When we moved here, my husband was coming home, returning to family and some of his closest friends. I was leaving home.  I’d moved to Boston in 1986 to attend college and never left. Never dreamed I’d leave.  I loved the city, the hustle and bustle and having just about anything your heart desired (an a few things you didn’t) within reach or maybe a few blocks away.

I had also built a solid social circle of friends whom I relied on for moral support and sanity checks especially once I became a mom for the first time.  When I agreed to move, it was with the understanding that there would be no grief about the long distance phone bills (flat rate plans weren’t prevalent at that time) and that I would be heading South at least once month for regular visits.   At first, I was down several times a month, very slowly, as I developed roots here, there were fewer and fewer trips. Email and Facebook have helped to fill the void and keep me up-to-date.  I still make it all the way back to the Boston area at least once a month to meet one group of friends for dinner and regularly meet another friend at the state line.

This is not to say that I haven’t made friends here.  I have and they are all delightful, wonderful people with whom I am slowly but surely building a history. My friends from Massachusetts have been through hell and high water with me and I with them.  There is something to be said for that kind of history.

I also crave the familiar and even after seven years, more of Massachusetts is familiar to me than New Hampshire.  Those trips back are an opportunity to swear at the drivers on Route 128 or giggle about how Batterymarch Street really does intersect Batterymarch Street. In December it is a chance for me to sneak back and see the house with the over the top holiday decorations in our old neighborhood. There is something strangely comforting about that familiarity.

I have said I love snow and I do, yet sometimes, New England weather can through a monkey wrench in even the best laid plans. This month is a perfect example of such wrenched up plans.  Last Sunday I was scheduled to meet a group of friends in Norwood, Mass. for a girls night out. Wet sloppy snow put the kibosh on that trip.  This weekend, I was going to head back and stay with a friend in Metro West on the way to a Celebration of Life on The Cape for another friend’s Grandfather.  The Blizzard of 2009 has made that trip a no go as well. The truth is I have plenty to keep me busy close to home, but I miss the face time with my friends, especially this time of year.

The irony is that I’m always glad to get home.  I shake my head at the lunatic drives (a.k.a Massholes) and I really don’t miss the traffic and congestion that comes with life in a metropolitan area.

I would not move back. In so many ways, our life here is infinitely better than what we had in Massachusetts, but every once in a while, I just need my fix.  I have at least one more trip planned at the end of the month.  Here’s hoping that Mother Nature and control herself.