My Favorite Place Isn’t on Trip Advisor

My favorite place in Arlington isn’t a park, a restaurant, or one of the places you’d find on a visitor’s guide. It’s my aunt’s house.

In 2011, when my marriage imploded, I came to Arlington from Switzerland for what was supposed to be a visit. I didn’t know how I was going to go back. I also didn’t know how I could possibly stay.

My son and I arrived at my aunt and uncle’s house with four suitcases and a whole lot of uncertainty. Every morning, I wanted to pull the covers over my head and disappear for a while. My aunt wasn’t having it.

She made sure I got up. I helped make breakfast. I made my bed. I fluffed the decorative pillows. And somehow, those little things mattered.

After a few weeks, exhausted from a life that had taken more out of me than I realized, I decided I wasn’t ready to go back. I enrolled my son in school, and we began building a routine. Every morning, I walked him to school. Then I went out with my aunt to do the most wonderfully ordinary things. We'd go pay the water bill, go to Sears and pay that bill, have lunch, or catch a movie with her retired friends, who folded me into their circle as if I had always belonged there.

In the evenings, we watched TV together. Sundays we went to church and after, we'd watch the Cowboys lose together. A lot. (Ha! Love you, Uncle Charles.)

And slowly, without some big dramatic moment, I began to feel like myself again. I felt loved, welcome, and safe. Little by little, I began to feel like I could keep it all together again.

Eventually, I found a place of my own. And instead of rushing me out the door, my aunt and uncle asked, “Are you sure? Are you ready?”

I was.

Their house will always be the place where I remember starting over. And Arlington, the city I spent childhood summers in but never expected to call home, became exactly that.

Home.