Making It Yours

My family is just back from a week at the beach.
After a whirlwind spring, we took off on my youngest child’s last day of school for a little family getaway. My second-born just graduated from high school, which means we now have two college-aged kids, plus one each in high school and middle school. This trip was wedged between a college May term and internships and scads of summer obligations for all four of them. Am I feeling more than a little wistful about what feels like a big transition? Definitely maybe. But I am also so thankful we could have this time together, and thankful we’re able to have the following conversation at all.
With two pandemic-related exceptions, we’ve been visiting the same town on the Florida panhandle annually since my oldest child was four years old and my second-born was one. Now we have four kids, the oldest are twenty and eighteen. They don’t remember a time before the beach.
I know everybody says blogging is over (maybe we should talk about that soon?) but I love my blog, and I’m deeply grateful for its time capsule nature. Almost exactly ten years ago, when my kids were much younger but still had an established history with “our” beach, I wrote about the concept of falling in love with a specific place, whether that place is a beach town, big city, a restaurant, a park. I think the same concept applies to things like books and sports teams: we may be inclined to love a certain something, but there’s an element of choice in truly making it ours.
That blog post (which appears in its entirety below) ran ten years ago, but I think of it every time I return to a place I love, to one I’m tempted to consider making mine. Since 2013, Will and I have moved (twice!) and laid purposeful claim to our current neighborhood; we’ve made ourselves regulars at a handful of hyper-local spots. All this year’s outdoor Summer Reading Guide photos were shot at a local place I adore. We’ve returned again and again as a family to a few specific haunts: nearby hiking trails and camping destinations further afield. We’ve visited places, numerous times now, that I mentioned wanting to visit in those 2013 comments. We’ve realized that some places we once thought we might make ours don’t belong to us after all, not in this sense. We like them, but somewhere along the way, we didn’t actively choose them.
We stayed home in 2020, and due to poor planning on our part, we ended up visiting a different but nearby beach town in 2021. We had a wonderful visit as a family; I love that little beach community and was grateful for the opportunity to stay there. But it wasn’t ours . I was not expecting to come away from that week with a deepened appreciation for our regular place and its meaning to our family, but that’s exactly what happened.
I asked you to tell me about the places you’ve made your own ten years ago, and I was touched by your thoughtful responses about vacation destinations and moves to new towns and the sports teams you’ve learned to love. I so appreciate how your comments have helped me think about my own choices over the years. (Those comments appear below; there are 93 of them so please plan on scrolling a bit to get to the new comments.)
Ten years later, I’m asking again: do you think there’s something to this theory? Would you tell us about the places, neighborhoods, teams, anything at all you’ve chosen to make your own? We’d love to hear all about it in comments. (If you’re able to articulate it, I think we’d all love to hear the details on the thought process behind your choice.) 
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This is the full text of the original piece, which first ran on June 19, 2013. 
I’ve been thinking about falling in love. Or maybe I should say, choosing to love.
When we spent time in South Haven recently, my friend reminded me that it’s the same town Shauna Niequist gushes about in Bread and Wine , the one she loves for its charm and the memories it holds for her.
South Haven is a beautiful town, but there are lots of beautiful towns all up and down the Michigan shore, and even on other beaches, other lakes. Why South Haven?
From South Haven my family moved on to Chicago, where we stayed in a friend’s second home. Chicago is their city, they said when they handed over the keys, and they wanted to make it easier to get up there more often. So they bought a place, and now they do.
Chicago is a great city, but there are other great cities. Why Chicago?
I’m starting to suspect that to really love  a place, you’ve got to meet it halfway:  you have to choose to make it yours.

Let’s say you like a place. Because you like it, you choose to spend a little more time there. And the more time you put in, the more you like it. It’s a virtuous cycle. It’s how you fall in love.
This happens with all kinds of things: towns, restaurants, books, baseball.
I have friends who piled in the car before dawn last Saturday to drive 700 miles to Omaha to watch U of L play in the College World Series. They cheered on their team, went to bed, and left for home the next morning.
That’s love.
Ownership—and we’re not just talking money—is a powerful construct. When you make something yours—a town or a book or a baseball team—it becomes part of your identity.
My husband and I have been thinking about what we want to make ours as a family. What will our thing be? What makes us us?
We have a few starting points: my own little family returns to the Florida panhandle each year, same town, same place. To my kids, this beach is the beach, and their childhood memories will be tangled up with these trips.
This place has become ours .
(Fun fact: I snapped the photo for last year’s summer reading guide on our beach.)
But we’ve got room for more. We’re paying attention to what we’re drawn toward: what places, what things, what causes will we claim as our own?
What will we choose to love?
I don’t expect the answers to come easy, but I think our lives will be richer if we find them. If we choose them.
Do you think I’m way off base, or do you think this is really a thing? What have you made your own?
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