I heart home

This river valley, in the tip of the commonwealth, which has historically filled the role of stepchild to a city which is now on the brink of greatness, is where I call home. There is no need to insist to me that it is already great; I agree and it just keeps getting better. And there is no need to complain about what is wrong with Cincinnati, my cup is half full.

I mean, let’s face it; we do live in a pretty unique region of the world. I am not naive enough to think that there is no other place like the Greater Cincinnati region; I just believe there are very few. We are full of so many cultures, landscapes, makes and models that it creates something for just about anyone (if you are willing to seek it out).

It feels as if some time in the last decade, a great bolt of lightning must have hit the tallest building in downtown Cincinnati and spread out like veins filled to somehow connect us all. The veins slowly streamed to the east and to the west and then across the river, and somehow made us all part of one great something.

Yes, I may be from Northern Kentucky, but Cincinnati is my city, too. I care about the people who fill the streets, the businesses and homes that fill the buildings and all of the people living their dreams.

I have always been a strong advocate for ensuring Northern Kentucky gets a fair shake in our region. When I travel with friends who tell strangers they are from Cincinnati, I proudly boast that: “Actually, I am from Northern Kentucky, just a stone’s throw south of Cincinnati.” I am the girl who loves the expressions on people’s faces who arrived in the airport’s Terminals A, B and C only to learn they were in Northern Kentucky, not Cincinnati.

An Ohio ZIP code just simply would not feel like home to me. I am a Kentucky girl, but love my city just the same.

The city that I could virtually sketch the skyline full of rectangles, arches and squares, simply from memory. The city that as a child I remember traveling to, for what seemed like forever, for Downtown shopping at Christmastime. The city that now I travel into for amazing dinners, entertainment and memory-making with our two children. The city that I once was worried about, but now have eternal, relentless optimism for its future.

It is hard to go anywhere and not know someone. That is a wonderful thing, sometimes ironic, but wonderful. There is comfort in knowing someone everywhere I go. There is peace in a sense of small community that I am afraid we are losing, but I used to so desperately want to go away. And there is something magical about the way we fit together as tightly as a jigsaw puzzle to form the place we all call home.

I am proud of what we have become. While the river may still be an ocean to some, I see us as one great body of land, water and people who have a bright and promising future together. Maybe it was lightning, or maybe it was the natural evolution of a city that I am proud to call my home.