The House They Leave, The Home They Keep
About a year-and-a-half ago, my husband and I did a big thing for the first time. In any phase of life such an event can be cause for both anxiety and celebration, but at our ages, and in that moment in time, it felt like a declaration of discovered hope.
And so, at 8:17 a.m. on March 13, 2025—and yes, I remember the precise time—Sherrod and I walked into an old house and declared it our new home.
After 13 years of living in our beloved Cleveland neighborhood, we were moving two hours south to the Columbus area. Six months earlier, we’d had no plans for such an upheaval. We also had no idea that Sherrod, after three terms as a U.S. senator, would lose his race for re-election. At the time, this seemed like an earthquake for our family, but it did not take long for us to roll with the aftershocks. Within six weeks, we had made the biggest of surprising decisions: We would find a new place to call home.
We had our list of practical reasons for moving. Five of our eight grandchildren live in Columbus, and we wanted to see more of them. I could finish my second novel from anywhere, and I told myself that a new view from my desk would keep my writing fresh. I was teaching at Denison University, and this move would shorten my one-way drive from two-and-a-half hours to 40 minutes.
About that drive: I’d done a little too much bragging, perhaps, about all those miles logged in a single day. Oh, look at me, unstoppable Grandma in her union-made Jeep. I will not miss that occasional 20-minute car-nap at a state rest stop as the final glints of sun disappeared from the Ohio sky. (When I first disclosed this habit in an essay on Substack, Sherrod acted as if I had just confessed to volunteering to be mugged.)
This was a very big move for me. I had spent virtually all my life in northeastern Ohio, most of it in the Cleveland area. It is the city that launched my journalism career, and the one I insisted on calling home through every major change in my life, from divorce and single motherhood to remarriage a decade later when I was 45.
Word of our plans to move traveled quickly, and well-meaning friends had questions. They worried that we were acting too rashly. Had I never heard that sage advice to wait six months after a life-changing event before making big decisions? What about all my longtime friendships in Cleveland? Had I considered the ensuing chaos of packing and downsizing, the hassle of finding new doctors, a new hairdresser, a new favorite place to gather with friends? Did I really want to abandon all the lynchpins of a secure and settled life? At our age?
The toughest moment, perhaps, was when our 9-year-old grandson, Milo, stood in our living room and said to Sherrod, “I don’t want you and Grandma to move. This house is full of magic.”
I could feel his fear. Milo and his sister live in New England, and so their visits were always for a few days at a time. You get to know a place when it tucks you in at night and greets you every morning with the smells of coffee and cinnamon rolls.
When I heard Sherrod’s response to Milo, I had to leave the room for a moment. “Grandma is the magic,” he told him. “Wherever she goes, the magic follows her. You will feel it in our new home.”
A few days later, I shared that story with Sue, my friend of more than 30 years. “Grandpa’s right,” she said, smiling. “I know you. You will find the right house, and you will make it your home. It’s what you do.”
It’s what we all do, isn’t it? Change is the only constant in our lives. Sometimes it lands softly, like a whisper. Other times, it rattles the very foundation on which we stand. The sooner we accept it, the more quickly we can see through the windows that have been blown wide open. What a view.
Four months after that election night, we held the keys to our new home. We went from a new build in a city development to a 90-year-old English Tudor in a tree-filled suburb. We live in a multi-generational neighborhood, full of strollers and bicycles and greetings from people we’ve yet to meet.
We are a public couple, and for the first few weeks some people looked a little surprised to see us, as if they'd just spotted a couple of pandas cavorting in our driveway. But our neighbors have grown used to us, it seems, and I’ve never felt more at home. Our dogs, Franklin and Walter—both rescues and thieves of our hearts—helped us meet neighbors more quickly. At least 200 of our new friends are dogs, and I keep a working list of their names on my phone.
This summer, a talented hairdresser-turned-landscaper named Jake Miller helped us transform our overgrown backyard into an English cottage garden. Lots of knock-out roses, hydrangeas and various other plants flowering throughout three seasons amid new evergreens and tall grasses. In the center, our two weathered rocking chairs wait for us on a small bluestone patio surrounded by large pots of flowers still blooming in October. For the first time in my life, I have the garden of my dreams.
During the first weeks of summer, an early morning ritual served as reminder of what it means to be home, now. Shortly after dawn, I’d hold a mug of coffee in one hand and a hose in the other as a young boy zoomed by on his bike and yelled, “Good morning, Garden Lady!”
Every time, I lifted my mug and shouted, “Good morning, Rocket Man!” He always laughed. So often, I’d stand there watering the garden and think about how, not so long ago, I could not have imagined this home, these moments of joy. Sometimes, our hearts know what our minds cannot yet imagine.
About a month after our move, Milo and his family visited our house for the first time. A few hours after his arrival, I found him nestled in his favorite chair, looking out the window.
“Hey, you,” I said, leaning against the doorway. “What do you think?”
He smiled and gave me the thumbs-up. “It’s cozy, Grandma,” he said. “The magic followed you home.”
Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and author. She is married to former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, teaches at Denison University and writes the Substack “Hopefully Yours.”
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