{"id":12,"date":"2010-09-22T15:25:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T15:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/22\/from-home-and-back\/"},"modified":"2010-09-22T15:25:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T15:25:00","slug":"from-home-and-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/22\/from-home-and-back\/","title":{"rendered":"From Home and Back"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;\">For the earliest part of my life, my family and I frequently traveled between Massachusetts and Florida&nbsp;to visit one set of grandparents in each state. We lived miles from any other family members in Mass and I had a better relationship with my Floridian grandparents on the phone than I did in person. Eventually, my grandfather in Florida became terminally ill&nbsp;and as a result, we uprooted ourselves from Massachusetts to relocate to Florida. Although&nbsp;I was very young,&nbsp;I can still recall&nbsp;feeling strongly attached to the bay state and nearly heartbroken about the move. I considered&nbsp;the entire&nbsp;clawed-state&nbsp;my home: from the berkshires to Boston. The radically changing weather was&nbsp;my favorite&nbsp;game of hide and seek, the autumn leaves painted the surroundings with such&nbsp;vibrant colors no fingerpainting could compare to and the Boston Red Sox were undoubtedly superior to any fishy sports team Florida might have. <\/div>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;\">\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;\">\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-eXqDlgiQjjc\/TjIVQXXNaWI\/AAAAAAAAAAw\/6alibk-nOZo\/s1600\/IMG_0358.JPG\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" border=\"0\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-eXqDlgiQjjc\/TjIVQXXNaWI\/AAAAAAAAAAw\/6alibk-nOZo\/s200\/IMG_0358.JPG?resize=200%2C150\" t$=\"true\" width=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;\">The move itself was trying,&nbsp;and even once&nbsp;we had settled into the quaint house in the newest neighborhood development, I missed Massachusetts with every fiber of my little heart. Year-round greenery, however beautiful, did not tempt me with its accompanying fair weather; no, I longed for snow days during school and an every-changing, undulating landscape. People were pleasant, but they had passions completely divergant from my own. Every weekend was beach day when I wanted seasons. Fast food was abudant on the commercialized stretch of land just beyond our property, but I preferred my northern grandmother&#8217;s home cooking. And as the months passed by, I could only dream of my Massachusetts home among the hills, or trips down to the breezy cape in place of the identical houses and constant sun&nbsp;that left my appetite for New England unsatisfied. <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;\">Although my return to the land of&nbsp;big hills came on the somber passing of my grandfather, the smell of crisp northern air was exactly what I needed. We moved away from our western-mass home and settled far closer to the patchwork of towns where the remainder of my family resided, just south west of Boston. Witnessing a sudden summer shower or an abrupt blizzard&nbsp;awakened the pitter-patter in my chest and in a wave of seafood dinners and Patriot games; I knew I was back where I belonged. Nestled within a hilly community where yellow buses picked me up at my door for the start of school and returned me during the blossoming of late-spring flowers, announcing the soon-to-be arrival of summer. From then on, I knew&nbsp;there wasn&#8217;t a single thing about my Massachusetts home I could ever live without.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the earliest part of my life, my family and I frequently traveled between Massachusetts and Florida&nbsp;to visit one set of grandparents in each state. We lived miles from any other family members in Mass and I had a better relationship with my Floridian grandparents on the phone than I did in person. Eventually, my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-new-england","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2YHlB-c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}