Coming Home

The search began casually, without a realtor, checking out a cute A-frame with my sister in Southern Vermont, but it needed a complete renovation and didn’t feel like the house for me. We headed back home, through Grafton, Vermont, to stop for lunch at the general store in town, and as we turned the corner into the village, I felt as if I had fallen out of the sky and into a picturesque TV town mash-up of Stars Hollow and Virgin River. Perfectly matching white Greek Revival style houses lined Main Street like a freshly painted white picket fence. The town’s two-hundred-and-twenty-year-old Grafton Inn held court at the northernmost point, and I could hear the bubbling Saxtons River that flowed through town like a soundtrack to small town life. As I took in the view, I thought to myself, This will do.

I bought my first home in one of the most ridiculous housing markets of the decade, closing on my 1830s Greek Revival house in Grafton in October 2020, just in time to watch the leaves turn in my new backyard, surrounded by a few of my oldest summer camp friends. Huddled under wool blankets, we held up our Vermont IPAs and toasted my return to New England, the simple life, and really big backyards. In the back of my mind, I knew that one day we would all emerge from our pandemic cocoons and my life in L.A. would come calling for me.

My L.A. friends ask if I’m living in the real-life version of Virgin River, the show that follows nurse practitioner Melinda Monroe (played by Alexandra Breckenridge) from Los Angeles to a small town in northernmost California. Though a handsome bartender has not swept me off my feet yet, Grafton feels just as idyllic. I’ve met some lovely ladies in town who have invited me to be a part of the local women’s club, all quite inquisitive about why a single woman in her 30s decided to buy a house in small-town Vermont. After first confirming that yes, it’s just me and my dog, and yes, I bought this house myself, I give the real answer: In my little corner of this little town, I feel like I can step into my full self.

I love my house, my new home in Grafton. I love the wide-plank wood floors throughout; I love the navy blue shutters with matching window boxes that I painted and planted myself. I love the original, 70-pane picture window complete with a window bench, where I sit to watch the birds while I drink my morning coffee. I love the stone platform that sits at the top of the property where I take in the most stunning views of the valley from my Adirondack chair and the vegetable planters that offer me full salads from their bounty; and I love the river across the street that I can float in on a hot summer day. I was even fine cohabitating with a cute, little country mouse that I saw coming and going from the house’s stone foundation, until he crossed party lines and ran through my kitchen during a work call. There’s the wildlife that I cross paths with on my morning walks: turkeys, deer, rabbits, a red-tailed fox, a black bear, and exactly one naked hiker (this is Vermont, after all). There is also a friendly woodchuck — lovingly christened “JubJub” by my nieces — who I have become fond of, but who my dog terrorizes when he sticks his little nose out from under the woodshed in the driveway.

A friend from LA who came to visit this summer said to me, “I finally see the full you against this backdrop. You are a part of yourself back in L.A., but this place, this home, and you all vibrate at the same frequency.” His observation knocked the wind out of me in the best way. It had been a while since another person’s words had provided me such assurance in my life choices and made me feel so deeply seen.