Some days, I wonder what I’ve missed out on by moving to a small town. How I might have grown had I stayed in the city, how my horizons might have expanded, the new opportunities I might have sampled.
As I write this from my hotel room in Seattle — a little more than 14 years since leaving Denver — I am indulging the city girl in me who loves to shop, loves discovering new restaurants, loves pondering all the possibilities to fill an afternoon. I am also remembering that I hate the traffic, hate the need to hold onto my purse just a bit tighter and I’m so not used to the litter, the graffiti, the masses of people.
Small town living can ruin a girl for the city, and city living can definitely make small town seem, well, small. But in the end, I don’t think one is necessarily better than the other. Just different. Like shopping at Nordies or shopping at … never mind. For the person browsing the aisles, it can call for a real tug on the big girl panties.
Which is probably why April Peterson has been heard to call 2014 the worst year of her life. After 13 years in Newport, where she knew everyone and pretty much everyone knew April (except me), she has become a Seattleite. (We met just once in Newport, exchanging all of five words: Hi, nice to meet you.” She had to move to Seattle before we connected on social media.)
The move was an opportunity too good for April and her artist husband Evan to refuse. Both have family here, and for an artist, there are so many more possibilities. It should be the move of a lifetime — and one day it still might be. But right now, April’s in strange territory, that place that’s not home, but someday might be.
“I miss Newport so much,” April said. “I miss the sense of community a lot. There, I had the biggest family I’ve ever had in my life.”
I’ve been in that strange territory a time or so myself.
When I left my small childhood hometown and found myself in a city far away, I ached for what I’d left behind — even as I fell in love with all that the city offered. When we left the city and wound up in the rural wilderness, I was miserable missing all it didn’t offer. I no sooner fell in love with country living when it was time to go, and once again, we were back in a city. And once again, I was miserable. I hated the crime, the traffic and frankly, the people were not exactly a warm and welcoming bunch. (Of course it couldn’t have had anything to do with the fact that I would have rather been most anywhere else and had no problem articulating as much.) But in time I adjusted. I got used to double locking the doors, to driving like a madwoman, to understanding that just because people were cold and short in their conversation, it didn’t necessarily mean they were (ahem) unfriendly.
I’ll never know what I missed out on by moving from the big city to a small town, though my imagination dreams up all kinds of possibilities. But I know what I would have missed if I hadn’t and that list is equally long and still growing. True, small town shopping may not exactly be a stroll down 5th Avenue, but nor do I feel the need to rush out and spend my life’s savings on the newest “smart pants” (seriously?) as featured in Vogue.
I’m guessing April will miss Newport for a while. Then one day, she’ll return and — happy as she is to be back — she’ll be just as happy to go home to the city.
That may, however, take some time.
“I am one of those people who doesn’t like change,” she said. “So this is a really big thing to do. I don’t think I could go back and visit for like two years because if I did I would regret everything I did. I would be so sad. If I went back and looked down Coast Street… that was my street. I would definitely regret it. But right now I don’t.”
And odds are, she never will. But if she does, Newport will still be right there waiting for her. Just the way home, wherever you call it, always is.
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