By Matt Boren

I really understand Dorothy. While I, too, learned a great deal on my journey through OZ (Los Angeles in my case) I had for years wanted, more than anything, to go home.

The pandemic, in all of its drudgery, has offered some very powerful realizations. Among them, that I had the permission all along to click the heels of my Air Force Ones three times.

Our dear friends have lived in Maplewood for some time now and because of their love affair with this town and their Instagram pictures depicting its charm, beauty and magic, we found ourselves dreaming on a life here.

When the three thousand miles that separated us from our parents and siblings - all of whom live in the North East - seemed to double and then triple as the pandemic raged, we knew that the physical and emotional pain caused by not being able to see our families was not only too much to bear but unnecessary. Knowing the pandemic would one day be over and travel would normalize again was no longer enough for us and while the anguish and distance we were experiencing was not necessarily because of the pandemic, it was certainly revealed by the pandemic.

And as is often the case, one revelation leads to another and then, of course, to another.

We wanted our daughters to be near their cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. We wanted them to have snow days and the freedom to walk and bike around their hometown - two things not possible in L.A. We wanted a straight-forward, solid school system. We wanted them to experience the foliage, the snowstorms, the spring. We wanted them to have a piece of what we had growing up.

Friends of ours moved from L.A. to Hawaii around the same time we moved to Maplewood. One correspondence we had knocked the wind out of me. I wrote to our friends that being in Maplewood had me feeling a calm, a peace, a contentment unlike any I’d experienced in years. Our friends wrote back: “Same. That’s how we know we’re home.”

That’s how we know we’re home. That is how we know we are home. Those words were on a loop in my head, in my heart. They still are.

We had never lived in New Jersey. Didn’t know much about the state to be honest. This wasn’t moving home the way moving home is depicted in films. This was a more nuanced, more soulful kind of moving home. A moving home to be near our roots that even under feet of snow can’t be covered up. A moving home to reconnect with the same reality and values and seasons that guided us, taught us, shaped us and helped build us strong enough to head out into the world.

And it is important to note that there are, in fact, some OZ-ian things afoot here in Maplewood including, but not limited to, a veritable Lollipop Guild. When we moved in every single masked neighbor stopped by with Banana Bread or cookies from The Able Baker, handmade welcome cards, well wishes. For the exception of a small handful, we never met the majority of our neighbors in Los Angeles. And then there was our very own Glinda (otherwise known as Vanessa Pollock) who did not arrive via bubble - apologies for bursting yours. She arrived in a real estate van (super cool in its own right) and with love, patience and integrity got us in to nearly twenty houses and like the good witch herself, she made certain we followed our hearts. And follow follow follow our hearts we did and by doing so we found our home.

Home.

There really is no place like it.

Author Bio

Matt Boren

Matt Boren is an author, TV/FILM writer and actor and along with his daughters Evvy and River and wife Michelle - a proud citizen of Maplewood. His new Audible Original - Brackish Waters (Performed by Christina Applegate) arrives March 18, 2021.