I spent most of my formative years looking for a way out of my hometown. Call it wanderlust or discontent, I knew there was more out there than this sleepy Florida beach town. I wanted to see really big cities, have actual adventures and find unique people and experiences in unknown places. I was bored with what I already knew. I was itching to get away. The summer before college, my French teacher took a group of students to France for two weeks. That was the gateway trip that led to mission trips across the US and Europe during summers in college, a study abroad semester in London and a seemingly permanent move to the Pacific Northwest (that actually only lasted about five years). I got out. I pursued adventure after adventure. I met strange and wonderful people. I experienced places, food and cultures that I didn’t even know existed.
Then life moved me back to Florida.
I wasn’t in my hometown, but I was close. Still, I found ways to experience new things and meet new people. My second and third children were born in this town, so I was in a different place in life than I’d been before. I met other moms, I explored parks and playgrounds and life moved a bit slower than it used to. As a stay-at-home mom, my world constricted from big adventures and new experiences “out there” to the minute adventures and new experiences within my own four walls. Parenting is an adventure unto itself, especially in the early years, and there simply isn’t much time or money for anything else.
When I went through some significantly catastrophic changes, another move occurred and I found myself situated right back where I started—in my sleepy Floridian beach hometown. Now, as a single working mother with three children, with everything and everyone that I had known in my recent life gone, the only thing familiar in my life was the town we now lived in. The town I’d left behind years ago. The town that was too small for my big dreams.
However, it turns out my sleepy little beach town has a lot to offer. The security of being in a familiar place while going through very unfamiliar circumstances was comforting. My children began to plant themselves here, and slowly, we grew roots. My oldest two daughters go to the same middle school that I went to. My mom taught there for over 20 years. My current boss was the cool older brother of one of my high school friends. I rarely go anywhere without running into someone I know—it’s a running joke in our family. I stop and talk to someone in the grocery store, and as we walk away, my daughters say, “Let me guess…someone you knew in high school.” Yep. Old friends, familiar faces and the consistency of unchanged scenery is no longer boring or slow. It is comfort, it is depth, it is home.
I drive my children down the same streets to look at Christmas lights where my mom drove me as a kid. We trick-or-treat in the same neighborhoods. Somewhere along the line, I learned what it is to be content in all circumstances. And while the circumstance of winding up right back where I started never ever sounded appealing to me, I have learned that there is still much more to be learned. I bring back to this town all of the experiences and wisdom gained from years away. So do a lot of other people. I’m here, for the long haul, so I can fuss about it or I can embrace it. To me, after everything I’ve seen, there are much worse places I could have ended up.
