From Brooklyn to Bond Hill

With bated breath, it was exactly three years ago today that I returned to Cincinnati — and to Bond Hill.

I had grown up just down Reading Road, in Avondale, but left Cincinnati for NYC in 1999. I fell in love with New York; got married in New York; got grown in New York; gave birth to my son in New York and tried my best to be a great mother in a 700 square foot one-bedroom apartment, in New York.

But after 16 years, it was time to raise my baby near my family and near grass and trees. Upon finding a job in a nearby Cincinnati suburb, I set out on foot in the city to find a home. I walked through Clifton and North Avondale and Mt. Auburn, writing down landlords’ phone numbers found on frost-streaked ‘For Rent’ signs. Each property was a disappointment, some more expensively so than others. Just as I was running out of time, fate and Craigslist brought me to a beautiful, if battered, 1890’s Victorian home in Bond Hill, on Yarmouth Avenue.

After the momentary relief of having signed a lease, there was the reckoning: I had arrived back in Cincinnati with the disorientation of an exile, scarcely remembering the geography; with few friends; with little sense of what had and had not changed in my almost-two decades of absence. I returned to Cincinnati with little more than my infant son and desperation for a life that was less frenetic and encumbered than one I could eke out in Brooklyn. The early days were spent in an empty and drafty home, trudging to work in the snow at times because I not only lacked a car but even the knowledge of how to drive.

I mourned the loss of my New York dreams. I missed the companionship of my husband. My 14 month old son, so overwhelmed by the loss of his father and home, lapsed into silence and seemingly couldn’t find any language. He reverted to pointing rather than talking and clung to me. I feared that in returning to the Midwest, I had made a terrible and irrevocable mistake. In those early days I saw and felt coldness and absence so cutting that most nights I fell asleep in a knot of tears, exhaustion, misery and anxiety. Almost every day seemed to present some limitation or complication that was mundane but felt, at the time, maddening and deeply depressing.

And yet. Slowly came deliverance. My mother and I scrubbed the dusty house and batted away years’ of cobwebs. Trips to consignment stores and discount stores netted me furniture.  My mother took excellent care of my son, and of me. She seemed to know that I would break, even when I didn’t know that about myself.

The snow melted. I took the driving test umpteen times and finally, aged 35, got my very first drivers license. My husband rejoined our family, after finding a job. Our boy shone in the light of being reunified with his extended relatives.

And Bond Hill was explicitly part of my healing. The sound of the trains at night soothed me. The sight of a particular tidy and perfectly ornamented Craftsman on the corner raised my spirits, even when I had to walk to work. Neighborly waves and acknowledgements buoyed me. The sights of bunnies darting between yards filled my son with delight. Bond Hill was much like my home; lovely if battered, imperfect but charming. Three years on, I am immense grateful to have found this place, this community and this moment.