The Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden--it is, of course, the story of how the world was created.  We're all familiar with this classic story of Adam and Eve and how our world came to be.  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth; he took seven days to create light and dark, sky and earth, sea creatures and birds, livestock and plants, and eventually, man and woman.  He places the man and the woman, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, where all kinds of trees grew, trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.  One tree in particular, however, God told Adam and Eve never to eat from, for they would "surly die."  A clever serpent was able to trick Eve into eating the fruits from this tree because this tree gave knowledge of good and evil to anyone who ate its fruits.  Once Eve shared the fruits with Adam, they both became more aware of good and evil, and God punished the two of them and the serpent for what they had done.

This story makes me wonder:  how was my world created?  Where do I come from?  I know immediately that my father grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey; his mother's mother immigrated to the United States from Russia.  My mother was raised in a little town called Henderson in North Carolina.  (Wow, a city boy and a small town girl?  Are they livin' in a lonely world?  Did they take the midnight train goin' anywhere?)  I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but was raised in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia.  I'm pretty sure that I'm a northerner raised in the South, and I'm a city girl at heart.  I moved to Lexington at the beginning of seventh grade, and I'm not going to lie--I hated it so much.  I didn't like the people, I didn't like the town, and I really just wanted my city back; I wanted to go back to where I came from.  Though my opinion of Lexington now is nothing like it was back then, I do think that my city "origins," so to speak, have stuck with me.  I fully intend on going somewhere big where I know I'll fully completely comfortable.