We did it back in 2006. My husband and I moved from the suburbs to the rural back roads. Now that we have been here a while, we snicker from time to time about city slickers like us moving to the country. It’s such a stark change from city life, where horns honk, traffic is stopping and starting to the rhythm of traffic lights, trains choo-chooing.
I mean, we left the city of Richardson, right out of Dallas, a busy, up and coming suburb to a two-blinking-light on Main Street town. We have one neighbor, three acres of land and relative quiet…aside from our barking dogs. When we moved out here, the quiet was deafening. Oh, how I love it.
I’ve always been a displaced country girl. My family used to take what we called “Sunday drives.” We’d drive out to Collinsville, Texas, which is where my dad grew up. The old, rickety, white farmhouse stood with such grace and memories of days gone by. The barn where the names of cows were scratched into the stalls was still standing. The grass was tall and the cotton fields were full of bolls. My sister and I would go and try to pick the cotton, but we got tired quick and it hurt our fingers. I don’t know how the people of old did it. Guess they just had to and that was all there was to it. My dad had an old haybaler out in the shed way back in the pasture-way back where I was not to go since it was out of sight and earshot from my parents. I used to dream of living in the country with horses and all manner of animals. I could see it and feel it in my bones. I could see what I thought was wheat waving in the wind. It was only the grass of my daddy’s home, but it didn’t matter.
While I experienced a great deal of culture shock and a bit of trauma driving two ways on a service road, I fell in love with the deep colors of the sky at sunset and the brilliance of the morning sunrise. The city had gotten too big for me. The country was just right. A perfect fit.
I’m not so far out that I never go back to Richardson and I do miss some of my friends, but the peace I get out here with my animals, husband and God’s world is just a little piece of Heaven!