home in a place that's not...

i had to move recently. i did not want to, and i'll spare the sordid details. i've always been known (more, like a family/friend joke) for my wandering nature. I've lived in 23 different houses in 16 years. the house i just moved from was the first place i'd lived that i didn't want to move from. i'd been there a year. it wasn't so much the house, it was the town. my hometown--the one i swore i'd never live in because i was much too cool, metropolitan, blah, blah, blah. i'm not. i wanted the comfort of home. i loved taking my kids for a walk and always running into someone i knew and liked. i liked walking to the coffee shop to talk to dave, or jenna or one of the sweet people who worked there. i liked the surreal mix of bmw's and monster trucks in the parking lot of the local grocery store. i liked finding a church that didn't scare me, that helped me find God. so i had to move back to a town, about an hour away, that i had some bad experiences in...but into a fixer upper house i actually like. i've been trying to convince myself that home is where my family is (true) and it's just geography (also true)..but there is something to be said for connecting to a place and it's people. i saw things in this new place that touched me--the dapper old gentleman pushing his classic bicycle, the line of Harley's that's always parked in front of, or just pulling away from the rough bar on Main Street, rosey cheeked kids in sports uniforms, or a mom pushing a stroller. I see these things, and it makes me smile. this is someone's hometown, just not mine.