Scituate

This is my beloved Scituate, MA. We lived here 10 years ago and I never really appreciated it. I was always itching to get back closer to NYC, with Fairfield County, CT as our ideal place to put down roots. We moved from Texas, to Washington DC, with the Coast Guard and when Tom put in his papers to get out, he had a potential job offer with GE Capital in Fairfield that the guy told him was his. Just waiting on a formality from HR. We literally were down to the wire, moving out of our DC apartment when we got the call that he didn't get the job. I still remember his buddies were holding our enormous bedroom mirror when the call came and I excitedly passed the phone to Tom. No dice. They gave it to some internal. We were off to Massachusetts and a job with Frito Lay. Womp Womp. Disappointment shadowed the excitement of the move. The Frito job was our safety net. We quickly shifted gears (we had no choice), and got excited for moving to Boston. Except we couldn't afford to move to Boston. We ended up in a 3rd floor walk up in Braintree. We couldn't even fit alot of our furniture up the stairs and had to store it in Tom's parents basement. All of these items were newly purchased since we had just been married a year before.

The apartment never quite felt like home. Almost immediately we started looking at homes and on a lark found ourselves in the quaint little beach and fishing town of Scituate. There was a house on a marsh, with views of beach beyond the marshes. It was out of our price range but we were in love with it. In hindsight, we probably could have made it work if we both hadn't started grad school the year before. But we found a cute little 2 bedroom fixer upper, and got to work. Within a few months I was pregnant with Erin. Life was really coming together. I loooooved my teaching job and graduate classes, and was expecting my first baby in November. We put in the cursory New Englandy hydrangeas, shingled the cottage in cedar shake and were living the dream. But I was always pushing. How about Westchester? Why don't you try Gillette in New Haven? How about looking in New York City? Couldn't settle in and enjoy myself. We enjoyed the restaurants and shops in Scituate Harbor, but the grass was always greener down near New York.

Erin was born shortly after September 11th and by then I was truly homesick. Postpartum set in and colic exascerbated it. The six hour drive to New York to see family was brutal with a screaming baby. It never occurred to me to take her to the beach once she was crawling. I had no idea what to do with a baby at the beach. What if she doesn't like the sand? or the sun? or the water? I wish I had known then that babies are at their happiest at the beach. So we sat in our tiny little house and watched insane amounts of Elmo. Soon I was pregnant with Christopher and lo and behold a job that Tom had interviewed for in Central CT months before came through. Tom finally conceded and we moved our growing little family to West Hartford. It took me about 3 weeks to realize how much I missed Scituate. We are pretty much landlocked here. The summers can be stifling. The closest beaches are over an hour away. Tom hadn't wanted to leave Scituate at all. I got what I had been pestering him for, and while we were now in a big beautiful home, I missed Scituate.

So here we are. I love it here. I love the friends I've made, and the kids are at a great school and have made great friends in the neighborhood. The town and my neighborhood are unbelievable. It's all I ever wanted. But whenever we go to the Cape to visit Tom's parents we pass through on our way. And eat at our favorite restaurants and take them to the beach and the lighthouse. They have the same sense of ownership over Scituate that Tom and I have. Last year the little marsh house came back on the market. It's still on the market a year later. It's supposed to be ours. I know it. I see us retiring there. I would love to get there sooner. Maybe it will come back to us in another ten years.