I went back to my hometown today. By 'hometown' I mean the city where I grew up, not the semi-rural town where my parents live now. I don't usually visit my hometown, but an errand I needed to do took me there today. I walked past the public library where I spent so much time as a kid, past the beautiful city hall, into the gracious art-deco post office. I was struck by how beautiful everything was and how, as a kid, I had never really seen it. It's been so long since I had a connection to this place that the feeling of homecoming took me by surprise.
I never really thought of this place as beautiful before today. Describing where I grew up to people in Maine, I usually said my hometown was kind of a depressed city, with not a lot going on, a little dangerous, not really a place a lot of people want to be. I usually said it was about the size of my city in Maine, but not as vibrant.
But today I realized there is a vibrancy here I hadn't noticed. Yes, there isn't a lot of money in this town, like there was in its heyday. And maybe it's still not a place I would want to live. But I recognized there's a part of this move that's about going back to my roots. Living in Maine, I felt removed from my past. I was making a new life for myself far away from anywhere I had been as a kid, and that time gave me wonderful gifts. In a way, this move feels now like integrating all the different parts of me, at the same time that I'm exploring new ones. I looked at my hometown--and my life--with new eyes, and I appreciated what I saw. And that was just really cool.
