For my entire juvenile and early adult life, I lived in one city – Sandusky. If you’re not from there, chances are, you don’t know much about my town. Sure, there are an outsized number of pop culture references for a city of less than 25,000 – like the one spoken by Marilyn Monroe in the legendary film, “Some Like it Hot” –  “ . . . just imagine, me! Sugar Kowalcyk from Sandusky, Ohio!” Or almost every joke from “Tommy Boy” – no, we don’t go to 4H auctions to pick up chicks or guys (although many of us do take some measure of pride in the movie and own Callahan Auto Parts t-shirts), but the real Sandusky is in its people, its lakeside landscape, and of course, its world-famous amusement park. 

Cedar Point has long been our best-known attribute, and for nearly 128 years, it’s the reason just about anyone knows where to locate my town. Once, in Dayton, I saw a local news station ask residents if they knew how to get to Sandusky. Blank stares. Then they were asked if they knew how to get to Cedar Point – and most of those interviewed began to give directions. The park’s shadow looms large over everything, and even though I can’t remember my birth, I imagine my mom, in the throws of labor, heard something like this from a nurse on duty:

For your safety and the safety of your baby, keep your hands and arms in the bed and your feet in the stirrups for the entire ride. Thank you and have a great day here at Providence Hospital, America’s Birthing Coast.”

No wonder I eventually worked there for four summers. But I digress . . .

In some ways, Sandusky was a lot like other towns. We were once the home of factories for all three big American auto companies, just about everyone’s Dad and some moms worked those jobs. Of course, like other places, those are gone. We have suburbs, including Castalia, home of the Blue Hole (which is now private land, so good luck visiting), and Huron, which still boasts that it was the world leader in steamship building – in the 1830s. There are a lot of chain restaurants and big box stores. 

Growing up, I could not wait to move away. Our city had a dying downtown, a tiny, lame mall, and, according to every teenager there, “nothing to do.” I was determined to move to New York City when I embarked on the adventure that was to be adulthood. Then, when I got married, I did move far away, to the big city – of Lakewood. Not long after, we moved temporarily to San Juan, Puerto Rico – talk about culture shock. The closest I ever came to Latin culture in Sandusky was my high school Spanish 1 class, and between that and living in San Juan, I still no hablo espanol. Then we moved close to friends in Wadsworth for ten years, then to Orlando – I thought living in Puerto Rico was culture shock, but that had nothin’ on Florida life. 

I worked at Disney World for almost four years, and my hometown was on my nametag. Sometimes, guests would recognize the name “Sandusky” and they’d start to ask me questions. A lot of times, it was about Cedar Point. One time, it was a guy who knew my sister. And often, and always with guys between about 25 and 45, it was about Tommy Boy. I always knew before they asked; they had this same smirking look in their eyes.

For the 13 years my family lived in Orlando, we would come to Sandusky to visit about once a year. And every time, I would notice that downtown got a few more businesses. And it wasn’t “devil’s ass crack” hot and humid all summer long, and it’s such a short drive to Cleveland sports, museums, shopping, and there are no terrifying predators like alligators . . . Then I would remind myself how terrible Ohio February is, and that Cedar Point is one park, and Orlando has SEVEN theme parks, if you don’t include water parks, and we were so close to cruise ports, and we had awesome friends and neighbors, and our jobs were great.

That was, until the coronavirus. My husband lost his job in the hospitality industry and got six months severance. And after over six months of searching, he had no luck in finding another job. The money, and our time in Sunny Florida, was running out.

So where do you look when you need to move? Home.

My husband applied for more than two hundred jobs in Orlando. He got nothing. He applied for two jobs in Sandusky, and got two offers. So, like Simon & Garfunkel wished they were, we were actually Homeward Bound.

It’s strange, moving back to your childhood hometown after being gone for so long. It’s old, but it’s also new. I had to re-learn how to get around town, had to pick new favorite bars and restaurants, learn how to form a new kind of relationship with my family, especially my Mom, from whom I now live only 5 ½ miles. But it’s more than just the tangibles. I had gotten to know how to be a visitor and how to exist in that space. Existing in resident space is entirely different. I had grown up and grown away from my home, found a new home where I was comfortable and felt I belonged. I had been, and got used to being, a stranger in strange lands; now I was a stranger again. But in a familiar land.

Because of this new perspective, I see everything now with a renewed sense of place. Looking at Sandusky through fully adult eyes, I can see the beauty of my town that I never bothered to notice before. We have a lot of parks. A LOT. Our weird masonic-symbol street layout (seriously, Dan Brown could have written a best-seller about this) led to tiny triangles of space that aren’t practical for more than anything ranging from a single fountain to a few little league fields. We’re not so small that everyone knows your business, but not so big that you don’t run into people you know sometimes. The small businesses here are AWESOME. We have great Vietnamese food, which we didn’t have 20 years ago, but have always had superior Italian food and – guys, guys – I have a locker for my own bottles of whiskey at our local distillery. What’s better than that? Well, the lake. The lake dominates our springs, summers, and autumns for beaching, boating and island hopping. And spring? Do you guys know how great spring is? I had totally forgotten in Orlando, home of eight months of green and four months of green-ish brown, that spring here is so freaking colorful and beautiful! And Sandusky is so cheap – our house here, with a huge yard and sits on a river, has 520 more square feet for $90,000 less than our house in suburban Orlando with basically no yard and absolutely no view of water – well, I guess we had some water. Hurricanes & summer rains would fill the retention basin across from our front porch. But in Ohio, we have no hurricanes, and NO. RON. DESANTIS.

I’ve been back in Sandusky for 18 months. On weekday mornings, I work out with my mom and then go to breakfast at this little diner, where we discovered that we’re distantly related to our regular server. I work from my home office raising money for a breast cancer charity. My kids are in their early twenties, launched, and living in nearby towns. My husband and I look forward to spending time on the islands, at Blossom Music Center, and at Cleveland Guardians games this summer. And as soon as it’s warm enough, we will kayak up the river, the rhythmic paddling and calling of birds as our soundtrack. We will enjoy the fall colors we missed so much in the south. And we know where we will spend Christmas this year, with our families, where we should be. We’re home.