Episode 2: We Moved Across the Country During the Pandemic. Here’s How (and Why) Pt. 2

“What about Hudson?”

“Hudson, Ohio?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

You know that part in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation where Cousin Eddie and crew show up unannounced in the R.V., prompting Clark to exclaim, “If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn’t be more surprised than I am right now?”

That’s about how I felt when my wife, Erica, out of deep, deep left field, lasered Hudson, Ohio, at me as a suggested relocation destination.

We had only recently declared in private our intention to move back East, working off a short list of one city – Pittsburgh – that we weren’t even sure was The One. Nevertheless, Pittsburgh took us from flirting with to dry-humping the idea of moving following Steel City’s starring role in a January 2020 Parade magazine article, a story that most readers probably shoved their way past to get to the recipe for the anti-aging grain bowl. At the outset, Pittsburgh was merely a loose ideal for what we thought we might want, a starting point for something we might not even finish.

The paint was still drying on our declaration when Erica brought up Hudson, Ohio. For no good reason other than I was born and raised in Northeast Ohio and maintained a been-there-done-that attitude toward my homeland, I had never seriously considered moving back. There was that time in 2008 I interviewed for a position at Kent State that I didn’t get, but if we’re being honest here, that was an act of desperation (one of several) in a vain attempt to jettison a newspaper job that was souring by the day. The only way I ever imagined myself back in Ohio was losing my wife and daughter to some tragedy, selling everything and self-isolating in my parents’ house until I got my shit together again.

Growing up in Cuyahoga Falls, a blue collar/white collar suburb of Akron and the second largest city in Summit County, the neighboring village of Hudson was clearly defined in our imagined class warfare as the area’s breeding ground for rich snobs. Kids in Hudson played field hockey and lacrosse and probably had family crests. We played them in sports – at least, the sports that normal kids played – so once a season we got to see just how greener the grass was on the other side, and sure enough, Hudson had nicer (and greener) athletic fields than Falls did. Their high school resembled one of those fancy suburban high schools from a John Hughes film, and unlike Falls High, it lacked a poorly-lit windowless space called the Old Gym that perpetually smelled like feet and despair.

Erica had set foot in Hudson, I don’t know, maybe twice? The first time was during one of our yearly visits to Ohio, probably a decade ago by now, when we drove 20 minutes from Cuyahoga Falls for overpriced gourmet cupcakes because of course the only cupcake shop in Summit County was in Hudson. It was early June, sunny and slightly breezy, low humidity – a picture-perfect Ohio summer day. Under the blue sky and puffy white clouds, with the picnic blankets on the village green and the bustling boutiques on Main Street, downtown Hudson looked like a postcard you would buy, well, in a bustling boutique in downtown Hudson.

A few years later, our friends Kyle and Emily moved from the Falls to Hudson, and the next time we were back in Ohio we drove out for dinner on the deck overlooking their spacious new property. There were no gourmet cupcakes, but a good time was had by all, we were thrilled to be around old friends and it felt really good to drive with the windows down on tree-lined blacktop and breathe in the evening air among the rolling, dewy hills.

In her teenage and early adult years, Erica lived in a series of quaint New England towns similar to Hudson; one of those towns was, in fact, Hudson, New Hampshire. It’s no secret to our friends and family that we have missed living in New England since we moved to Boise from northern New Hampshire, and the Ohio Hudson endeared itself to Erica instantly. Even if the cupcakes had sucked that day (and they didn’t), it would have been worth the trip for the tiny New England time warp; I had been giving Erica tours of Northeast Ohio since 2002 and I remember her looking at me as we strolled along the village green like, you didn’t bring me here before, why?

Still, I needed an explanation, some context, for how in the hell Erica had arrived at Hudson, Ohio, having never spoken of it outside of our short visits and so soon after we had set our sights (sort of) on Pittsburgh.

“I’ve been looking into it,” she replied.

Huh.

Erica would later admit that she had been looking into Hudson as far back as the fall of 2019, months before any serious moving talk. The idea certainly was intriguing, and her initial pitch – her only pitch, as it were – was pretty solid. Pittsburgh, Erica reasoned, was all well and good, but if we were going to move closer to family, we might as well move really close to family. In moments of crisis, two hours might as well be two days, and anyway, isn’t Hudson charming?

It looked good on paper, but still, this was Hudson we were talking about, and my knee-jerk reaction was, how the hell are we going to afford it? Thanks to the inferiority complex I developed growing up in a make-believe class war with lacrosse-stick-wielding sweater boys named Sasha and Hunter and Chase, a town like Hudson seemed out of our league – until Erica had me stroll through a sampling of real estate listings on her phone. Turns out you can get a hell of a lot more house in Hudson for what we were paying in Boise, and with land to boot.

All that said, honing in on Hudson wasn’t a play for status or ego gratification or proximity to gourmet cupcakes (the shop went out of business anyway). It was all about our daughter. We could have explored any number of more affordable towns near my parents’ new house in Stow, but Hudson had one thing going for it no other zip code did: Summit County’s only state top 20 school system. Any potential struggles we faced, financial or otherwise, would be worth the next six years of Magnolia’s schooling. Plus we’d have built-in friends to drink with there.

Which is to say, I was sold. So on the last day of January 2020, we reached out to our real estate agent in Boise.

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