Click, Click, Click.

Originally Posted on April 7, 2013 

I’m hearing the ‘clicks’ everywhere, the syncing up of things that matter.

It’s started to feel like this is our time.  I first noticed it yesterday, at Isla’s birthday party.  There were people everywhere, big ones and little ones.  Things felt crazy for a bit, big and loud and birthday-like, and then later, calm.  Familiar.  Regular.  Our people were there for lunch, stayed through the mayhem, and we sat around, like we do every year on Isla’s birthday-party-day, soaking up the early-spring sunshine.  Girls ran around with bare feet and winter coats.  The grill sizzled hot.  There were quiet conversations on the steps and booming laughter from over there.  It was lovely – we all said so.

Click.

And then it was me thinking about this summer, the one that’s coming, thinking about how damn town-proud I’ve become.

I love Greenfield.  I love it here.  At work, I often meet folks who are thinking of moving here, and I’ve quickly turned into an accidental ambassador.

When we lived in the Hills, I was as snobbish as many others about Greenfield.  ”I will never, ever live there.”  I was so proud of the fact that I lived just over the hill, in the Falls or even further out, way up in the Hills. It was good there, clean and cozy and pure in some long-forgotten way.  Greenfield, dingy and sketchy, wasn’t good enough for me.

Because I am so important.  So, so important.

And then, of course, reality.  Budgets.  Being woefully under-qualified for a mortgage.

“There’s this house I drove by one time.  It was For-Sale-By-Owner.  Let’s drive by,” said Tim, the night we’d looked at the last house within our budget in one of the towns we were willing to live in.

We drove by at dusk, by the house in Greenfield, and I gasped and said aloud, “That’s our house.”

A few months later we were living in said house, and I remember the day I drove down Leyden Rd., right where it turns into Conway St., thinking, “Moving here’s been seamless.  There wasn’t even an adjustment period.”

Click.

And since I so completely live here now, this summer is the summer of gettin’ in it.

My kids will be Greenfield kids.

I will be a Greenfield woman.

We will buy a pass to the Pool, the dammed-up-river-turned-chlorine-free-summertime-swimming-spot.  We will sit there day after day, eating sandy sandwiches.  I will read, wear stylish sunglasses, and glance up and over at my kids, watching them become rooted in the town we chose for them.

I’m here.

They’re here.

This is where we grow.

Click.

*E