Wilton was once an unfamiliar place to me. I remember scoping out a potential home with our realtor. He took us on what felt like roller-coaster ride through the back roads of the rural town; up and up and up to the top of on Mountain Road and Nod Hill; around the windiest and most unexpected turns of the neighborhoods of Silvermine; finally relieving us of our car-sickness on a drive down the halcyon Ridgefield Road, something that to us looked like it was straight out of a New England picture book. I had never seen so many toppled stone walls scattered throughout the landscape. I had never seen such lush greenery that formed the summertime canopies over roads where the sun and blue sky peeked through in small patches. I had lived in New England before, but this was the first time I remember being old enough to appreciate it’s unmatched bucolic beauty. This was where my family was to declare our home, a place my little brother would most likely reflect on as his childhood home, but as I had already lived in multiple different houses, cities and states by the age of 10, I would come to reflect on still as the town in which I grew up.

There isn’t much to Wilton, Connecticut. I joke by telling my college friends, “We have five different delis, 20 places to get fro-yo, 37 nail salons, and a Starbucks.” Of course, this is hyperbolic, but I think anyone from Wilton would agree that we have a ridiculous amount of nail salons. Most people have their favorite, but I always chose not to discriminate and go to a different one each time. Sure, there physically isn’t much to Wilton. It’s a small town, 27.4 square miles to be exact. There are only a handful of options for retail shopping, one small movie theater, two grocery stores, one CVS, a few upscale restaurants and a few pizza joints, a bunch of delis (because Wilton High School runs on bacon-egg-and-cheese, hashbrowns, and hot sauce, A.K.A. the Athlete’s Special from the acclaimed Wilton Deli) a building of retail space in the center of town which businesses cycle in and out of quite frequently. Occasionally I feel a pang of nostalgia for the endless entertainment that was the Blue Tulip when it consumed the retail space of that building.

Driving through town center, you might feel sorry for us, you might think that we have nothing to do, limited options, and an unexciting array of options at that. Although by the time Wilton kids grow up to be seniors, many are anxiously awaiting their departure from the small town, they only town they’ve ever known, which may feel suffocating and microscopic by the end of their adolescence, despite the size and quantity of buildings, Wilton is a town where every corner of its 27.4 acres holds significance. I’ll remember each restaurant by the memories made with friends and family. The first time I ever went out to a restaurant with a friend and without parents, we panicked thinking we did not bring enough allowance to cover the bill at Wilton Pizza, we frantically counted our dollars and debated how we were going to work off our debt in the kitchen. Hunan cafe was the declared weekly meeting place of my group of friends; and to no fail we sat down at a table for eight and shared fried dumplings and laughter, embarrassing stories about tripping in the senior hallway and our frustrations with boys. B Chic, Tom-E-Toes, and the “teen” section of the Wilton Public Library were the predetermined destinations every Friday afternoon of seventh grade. Upon the dismissal bell, we would make the trek from Middlebrook through the woods on the Merwin Meadows trail, unmindful of the quiet tranquility of the woods, simply because they were always just going to be there, and we didn’t realize the beauty of it all in comparison to the cookie-cutter strip mall suburbia that is the majority of the country. We didn’t realize not everyone was this lucky, though. After we emerged from the woods, passed by the pond and playground of Merwin that will forever remind me of when my brother fell from the monkey bars and broke his arm two weeks after we moved to town, another story in itself, B Chic was the first stop. There, I ran my errand of acquiring the trending sugar lip color of the week, my rainbow array of these now too-tight tank tops will be a constant reminder of middle school, and hundreds of dollars that I could have put to great use in college -- but no regrets there. The next stop was Tom-E-Toes for a slice of Pepperoni you had to blot for ten minutes with multiple different napkins to get a sufficient amount of grease off. The hum of a soccer game buzzing on the TV in the corner of the small dining room and the banter of the owners and chefs generated the familiar music of the restaurant.

I could spend thousands of words on what each establishment in Wilton reminds me of, the hundreds of memories made within the walls of each restaurant; the traditions perpetuated throughout my ten years there and new ones that were made with each passing year. I am nostalgic for my days behind the counter of Witchy Poo, and eternally curious as to why Marie Wendorff took such a gracious chance on the girl who still had braces and absolutely zero knowledge of retail. I am comforted and satisfied by the fact that friends make an activity out of visiting whoever of their friends’ is behind the counter at Scoops for the night shift, keeping them company with a cup of Swamp, and suppressing laughter whenever a customer walks in at a super awkward point in the story someone was telling extremely loudly. I smile when I’m running errands to pick up the toothbrush I always forget when coming home for Christmas vacation at CVS, and I see packs of girls giggling through the makeup section, something that would keep my friends and I made an event of in itself, spending too much time picking out face masks, nail polishes, and the Cosmos we were too young to be reading at our sleepovers. I could still write an angry rant about the week-long detention I served my sophomore year when we got caught sprinting away from the high school to indulge in blueberry pancakes at Orems. I could’ve written this entire article on Orems, the countless Sunday breakfasts and post soccer game brunches and “family” dinner on Friday nights with the family we chose for ourselves.

To the current seniors about to graduate: I know Wilton High School feels like a prison right now, I know Wilton feels as small as it’s ever been, I know you are aching to grow and expand your horizons and meet people you haven’t known since kindergarten, I know you want out, I know you want new, I know you want bigger and better. You’re not wrong for feeling this way, I wanted out more than anyone. Wilton is undoubtedly a bubble, but you’ll come to learn that most people you’ll meet at college also came from bubbles- and I learned that Wilton is a hell of a little bubble that we are so lucky to have grown up in. I’d like to think our proximity to New York City helps largely to ensure that we are able to have incredible experience that most kids don’t, and that we don’t just receive a singular story of how people live, because we have gotten to see and are aware of the realities of the world beyond a polished Rolling Hills country-club kind of life. I also think that’s it’s something about Wilton in itself. I’m always impressed by the continual production of a breed of extraordinarily driven and determined students, made evident by the impressive array of college balloons proudly stapled to the board in the senior “Jungle” in May. Call us sheltered, call us spoiled, some of the most hardworking and well-rounded people I’ve ever met in my life I met in my time at Wilton High School. You’ll appreciate of the beauty of this place when you’re driving down Huckleberry and stop at the reservoir, you’ll feel it then. You’ll feel it when you graduate and you’re standing on the football field surrounded by everyone you’ve ever known for your entire life. You’ll feel it in your final days before you part with your best friends for your respective schools. You probably already feel it as your time as a full-time Wilton-ian dwindles and you’re going to start spending more time away from home than at home, filling out your primary address on paperwork as your school one, absent of the 06897 zip code we’re so proud of we plaster on hats and hang from our car keys.

This summer will be a whirlwind of brown packing boxes and seeing my cozy, memory-filled home dwindle down to an empty shell. Although by the time I’m headed back down to Georgia it will be physically empty, absolutely nothing about it will be empty. It will be filled from wall-to-wall with the secrets of my friends and I’s weekly sleepovers, the echoing sound of my dad and brother’s blu-ray disk of "Top Gun" blaring through the darkness on the surround sound, the memories made during hurricanes and snowstorms in October trapped in an essentially candlelit insane asylum (the result of watching your parents dance after they’ve had one-too-many glasses of wine) the yippy bark of the miniature schnauzer we finally wore my parents down on adopting when I was 15 and finally stopped writing “dog” on my Christmas list. An endless list, only to be added onto by the next family who is so lucky as to continue to grow the love in the home my family created for ourselves when we decided to plant our roots in Wilton.

So I guess I’m writing this as a memoir of my time in Connecticut, an ode to Wilton and my adolescence, a thank you to the opportunities it provided me, to the people I met there, and a goodbye to the home I grew up in. Whatever it may be and whatever you reading may deem it, I’m writing mostly because I am thankful, and I will always, always come back for a Fresh Salad on Pita from the Luncheonette.