As I approach my last year of college I returned home yet again for summer break. This time a little older (maybe wiser? probably not) I realize that I’ve never really taken a look around and appreciated where I came from.

Back then I looked around and saw the wide open spaces, huge corn fields and clear skies as something outdated or too “country” for me, back then I hated it. I wanted nothing more than to grow up and leave. Now, I see peace, tranquility, and beauty all around me. I look out my back window to see sunsets that you just don’t see in a city. Things that I once took for granted are making me feel so nostalgic.

Every time I come home everything is exactly how I left it, my room, my family. There is some comfort to this when things all around me are changing. I find a place that I feel constant. Home, I feel at ease.

There were times, I wondered, how my life would have been if I would have grown up in a more populated area or had attended a larger high school. Sometimes growing up I wanted nothing more than for people not to know me. But as I look back on the years I spent in this place I remember that here is where I learned to ride a bike, where I had my first kiss, where my parents threw all my (amazing) birthday parties, where I wrecked my first car, where I cried to my mom about the boy who didn’t like me (ugh) and where I spent so many moments laughing and living with the people that made me who I am today. This place raised me.

Kent is somewhere I found friends, somewhere I found family. That place is a new part of me. One that I proudly call home as well. The people brought me new memories I am so thankful for and love to look back on. However, my hometown brings new meaning to the term growing up. My little siblings will be going to high school, when I remember them in baby bouncers so vividly, my mother brings out old photo albums from my childhood and my family is still always there to welcome me like I’d never even left.

It is not often I appreciate my small town, it’s not often that I really think back about the times that made me so very happy here. I always wanted something more but I am glad now I never got it. I am glad that I spent summer nights in the middle of nowhere, in the bed of a truck, drinking a beer (sorry mom), days by the river where our skin turned red and running around town with my friends not even knowing where we’d end up.

To all the people that I know, to those who I’ve lost contact with along the way, thank you for the memories. Thank you for friendship and for helping me create the bond with this place that I never knew I needed.

I’ve learned a lot of things but I know that this place will be a part of me forever.

So thank you Sarver, Pennsylvania. I owe a lot that I am to you, the small town I grew up in.