Member-only story
Where The Heart Is
Living and Writing Another Chapter
“But she just couldn’t stay / She had to break away
Well New York City really has it all / Oh yeah, oh yeah.”
— Sheena Is Punk Rocker — The Ramones
1 July 2010.
It was a beautiful sunny morning. My rental truck was loaded with all my earthly possessions. I got behind the wheel and took off towards New York City. A 58 year old was going home.
I was leaving behind Vermont—where I had arrived from New York City twenty-some years earlier.
You’ve seen the Vermont calendar photographs—beautiful Green Mountain landscapes and charming small towns with white steepled churches. Gorgeous lakefront. Leaf peepers, skiers, and college students, oh my!
The never-endingly increasing landscapes of pastel single-family home developments, with multiple cars (to access the strip malls) are not pictured.
Politically it is the home of the (still) amazing Bernie Sanders and yet in 2000, during the civil unions debates, the extreme rural right wing emerged in a most ugly display of “Take Back Vermont” rhetoric. A glimpse of what was to come.
My kids were beginning their own individual lives and creative journeys and New York City was calling me back one more time.
