More to love in Ohio

In February of 2019, I was granted a divorce. The details are not pretty. However, only from ashes does a phoenix rise. Divorces, especially ones like mine, are traumatic, but I learned something from that experience: trauma has a way of bonding people together.

I met my friend in Ohio when we both worked in marketing in Central Texas. Her husband was in the Army and stationed close by. We quickly became close, and closer when we had the same frustrations with our husbands. Before long, though, she and her husband were whisked away to another duty station ,and there began a long pause on our friendship, that is, until we discovered we were both getting divorced from those husbands.

She was living with her mom back in Ohio during her transitional phase, and I was living with my neighbor during mine. She and I desperately needed to have a glass of wine and compare lives, stories, and, most importantly, some laughter. As it turned out, flights from Austin to Ohio are surprisingly cheap, so I packed a weekend's worth of clothes for my youngest son and I (two gallon sized bags of clothes in my purse = no baggage fees!), and away we went.

"I'm going on a weekend getaway; I'll be back next week," I told my mom, brother, friends, coworkers, etc.

They all asked the same question, "Who the hell vacations in Ohio?!"

I do, apparently.

I didn't know enough about Ohio to even have a guess at what to expect. Chickens, maybe? Slow-driving pickups? Hell, I had to Google a map of the States to find out where it was exactly.

Without a clue or a care, away we went. Between the airport and the town of Asheville, between her house and the water park, wherever we went, we had music on and while she drove, I watched the landscape, always fascinated by the new and previously unseen.

I looked out the windows and watched the slow-rolling landscape, the lush emerald grass, the pockets of trees, the gentle lefts and rights of the road before me. It is beautiful. It has a nostalgic feel, as most countrysides do, I think.

It's not so different than Central Texas: warm, green, humid, but there was a definite distinction. And then I saw it: a lack of fencing around property. Houses just sat openly near (but not too close) to one another without a fence between them. Backyards weren't squared off by pickets or wire. Back patios faced each other, and I could envision the Fourth of July, neighbors grilling and waving while children splashed in sprinklers or slid on slip-n-slides from yard to yard.

Texans have a historic attachment to fences, I think. "This is my property" and all that, which I didn't give a second thought to until I saw how aesthetically pleasing it is to see all the grass and landscape and lawn art or yard decorations of each house without the restriction of a wood or chain link fence. Moreover, we all know that a fence in derelict condition isn't even as effective as it is an eye sore.

"What about dogs?" I asked my friend and her mom on a drive one day. Doesn't anyone mind if your neighbor's dog is just roaming from yard to yard? No, not really, they said.

"What about kids?" I remembered my ex-husband being surly about our own neighbor's kids playing in our front yard. Nope, they said, normally isn't a problem.

And, to be honest, why would it be a problem? People typically love kids and dogs; babies and puppies are what make Instagram and Facebook posts thrive. It made me think, do Texans put too much emphasis on property lines? It seems like something that would be so easily let go of. Pet all the dogs, not just your own. Watch the neighbor's kids grow, just like your own. Legally, the land you purchase is the land you own, but does that mean that's the only land you're allowed to roam?

There's a lot to love about life, and more landscape to love in Ohio.