Goodbye, Suburbs!

Or, am I allowed to live in Massachusetts again if I can’t stand Dunkin’?

It’s taken me much longer than I thought it would to launch this blog. Shortly after my first post, the second phase of our plan came into play.

My husband and I knew going back and forth from Colorado to Istria would be challenging, especially managing our 4,400-square-foot home. We needed to downsize and be closer to Europe.

When a great house came up on the market in Massachusetts—the state I moved from to Colorado 17 years ago—we put in an offer sight unseen. (OK, we did a video tour.) Every day from November to February, I woke up in a panic—purging, packing, and planning the move to our new, smaller home 2,000 miles away. There was no time for writing for pleasure, only for writing for work.

(Once there, we also had to deal with a flooded basement, which could—but will not—be a blog post unto itself.)

I never thought I’d move back to Massachusetts. If anything, I thought I would continue moving west to Seattle. Maybe it was because of something my father told me when I first left: the West was invented for people reinventing themselves. I don’t know if that’s true per se, but there is something to leaving the place of your birth behind.

This is my third time returning to Massachusetts The first was to attend college at Boston University. The second was after my high school boyfriend graduated from college and we said so long to New Jersey. (Still the state with the friendliest bunch of straight shooters, IMHO.) 

This time around, though, I’m on the North Shore instead of living in my childhood stomping grounds, the Framingham/Marlborough/Sudbury triangle. (AKA MetroWest.) We wanted to be closer to family and Newburyport, a charming town on the coast where the Merrimack River and Atlantic Ocean meet. If you’re going to move from a land-locked state, you should be as close to the ocean as possible, right?

A Colorado friend recently asked me if I felt like I was home. Which is another way of asking if I like where I’ve landed.

Yes and no. Yes, because I have fond memories of the area from when my grandfather would take me to visit his daughters who were the same age as me. Halfway there, we’d stop at Kimball’s to get a banana split for lunch. (No one loves ice cream as much as New Englanders.)

Yes, because I missed trees, humidity, and living at sea level. Altitude has never agreed with me. And living in the high desert was a challenge for my already dry skin.

Yes, because when someone asked how I envisioned spending retirement, I blurted out, “I don’t know. Hopping in my car and driving up the coast?” I’m not a huge beach person but I love the salty sea air.

Truthfully, the things I didn’t like about Massachusetts still bug me but less than they once did. This could be because I no longer have children living at home or have to commute to my job. Convenience matters a lot when you’re working full-time and raising a family. I have more time now. I also know how to create my own fun, so I’m not looking for a place to fill in the empty spaces.

That said, I’m still acclimating to the houses that would be considered tear-downs in Colorado being fully functional businesses with crappy parking and an aversion to GPS. I don’t like having to drive over a bridge to Newburyport to find good coffee and restaurants. (Flavored coffee went out at the turn of the century, Merrimac!) 

The funny thing is, bucolic Merrimac is a bit like Istria in some ways, especially compared to booming Boulder County, where shiny new buildings and traffic lights sprout seemingly overnight. 

If you put Merrimac and Istria on a Venn diagram, you’d learn they have quite a few things in common:

You get eggs from your neighbors. In Merrimac, the woman working at a car inspection office offered to sell them to me; in Istria, they were given as a welcome gift when we rented an apartment. 

People hang on to traditional styles. People in both areas warm slowly to change. We rebuilt our Istrian home to look as much like the original as possible, reusing rock and roof tiles from the 18th-century home we purchased. I knew we had gotten it right when a villager stopped by to admire it. She spoke no English but kept repeating lijepo, which means nice or beautiful.

Our Merrimac home is a quintessential Cape Cod with beams and flooring from the builder’s mother’s childhood barn. I’ve never seen this style of house in Colorado. With their steep-pitched roofs, the upstairs bedrooms in Capes can feel cramped. I’m grateful ours does not. Like our house in Istria, this house is a popular historical style—Capes boomed in the 1940s—but with some modern updates. (In New England, a 1980s house feels “new.”)

It’s easier to get booze than groceries.

Merrimac is a small town of about 5,000 people. There’s no grocery store. I was disappointed to learn that Towne Market is really a liquor store that sells canned goods and the trash bags the town asks you to use. There’s more than one liquor store and the convenience store sells alcohol too.

In our village in Istria, there are only 15 or so houses. The closest market—a tiny one —is one town over. I usually drive to Buzet to shop at the large grocery store, which also sells beer, wine, and hard alcohol. In many villages, you’ll find a caffe bar for grabbing a coffee or a beer, but no place to get food. I’ve learned that Istrians grow a lot of the produce they eat themselves.

Recurring landmarks can be a game.

On our umpteenth trip to Home Depot, I noticed a pattern along the New Hampshire border. Wishing wells dotted yards every couple of miles or so. I’ve only seen one made of stone that looks authentic. The others look as if they were picked up at a local garden center in the 70s, the wood sad and slowly decaying. I like to count how many wishing wells I see when running an errand.

In Istria, we pass small shrines to the Virgin Mary. They’re usually built into stone walls but sometimes stand by themselves beneath a little crown of stone or roof tiles. I always check to see if someone left a flower or slip of paper, the same way I check for fruit at the Buddhist altars in Colorado nail salons. No idea why.

The internet can be spotty.

This is probably true for many rural areas. There are just not enough people to make it worth investing in the infrastructure. Even with boosters, sometimes the internet just goes down at both houses. It’s annoying, especially when you work from home and rely on Google Docs.

Cash is preferred.

I tell people planning a visit to Croatia to bring cash and to ask the restaurant before ordering if they accept credit cards. Even if they do, they’re happier when you pay cash—most likely because it helps them avoid paying taxes.

I was surprised to learn there are at least two establishments that only take cash near our house in Merrimac. One is the House of Pizza—almost every New England town has one—and the other is a small grocery store in Newbury.

You drive across borders easily.

Colorado is so big that I would usually only leave the state by airplane. I had forgotten how it felt to be able to drive to New Hampshire to avoid paying sales tax or to spend the weekend in Maine or Vermont. Merrimac is only a mile from the New Hampshire border—it was nice to see $0 sales tax on those Home Depot receipts.

Istria is next to Italy. In fact, until World War II, the entire peninsula and the islands were part of that country. If you’re a native Istrian, you probably speak Italian or a dialect that combines Italian and Croatian. I was disappointed to discover the furniture store we drove to in Italy wouldn’t ship to Croatia. But still, I can go back for other better things like shoes.

I told a friend we were finally able to move into the Istria house and she said, “Congrats on having a habitable house.” Yep, it’s still a bit of a construction zone but we’re officially in.

The other night I had a dream where we still hadn’t sold our Colorado house, and I wasn’t sure where I was—in Massachusetts or Istria. My brain is still processing all of these big life changes. How long will it take, I wonder, to stop feeling like I’ve gone on vacation but taken everything I own with me?