In the month of February, the average morning in my hometown looks something like this: half-melted snow, very few cars, and fog so heavy you can just make out the road in front of you. It always felt suffocating to me. There was nothing in my town I hadn’t explored. 

According to my mom, the average day here in the mid-90s didn’t look much different than it does now. There have always been the same gas stations on every corner and the same dreary winter weather. 

My mother is, and always has been, a completely different person than me. She used to ride the bus to school with her headphones on and a pack of cigarettes hidden in her pocket. I always had hair dyed as bright as a highlighter, but would have never dreamed of talking back to a teacher. Immediately after graduation, my mom eloped with her high-school boyfriend and moved to Massachusetts. She was divorced and living in South Williamsport by the time she was 20. This might seem like the kind of story that comes with bitterness, and in a lot of ways it is. My mom lost years of her life to a man who treated her badly, all because she was already tied to him. Although she regrets many of her decisions from her late teens, my mom says that she has never regretted coming back home. When I was younger, I resented my mom for returning. All I wanted to do was escape South Williamsport, and she had decided to stay. But as I’ve grown up, I realized just how brave she was to return. She made a new life for herself in a place that felt suffocating to her, picking only the good things in her life to bring with her. 

Being 19, I can’t imagine how isolating and scary it would feel to be hours away from my family and closest friends, living with someone who treated me badly. When I’m home now, I appreciate how comforting it feels for me, and must have felt for her, to be suffocated by family and overpriced gas stations. 

 In the month of June, the average day in my hometown feels a lot brighter. Sidewalks are crowded with families walking their dogs, graduation parties are in every other backyard, and every local motel fills up with tourists starting to arrive for the Little League World Series. The mornings are slower and calmer, and I’m never awake in time to see the early morning fog.

I’ll always belong to my hometown in a way. It makes me smile when people point out my central PA accent, and I can never resist a Sheetz run. While I don’t plan on raising my daughter there like my mother and grandmother, I hope she picks up on some of my hometown quirks: My love for nature, folk music, and my affinity to trust strangers (maybe in a safer way). They’re a huge part of me that wouldn’t exist without my home.