:: Home Is Where... ::

There’s nothing like a visit from my mom and sister to bring out the suppressed stage mother in me. Even before their Friday-evening arrival I was coaching Evan: “Take a nice long nap, please, Evan, so you’ll be in a good mood when they get here.” “Give grandma a big smile when she gets here.” And then they arrived: “Come on, Evan, show them how good you are at rolling over.” (He can’t roll over from his back to his front yet but has been rolling over the other way for weeks already – I think it’s because he hates tummy time so much.)

For two weeks before they got here I was so excited about their arrival. It’s been seven weeks since their last visit and he’s already so different. He smiles now, and coos. He can hold his head up and roll over. He has grown three inches and four and a half pounds, putting on some extra chin and fattening up those baby legs of his. His hair’s filled in some and his eyes are bluer. And they’re open! When mom and Kate were here before, when Evan was just a week old, he seldom had his eyes open. Now they’re open wide all the time! He watches things, makes eye contact, even smiles at his own reflection.

And now they’re gone again. It will be six weeks before we see them again. What will he be doing then? What will they have missed?

It’s got us talking about whether we think we’ll ever move back home. Now’s not the right time, with me still in school and Brian barely out in the lawyering workforce. But we’ve talked a lot since Evan was conceived about whether moving back to Rochester might be in our future. On the one hand, it’s not a hard decision at all. In theory, we’d both love to be near our parents (we grew up on opposite sides of the city, each in our own quaint little town, and met in our twenties) and near the things we loved growing up: the Finger Lakes, trees and hills (Columbus leaves something to be desired on both counts), Wegmans (ohdeargod I miss Wegmans), all the great parks and trails, the leaves, even the snow.

But then there are other factors to consider. The snow, or rather the horrific lake-effect winters complete with gray skies, snow in October and May, and months and months of brown slush on your shoes and salt stains on the cuffs of your pants. The economy. Columbus is growing, prospering, and OK, yeah, gentrifying. Rochester is losing jobs and money, making poor revitalization choices, and basically getting a little bit more like Buffalo and Syracuse – its closest neighbors to either side – each day. And then there’s the fact that Brian has worked hard to make connections here that will always make it easier to find a job in Columbus than in Rochester. And we’re making friends. And finding hairdressers and dentists and doctors. It’s taken more than four years, and a lot of effort, for us to feel like Columbus is home. Will we be willing to move someplace and start all over, even when Evan is older and possibly even in school?

I think that when it comes right down to it, family and our nostalgia for home will probably win out. And if they do, you can bet my first stop on the way home will be at Wegmans. I still have my Shopper’s Club Card.