Coming to you live from a very empty townhouse in Boulder Colorado! There won’t be any recipes attached to this mailer so if that’s what you came here for, I give you permission to quietly exit now. If we had kitchen equipment and a full spice cabinet, I would happily be sharing a recipe for Spring Quiche Lorraine or Pan Seared Trout with Ramp Parmesan Fonduta and Quick Roasted Asparagus. Next time, if our belongings make it out of the warehouse in Northern Alabama and into a moving truck across the country. What I’ve learned from this brewing moving nightmare is that even when you don’t do things “on a budget” you can still end up with budget service. Deep breaths of fresh mountain air and nightly refills of the air mattress, so we don’t wake up on the ground - We will get through this!
I’ve been gawking at spring lately and it’s lead me to realize that seasons tend to feature very highly in my memory as both motivation for and explanation as to why I make big decisions. Moving being a huge decision that we seem to find ourselves choosing more often than any sane human should. We are so lucky because it’s always been by choice and with excitement. We moved to Nashville for a few reasons and moved away from Nashville for a lot of reasons. Not all cities are created equally and we learn that with each new experience. Our original and forever home of Chicago is the city of Big Shoulders. It’s a place that represents itself purely and whole heartedly. Its identity is cemented in the streets, the skyscrapers, and shoreline of Lake Michigan. Chicago knows who it is, and no Instagram trend or mass migration of transplants can change that. You better be willing to work hard, make sacrifices and find joy in the gritty beauty of it all. And there is certainly beauty to be found.
I was very pregnant when we decided to leave Chicago on the wings of an incredible job opportunity. Nashville offered us a much better space to rent payment ratio. It is a hip, up-and-coming city with lots of opportunities and mostly it wasn’t Chicago in January, when all this planning began. We packed up our bags of blind naivety in search of something fresh. Let me pause to say that we moved to Nashville in the 2nd month of the pandemic with a 6-week-old baby, after visiting one time. It was not a perfect plan, but we were hopeful. The whole situation turned out to be very wrong for us and forced us to reconsider a lot of the long term plans we had. We dug deep and found strength in each other and in the future we saw for our family. We did what most true Chicagoans do – looked for an alternate route to get us to our destination.
Nashville is a city searching for its identity. It’s insane population growth over the last decade has created a sort of cultural melting pot that is very murky and hard to navigate. Is it a blue city in a deep red state, eh maybe? Is it fun, festive and brimming with live music, yes but also overflowing with wasted bachelorette parties and my God the potholes. I will give it credit for having incredible open spaces and parks. We clung to our moments in the beautiful forests, dined at the same tried and true restaurants (Folk and Lou we absolutely love you) and made a plan for something that fit our needs better. Sometimes you have to be willing to pivot, and pivot and pivot.
As a University of Colorado alum I am very biased and would say Boulder is one of the greatest small cities in America. It certainly carries a bit of exclusivity as it is expensive and housing options are limited. It makes up for that hint of hard-to-reach with welcoming warmth and a seriously strong sense of community. We decided what we needed as a small family in a strange and competitive world was a place that felt established. Whether we’re talking about a person or a place, a sense of self feels like an overwhelmingly important character detail in an environment that is in constant transition. I am hard pressed to get behind trends. I’ve been wearing the same flannel shirt since college and eating Special K with Red Berries for breakfast since high school. You cannot convince me to buy into the next big thing, unless it is truly life changing for myself and hopefully an underserved community. I am a sucker for a two for one. The trend train that Nashville is currently on, is not for us. Maybe as Millennials, we’re too old or as musically inept it wasn’t our niche. I will never deny that we learned some incredibly valuable life lessons in our last chapter. We made core memories, we met cool people and we began molding a model of what we need for longevity. We are hopeful that this beautiful mountain town we’ve landed in will offer us the stability and refreshing dose of established confidence we’ve been searching for in a small community. None of this ties back to seasons but I guess in some broad sense it is all about welcoming change when change is inevitable. To the next chapters and new discoveries!
I have this here playlist for all your spring cleaning, walking, cooking needs. Enjoy!