I really love both of the places I live: North Caicos Island and Richmond, Va. So when I move back and forth between them, I take a day or so to reacquaint myself with the neighborhood and note any changes.
There are always changes, on both sides and within even a month's time. Yesterday's walk around Shockoe Bottom, for example, revealed the closure of a local coffee shop, the opening of a Puerto Rican restaurant and disaster restoration under way in a nearby apartment building, after a pipe burst. All since Feb. 3!
I noticed, too, that these are changes in place. On North Caicos, the changes are more often among people, learned from catching up with old friends: someone has a new job; a marriage has fallen apart; someone has lost a house to foreclosure; a daughter has moved to the U.S.; a baby is sick. Weddings, funerals, births, always changing.
Perhaps this difference - place changes or people changes - reflects how I relate to each of my neighborhoods. The beaches of North Caicos are beautiful, but its people were the reason Tom and I stopped island hopping to settle there. I've found some lovely friends in the neighborhoods of Richmond, but what drew me first were the places: rehabbed historic buildings, restaurants of all types, urban views and natural beauty along the river.
Yet neither place stays still, frozen in time. To love them - to love anything or anybody - is to notice and embrace their changes, even the unhappy ones. That was my lesson from my recent travels.
There are always changes, on both sides and within even a month's time. Yesterday's walk around Shockoe Bottom, for example, revealed the closure of a local coffee shop, the opening of a Puerto Rican restaurant and disaster restoration under way in a nearby apartment building, after a pipe burst. All since Feb. 3!
I noticed, too, that these are changes in place. On North Caicos, the changes are more often among people, learned from catching up with old friends: someone has a new job; a marriage has fallen apart; someone has lost a house to foreclosure; a daughter has moved to the U.S.; a baby is sick. Weddings, funerals, births, always changing.
Perhaps this difference - place changes or people changes - reflects how I relate to each of my neighborhoods. The beaches of North Caicos are beautiful, but its people were the reason Tom and I stopped island hopping to settle there. I've found some lovely friends in the neighborhoods of Richmond, but what drew me first were the places: rehabbed historic buildings, restaurants of all types, urban views and natural beauty along the river.
Yet neither place stays still, frozen in time. To love them - to love anything or anybody - is to notice and embrace their changes, even the unhappy ones. That was my lesson from my recent travels.
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