We leave my hometown tomorrow and I’m struggling with it.

I keep telling my husband that I want to move here. Of course, I’m saying this in June, while the weather is fabulous and it’s light out until 10 p.m. I might sound a little different in January when it’s forty below zero and dark at 5:30 p.m.

My daughter loves it here too. There is a park behind my parent’s house, a next door neighbor with a beautiful swimming pool and the patience to help her learn to swim a little, a little girl her age to play with next door who lent her a bike to ride. For her, it has been non-stop fun.

It has been fun for all of us.

For me though, driving and walking through the parts of town that I used to call home has been bittersweet. Memories flood my mind – most good, some sad. I drove past my old school, which looks exactly the same. There are new schools and buildings everywhere. Some places haven’t changed at all – like the local movie theatre, and other places are completely different.

There is a brand new public library, new stores, new restaurants, and new subdivisions. The city is booming again. With the price of gold at a very healthy price for a gold mining town, this town is vibrant and beautiful.

Time has changed many things though. I wanted to show my daughter the "secret" park I used to go to when I wanted to be alone. It was a park that had a great tire swing and lots of climbing. My daughter rode her bicycle over to it and we walked down the path to my secret park. I was extremely disappointed to see that most of the park had been disassembled. The tire swing that I spent much time on was no longer there. When we walked across the street to where another park used to be there was just an empty field. All the playground equipment was gone.

Perhaps it was made of that pressure-treated lumber that contained harmful chemicals and so they tore it down. Or maybe it just got too old and worn out and they decided not to replace it as it wasn’t getting much use. It’s sad, but there are many beautiful parks in other places for kids to play here.

The old overgrown field that used to be behind my house is now a huge soccer field with a playground. In the evenings in the summer you can look out the kitchen window and see children playing soccer. Just about anytime you can see children playing on the playground equipment beside the field. There are daisies and wildflowers growing along side the field and walking path where my daughter stopped every ten feet to pick flowers. Some of them are sitting in a plastic glass filled with water on the computer desk.

The hardest part about leaving tomorrow will be leaving my mother and father again. It gets easier every time, but it’s still amazingly painful. They miss so much being so far away. They miss birthdays and holidays. They miss hundreds of hugs and kisses. We can try to squeeze as much as we can into three weeks time, but when it is over it still doesn’t seem to be enough.

But my home now is in Texas. And I miss Texas. I miss big glasses of iced tea and I miss my church and my in-laws and my overgrown lawn.

We’re leaving our Canadian home tomorrow and heading to our Texas home. We’re so lucky to have two homes.

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