i often get colorado pangs.

they typically happen on a particularly hard new england day. a day like last monday when i felt really disconnected from my community and uninspired by most everything except my husband and my children. days when i feel like my house and my family are trapped inside a tiny colorful bubble; when outside the world is bleak and grey. i was struggling to find something out-of-the-house exciting to do and not wanting to travel 30+ minutes to one of the surrounding, er, more happening towns. we ended up at our local library. which, as horrifically embarrassing and totally telling as it may sound, i had to mapquest. like, yes, i didn’t know where it was. in my own town.

on the plus side, on the way there i found the local hospital and town hall – score! 

holding an 8 month old in my arms while supervising a 24 month old navigate  the staircase connecting the main floor to the  basement (because that was more exciting then the children’s room), it hit me; how much more blissful life would be if the world outside my bubble was also saturated in color.

by this point my husband is probably ready to stop reading. he doesn’t usually like to hear my colorado woes. maybe because he feels slightly guilty for luring me to connecticut with his boyish good lucks, amazingly sexy calves, and soulful heart. he needs to know that my home is where he is. where our children play, where our meals are cooked and where we lay our heads, together, at night. but shit, i think i might never stop smiling if those things happened in colorado.

a friend who lives there recently wrote on her family blog about an afternoon with her boys on the pearl street mall in boulder. and this is what really got me. because all of sudden, i saw myself pushing my babe with mybouncing toddler in toe over those charming cobblestones. i felt the always-present breeze blowing through my hair. you know, the one where if you weren’t totally land-locked, staring at the rockies you’d swear you were at the ocean.

i saw jackson climbing on the animal statues and running through the water fountains. i felt the warm sun on my skin and my straight, shiny, perfect-air-hair caressing my bare shoulders. i was completely and utterly there. and i’ve been “there” thousands of times since i left, but this time i was there as hannah: version 2010. momma hannah, wife hannah, almost 29 (eeek!) hannah. and i saw it and felt it and tasted it and desperately wanted it.

in honor of these pangs, here are some hannah: version co2004-5 i dug up

i have no regrets about moving away. the blessings  in my life the last 5 years have been amazingly abundant. but i am missing a passion for my community and an excitement and vibrancy in myself.

i will never live in boulder, colorado again. this i know. it was merely a point in time – a fleeting chapter in the novel of my life. one that i am oh so totally grateful for.

and it’s not that where i live is awful. in fact, i have great friends and neighbors. i’m close enough to visit our family on a regular basis. far from awful. it’s just that i want more. for me. and for my family. i’ve seen myself at my best – mentally, physically, emotionally – and i’d like to introduce my children and my husband to that woman.

via my beautiful friend and cousin emily, “You see, I want a lot, maybe I want it all: the darkness of each endless fall, the shimmering light of each ascent. ~Rilke”