When

by John Ince, President Charlottesville Country Properties, LTD

I remember a few years ago when my daughter was about ten, something spooked the horses, and they started galloping, snorting, tails flagged, prancing as Arabs do. I stopped in my tracks and said, “Man, that’s something, isn’t it?” “What?” my daughter asked.

The horses had been around since before she was born. She took no more notice of them than I would the big oak that stands just off our house. An everyday occurrence to her… If she only knew, knew about kids that don’t ever see grass, don’t have a dad who cares or just don’t have a place like Charlottesville, Virginia to grow up.

I was born in San Diego but left as an infant, moving every 18 months as we followed my naval officer father from station to station. I went to 13 different schools before I graduated high school and never had a life-long friend. Today I’ll drive by Martha Jefferson Hospital where both my children were born and can look up at the window that I looked out of as their mom delivered them into their lot in life, a life as an American, in Virginia into a warm, loving family, comfortable and well fed. My son has a college roommate he’s known since kindergarten.

I suppose youth is for idealism rather than perspective, but at least I know that they have grown up in a nearly trouble free environment in the midst of a remarkably happy population. They pass through some of the prettiest countryside in the world each day of the week though they hardly glance out the window. They have attended exceptional public schools that paved the way for my son to enter Virginia Tech and my 10th grade daughter to imagine her possibilities endless. They have a high standard for comfort and a remarkable tendency towards boredom.

I remember a few years ago when I took my kids to Times Square. They were 14 and 11. Nothing could have prepared them for the glitz and glamour, the hustle, the noise, the Broadway shows. They, like their dad were supercharged with metro energy after three days and two nights of experiencing the “real world”. My son made it clear he was destined for the city, New York City.

As I look forward five years or so, I see my son or my daughter walking through the cold, windy streets of Manhattan, Boston or Chicago. No longer are their necks craned to see the tops of the skyscrapers and what they thought was a huge salary is only allowing them the most meager apartment on top of noisy traffic and dangerous streets. Will they think about the horses then? Will they think about their life-long friends, their hometown? I hope so. I think so.

As a Realtor specializing in country property around Charlottesville my typical client is a UVA alumni who fell in love with Charlottesville while in school then went off to have a career with dreams of returning to Virginia’s Piedmont someday. Such is the draw of this beautiful place, loved all the more by being away. It’s a place that can fit like a glove, smell like home cooking and look like paradise… if you’re lucky enough to call it home.
www.charlottesvillecountry.com