Standing on the Cliff

For the past couple weeks it's been about 5 degrees, snowy, icy, windy and blistering cold in central Ohio, so I can see how you might think I was bonkers to be pining to live somewhere it's been around -15 degrees.

I was born and raised in Columbus, OH. I moved back here after college and have lived here for the last 14 years. People who don't live here think it's a boring fly-over state with a great college football team - but they're wrong. Columbus is a fabulous city, home to fashion headquarters, galleries, amazing food - by far the best artisan ice cream you've ever tasted - one of the best zoos in the country, a truly diverse culture and a University so large it needs its own zip code. I love Columbus - and I staunchly defend it to though who cry "nothing to do!"... and yet my heart has always  laid elsewhere.

Burlington, Vermont. It's where my dad grew up, where my grandparents lived when I was young - and where I've always felt I belonged. Most kids when you ask them what they want to be when they grow up, they tell you that - what, nah, I told you  where. Being an artist was always written in stone for me, but the important part was that I wanted to live on the shores of Lake Champlain. 

I'd forgotten that dream until five or six years ago. We were taking a family trip to Burlington and I was giddy to watch my husband discover this place to which he'd never been. At one point, I admitted my silly childhood dreams and the fact that nowhere had ever felt quite like home in the way Vermont does to me, "So I'll start looking for jobs here then." he said without missing a beat.  I was stunned. I hadn't been serious, but like any great partnership he showed me the potential of my dreams. 

Now, so many years later it seems unreal that in perhaps 6-12 months we could be living that fantasy. On the shore? Not bloody likely, we'd need to be raking in a lot more than our modest salaries, but that detail seem so wholly unimportant right now.