There’s no place like home

We moved here in Rhode Island after spending 40 years in St. Louis. We came to St. Louis in 1982 as postdocs. It was supposed to be a temporary gig and I figured we’d settle somewhere else.

When I was being recruited to the Biochemistry Department at Saint Louis University, the chairman—who knew I was applying to universities all over the country—asked me how I felt about staying in St. Louis. I told him I was fine with it, that I’ve found things to like about each place I’d lived.

We moved east to be near our daughter after Linda retired. We stumbled into this house in Rumford. It hadn’t gone on the market when it was offered to us, and we closed on it without having seen it in person and without a professional inspection. The first 18 months or so were a nightmare of home repairs. Now that those problems seemed to have abated, I can look around and appreciate what we have—a lovely neighborhood, great neighbors, and proximity to the amenities of city life in Providence while living ten minutes away in the burbs.

Robert Frost famously said that home is “the place where, when you have to go there,/ They have to take you in.” So far, that hasn’t been my experience of home, at least since I moved out of my parents’ house in Oak Ridge for good. I can’t rule out moving again, but at our age, the next move will probably be to some kind of assisted living. 

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