I have lived in this town for ten and a half years....when we were looking for a house to move to we drove down the very road we now live on and I said "no way do I want to live here, it's retirementsville".
Somehow the place has been villainised in my mind for all that is not good in my life. Recently I have started to wonder if I should cut the place some slack and make my peace with it! I drove around this evening (one of those grey rainy days that blossomed into bright blue skies and sunshine late in the afternoon) with a view to taking some pictures of parts of the town that held meaning for me....the places I saw were mostly about my kids the schools and college they went to (and in some cases still going to), the route of the first paper round, Ron's music shop where guitar and drum lessons happened, the walks to school, the walk by the river, the coffee shops and cafes, the local pool and the school pools where the youngest had her swimming lessons, the cold, dank basement of the old Victorian building where Josh and I used to sit practicing reading whilst the girls learned ballet and tap upstairs with Miss Rachel, the houses of their school friends where I would drive to drop them off and pick them up, the parks, the video shop, the supermarkets, the every-day-ness of it all and I felt self conscious and silly and only took a couple of shots.
Anyhoo, there is change on the horizon as they grow into great young adults, in the next few years the reasons for living here will have evaporated and it will be time to move on, in the meantime, it's not such a bad place to live. Ok so I wasn't born here, I didn't grow up here, or meet my wonderful man here, my babies weren't born here and I have struggled to make many great friends here (and I still miss the ones I left behind when we moved here). But there has been a lot of happiness here an awful lot of changing and growing, not just from the children. So I am looking at the place with fresh eyes and trying to focus on making life here as good as it can be...because really what's the point if I don't? I look in the mirror and see the grey hairs, and all the other signs that I am getting older. I look back in time to when we first moved here, how young we all were, the children, me, CJ...but we can't go back (and most of the time I wouldn't even if I could!) we can only enjoy now and look forward a little bit...
And look what my fortune cookie of the day said...'Your home is the center of great love'. But my home is another story for another blog!!
