Things I Will Miss About Connecticut

• The seasons
  

For starters, I am not a fan of hot weather at all, so the fact that the dominant season up here is a darn chilly one is fine by me. And then there’s spring and fall... They are such lovely, storybook seasons here. My Texas-bred self didn’t truly believe autumns like that existed outside of movies and books until I saw it for myself, and spring is so full of flowers and budding trees and barely warm sunny days. The seasons in Texas have much less charm for me, but in Texas’ favor is the ubiquity of air conditioning. Summer might not be long in Connecticut, but it’s long enough (and warm enough) to make you long for central AC.

• Basements
  

Moving to our new house in Dallas sort of feels like down-sizing, even though the square footage is a bit bigger, because we are losing the joy that is a basement. It’s just such a convenient place to stash Christmas decorations, outgrown baby clothes (and some outgrown mama clothes, although I have purged most of those by now), tools, and a huge pile of Magic: the Gathering cards. (Not mine, I promise you.) Anyway, after having outed Rob for some geeky past, I must say I will really miss having such extensive space to store stuff.

• Our church here
  

Being part of a church in the Northeast is a very different experience from being part of a church in Texas. The churches are much smaller and fewer in number, and the subset of churches where we would mostly agree with the teaching is even tinier. That being said, we really love our church home here and are going to miss it. It is such a unique group of people, dominated by super-smart, super-educated people associated with Yale in one way or another, but with a sizable presence from different racial and socioeconomic groups in New Haven. And it’s got to be the least Southern Baptist-y Southern Baptist church in the history of the SBC. I don’t think Rob and I would be likely to attend a Southern Baptist church in the South, but our church here is a whole different animal. Anyway, soon we will return to a city with more churches that you can shake a stick at, with plenty we know we would feel comfortable in.

It’s going to feel weird.

• Trader Joe’s
  

Oh, how I love you, Trader Joe’s, and how I will miss your affordable, tasty, healthy goodness... I really love to shop for groceries (what? why are you looking at me like that? doesn’t everyone?) and to cook, and it is such a fun and delightful place. Granted, I am moving to a city with Whole Foods and Central Market (which has to top my list of all-time favorite grocery store EVER) but neither of those are quite as affordable and practical for everyday living as Trader Joe’s. This map does not give me much hope for any change in the near future.

• Friends we’ve made here
  

The hardest things to leave will, of course, be the relationships we’ve built over the past three years. For whatever reason, a lot of our friends here are also transplants from elsewhere in the country and a number of them are also moving away from New Haven this summer, so I don’t really feel like I’m leaving a little group who will stay here and have fun without me. However, there is a group of mom & baby friends that Grace & I have who are all native to the area and settled down here. I’ve really loved walking through the first stages of motherhood with them and will miss them a great deal. It is a group where I am fairly atypical as far as ideology and background, but they have been really open to me and to chatting about our ways of thinking. I have a feeling it will be a little harder to make mom friends who have such different beliefs from me in Dallas, so I will miss both the diversity they brought to my life and the individual women with all their quirks and strengths and laughs. Some things about moving are quite sad, aren’t they?