At Large in Ballard by Peggy Sturdivant

There are those who reset their lives on Jan. 1 but my life has always followed the academic calendar.

Life after Labor Day is a new beginning with resolutions on exercise and packing healthier lunches. So the last week of August is when I take stock of the last year and set my course for the next nine months. And for me, each August means reconciling my past life on the East Coast with my chosen one in Ballard.

My parents celebrated their 50th anniversary on the last day of August and for the 45th year three generations were under the same leaky roof in a summer cottage on Martha's Vineyard.

When I was the age of my twin nieces, my dad was a college professor. The island summers were always distinct from the academic year, with the family intact and my grandparents in residence. As my mother said "we went to the island the day after school got out and didn't leave until the day before school started."

On evenings when we stay on the beach for a last swim while watching sunset over the lagoon and then shower beneath the stars, I find myself wondering, why do I live so far away? Away from the spires of New England churches and the Atlantic shoreline. Away from four granddaughters singing "We Gather Together" over breakfast cereal and causing the cat to howl.

But as the evenings grow cooler I find myself thinking about the upcoming school year and start to miss my own block in Ballard.

There's a country western song that asks, "How can I miss you if you won't go away?" I'm destined to miss the island when I first return to Ballard - and Ballard while I'm away.

Each summer I hone my replies to questions about why we live so far away. When the humidity is at its worst on the Vineyard, I remember the feel of a dry breeze at Sunset Hill Park while looking down at Shilshole. I think of the moonrise over Phinney Ridge as seen from my bedroom window.

As much as we fought the inevitable as children, always wishing for a Nor'easter storm to shut down the ferry service and save us from school, summers always have to end. Bare feet need to be imprisoned back into shoes, calls need to be returned, property taxes paid and lunches packed for school and not the beach.

Martha's Vineyard and Ballard increasingly struggle with similar issues such as how to manage growth and transportation needs. The lack of affordable housing issue that is growing throughout Seattle is already at a crisis point on the Vineyard.

Those who work on the island increasingly cannot afford to live on the island: the second grade teacher, the clerk at the hardware store. Both venues are victims and beneficiaries of their popularity even as their economic backbones shift from maritime to retail.

In locations with such rich history we try to hold the past before our eyes to avoid seeing the present reality. I focus on the old-fashioned Ballard Avenue storefronts while stepping around outcast smokers in front of bars and taverns.

The Ballard skyline boasts cranes like compass points; directionals of growth as Ballard moves from its past as a "sleepy Scandinavian village" toward Seattle's vision of an "urban village." Just as summer always had to end, so did that sleepy time in Ballard.

I know that for a few days in Ballard I'll miss the particular feel of the air and the morning count of my mother's Heavenly Blue morning glories as they bloom for their one single day. I'll claim that nothing can be more beautiful than looking over to Cape Cod from the Oak Bluffs harbor, but within a day the view of Bainbridge and the Olympics as I walk along Shilshole will shift my loyalties and my center point back to Ballard.

Every summer I rediscover my childhood in the family cottage but every year I also return home and fall in love with Ballard again; the aptly named Golden Gardens, sprinkler overspray from the living roof of the Ballard library, the quiet of the streets as I bicycle on an early Sunday evening.

It's not that absence always makes my heart grow fonder, but so far, for 20 years now, Ballard has been able to win my heart again. I hope that much never changes.