It’s a classic Rhode Island story: I have returned, as a freshly minted retiree, to the tiny state where I first lived as a fresh-faced college graduate. The state has a magnetic force that tends to hold onto its people, right? It just took me a while to get back here.
We often can’t see the patterns of our life while we’re living them. Only in retrospect can I recognize the itch I’ve been looking to scratch for decades. Over forty years of building careers and raising kids, my husband, Bob, and I have lived in five states and seven communities (and fifteen houses, but that’s a whole other story). We didn’t plan to live an unsettled life. We moved mostly for job opportunities. For better or worse, I tend to face forward, moving full speed ahead to the next thing. However faintly in the background, my pull to Rhode Island was almost always there.
I was twenty-two when the U.S. Yacht Racing Union in Newport hired me as a communications assistant. I left UMass Amherst’s apple orchards for the Ocean State’s beaches. I had a stunning view of Newport Harbor and downtown from my cubicle above the Goat Island Marina. I attended galas in the mansions and on Monday nights drove to Providence for a graphic design class at the Rhode Island School of Design. On weekends, I biked with a few workmates around much of the state, from Portsmouth to Little Compton and loops through rural South County.
But professionally and socially, I wanted more, so at twenty-four I moved to Boston. I landed a job editing Northeastern University’s alumni magazine. On my first day of work I met Dee, a marketing professor who became an instant running and biking pal. A crush I developed on Bob, the guy in an office down the hall, soon bloomed into a relationship and a wedding.
I was still a newlywed when a job posting caught my eye: associate editor for the soon-to-launch Rhode Island Monthly (yes, this magazine, now approaching its fortieth birthday!). The new magazine sounded closer to the cultural journalism I’d studied and loved at UMass. Bob understood my ambition. He stayed behind in a good job with Harvard while I rented a duplex off Hope Street on Providence’s East Side. I rolled my bike downhill to the magazine’s Branch Avenue offices above Benny’s. On Fridays, I collected Bob at the train station to spend our weekends exploring Rhode Island…