\/em> subverted it because my heroine, the one to whom Rush speaks so deeply, lives in such abject poverty in a falling-down relic of 19th-century gothic revival in such a backwater of a town that the particular flavor of hell of growing up in a subdivision is, for her, a dream come true\u2014or better yet, a dream she never thought to dream at all because her future is<\/p>\n

pre-decided<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, the subdivision she is suddenly dropped in the middle of isn\u2019t a rich one, either. It\u2019s old, mid-1960s, in a sprawling ranch that tries to look French provincial, a house that still has Mamie pink tile and Formica in its kitchen and bathrooms, and sits at the very back of the developed land, waiting for the day it gets razed and replaced with closely set mcmansions. There are newer houses farther away from her upgraded home, and so there\u2019s a clubhouse with a pool.<\/p>\n

The house and neighborhood are not glamorous. They\u2019re not even of the caliber of the Toronto subdivisions referenced in the song. She\u2019s savvy enough to know that the house is wildly out of date, even if someone did<\/em> attempt to modernize it with avocado green shag carpet and a harvest gold refrigerator, and the fact that the trust-fund guy she\u2019s married to is fine with Walmart flat-pack furniture isn\u2019t normal, nor should it be\u2014but to her, the whole setup is magical.<\/p>\n

ngg_shortcode_0_placeholder<\/div>\n

But not<\/em> overwhelming.<\/p>\n

After all, you can take a poor country girl off the farm and plop her in a society matron\u2019s living room, but there\u2019s gonna be an immediate need for a therapist. The mint-ish 1960s ranch is as big a step up the socioeconomic culture scale as any mature person could handle. The mcmansion<\/a> comes next.<\/p>\n

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