This morning marks a family milestone- there are no Wilkins family homes in the Phillipsburg School District. My grandmother’s home in Pohatcong closed today, and the incredible people at DLP got my father and his siblings their original asking price. Wonderful people did wonderful things. I’m basically happy.

As I said though, it’s a significant day for me- basically none of my family is present in the towns we called home just a generation or two ago. There are no Wilkins in Phillipsburg, NJ, not even the wing of the family I never knew. My grandmother was a Kravchak from Brainards (Harmony Township), NJ- a village our family once was prominent in. No one related to us is still there. In fact neither side of my father’s family is still in Warren County. We’re all gone. Almost exactly 100 years after Julia and John Kravchak and Joseph Wilkins and his brother came here, they’re gone.

It’s not just my dad’s family though. My mom’s family had deep roots in the Poconos, specifically Monroe County- neither side seems to be left. The Treible and Vantran families are completely gone from that area for now, scattered all over Pennsylvania and America. My mom has an aunt and cousin still living in their home area in upstate New York on my grandmother’s side. But that’s it. Otherwise there are no ties to where we were 100 years ago. We’ve all left now. My Poconos family is all gone now.

Place, geography, is important to me. Towns have personalities. Where you are from often times tells a lot about you. Identity can be race, gender, or religion based. It can also be where you’re from. For our family, it’s part of our DNA. Or it has been. It was. Time passes though. People change. Places change. Values change. Homes change.

This Winter was long. It didn’t snow as much or anything like that, but it was cold. I thought about a lot of things. Some were good, some weren’t. I have changed a lot over the years. My life has too. But life doesn’t last forever, nothing does. Perhaps being released from life as it was can be a good thing. Either way, something different lies ahead. There are no anchors now. Things can go wherever I’d like. It’s a big world.

In a couple short weeks, it will be Easter. My grandmother’s flowers will bloom by then, they always do. She was good with flowers. For the first time in 40 years, they won’t be our’s, I won’t be there. But maybe now I’ll be somewhere better.