The last time I posted, we were in the middle of hanging hurricane shutters with Hurricane Dorian on its way in.
Since then, we:
- Bought a house in Ohio
- Sold our place in South Florida
- Packed our stuff into a Pod (BIG shout-out to the folks at Pods.com, who totally kicked ass from beginning to end)
- Moved our shit from the Way Deep South to the Hilly North
- Painted, unpacked, put things places
And I am home to stay after thirty-nine (almost forty, by just a couple of weeks) long, Ohioless years.
The town I moved back to, and the people who live here, are as I remembered them (and I last lived in this particular town 46 years ago).
There was a lot of crazy in this particular move. We didn’t come back here to scope out the area first. Didn’t see anything of the house (and a bunch of other houses) but pictures the real estate agent (Amy Otto, who was AMAZING) took for us.
We moved here based on my deep love of this state, of this town, and very old memories that never let go of me.
And we were right to make the leap, crazy as it admittedly was.
My memory was good.
And home — in our weird, quirky house, in the hills and the town and these people — was waiting when we got here.
I love this place. I love the roll and rise of the ground, the curve of the river, the trees I still remember from childhood, the smell of the air in the morning, the lay of the light in the afternoon, the quiet, the old houses still lived in and loved and kept up in a place where old things deserve a bit of reverence, and the kindness of strangers.
And the fact is that a helluva long time after I got dragged away from here against my will and my vehement protests, I fit here as I have never fit anywhere else.
These are my people, this is my place.
I’m home.
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