Meet me in St. Louis for a good, old fashioned time

To be born a St. Louisan is to be swaddled in tradition from cradle to grave. Sometimes a comforting security blanket, sometimes oppressive and suffocating, but never escapable. St. Louis is the most hide bound, past-worshipping, establishment place I know. I now live in a city with more than 2000 years of history, and work in an office on a road originally laid down by the Romans ... but London is young, vibrant and utterly dismissive of its past compared to this 300-year-old upstart on the Mississippi.

It will be no surprise that I'm reflecting on this do to a slight venue change of life for a bit. My mother hasn't been well, so I'm working from St. Louis for a couple of weeks to keep an eye on her.

I doubt I have been in St. Louis for two full weeks since I first moved away in the mid '90s. It is ... unsurprisingly ... pretty much the same. There's been some urban regeneration in the city, there are some major building works going on and the suburbs in which I grew up are looking ever more established. But it's pretty much the same old place. My mother tells the same old stories about the same old families as we drive by the same old landmarks, we eat at the same old places and respect the same old friends.
The greatest pleasure of a lengthy visit will no doubt be time with those old friends. When I left St. Louis I was fleeing, in part, from a repressive society that bound everyone to their high school social groups and interlinked the same families into shared traditions for multiple generations. As I reach the mid point of my life, I acknowledge that there's also something extremely comforting in the company of people you've known that long, and with whom you share so much. Of the 62 women with whom I graduated, I've probably known at least a third of them since I was three years old, and half since I was 12. And in the best traditions of St. Louis, I'm coming to accept that despite the years since school, many of these are people I can depend on, enjoy being with, and with whom I'll always have a bond.

Which brings me to my induction, on Saturday night, to "the birthday club", in which high school classmates use the excuse of one person's birthday to meet up for drinks, go out to a lovely restaurant and have a good gossip. And shower the birthday girl ... yes, me ... with gifts. (That traditional St. Louis attitude also seems to yield particularly fine, classic taste in presents. Or maybe it's just my own taste, shared by my childhood friends.)

We went to a small, neighbourhood bistro called "Cravings" in Webster Groves, a southwestern suburb of the city. It's known for its deserts, which were indeed excellent and various, if rather .... inevitably ... traditional. I was delighted to be celebrating my birthday with a turtle cheesecake brownie slice with vanilla ice cream, whilst others indulged in apple pie, chocolate mousse and cheesecake. Of course, we are grown ups, and we did order and finish dinner before moving on to the sweets. My blue fin tuna was beautifully cooked and well complemented by a topping of wasabi mayonnaise. The wasabi was certainly proof that some things in this town do evolve and change. You certainly wouldn't have seen that on the menu when I was a kid.

Everyone else professed equal satisfaction with their food. And I, still re-adjusting to America, was particularly impressed with the great service and reasonable prices.

There's plenty of home town activity stretching ahead before I return to London. And while I'll be happy to get back to my house, dog and friends, and while I know it's unlikely I'll ever live in St. Louis again, returning to my birthplace reminds me that I'll live and die a St. Louisan.