Up to that point in my life, I thought it was normal to uproot every few years and go somewhere new, if only for more excitement or more pay. While growing up, I had watched fathers follow jobs from place to place and drag their families along. I had also read countless stories about pilgrims, explorers, and pioneers. These were the venturesome souls, the ones with gumption, while the folks who stayed put were bigoted, listless, and dull. At our most lively, I came to believe, Americans were a footloose people, always striking out for new territory.

So instead of dismantling the crates we had used to ship our things from England to Indiana, I stored them away, keeping them handy for our next move. I worked hard at my job, but I didn’t pay much attention to this place where my job happened to be located. After a year in Bloomington, however, Ruth became pregnant, and the following winter she gave birth to our first child. From the moment I heard baby Eva draw breath, the alchemy of fatherhood began to work a change in me. I began to look at our surroundings with a fresh awareness. How clean was the air that our daughter was breathing? How pure was the water she would drink? How safe were the streets? Was the library well stocked with children’s books? Were there parks where she could play, museums where she could explore? How good were the schools? Were the teachers well trained and well paid? And who took responsibility, inside or outside of government, for making sure these needs were met?

Suddenly I was beset by questions about this place where my daughter had entered the world. In seeking answers, I began to see Bloomington not merely as a way station on my career but as a community, with its own history, virtues, and flaws. About the time Eva learned to walk, Ruth and I bought an old brick house within strolling distance of the courthouse square, near a city park and a public school. It was a sobering step for me to sign a mortgage promising payments for the next thirty years. I had been alive only twenty-eight years, and already I had dwelt in ten houses. Ruth and I could afford this house only because it was small and run-down. No sooner had we settled in than we began fixing it up, and the sweat and imagination we put into the work strengthened our marriage to one another as well as to the place.

“What about those shipping crates?” Ruth asked me one day. They were just taking up room, and she didn’t plan on moving again any time soon. After mulling it over, I pried the crates apart and used the wood to build storage shelves in the basement.

Within a few years our second child was born, a boy named Jesse. His arrival only deepened in me the change begun with Eva’s birth. Here were two reasons for staying put. Children crave stability, a known world that is stimulating but safe. They also crave novelty, of course, but against a background of familiarity. For infants, the parents provide such a known world, but as children grow they need first the home, then the neighborhood, then a town or city for space to explore. Ruth understood from the beginning that Bloomington could be such a nourishing space for Eva and Jesse, and I came to agree with her.

As I recognized our family’s need for a firm home ground, I also recognized my community’s need for citizens who stay put. Most of what I valued in Bloomington was the result of efforts by people who loved this place, either because they grew up here and chose to stay, or because they landed here and chose to remain. I suspect the same is true of all flourishing communities.

Now, more than three decades later, having paid off the mortgage, Ruth and I are still fixing up our old house. Eva has settled with her husband a few blocks away, and has given birth to a daughter of her own. In fair weather, my granddaughter and I often go to one of the parks, or we walk downtown to the children’s museum, the history center, or the county library, or we stop for a snack at the food co-op, or we check out the house renovation projects in the neighborhood, or we amble through gardens examining whatever happens to be in bloom, or we listen to birds, or we study bugs, or we go wading in a creek, or we rest on a bench in the shade of some great tree and watch the strollers pass, visiting with the many people we know, here in our hometown.

Scott Russell Sanders is the author of more than twenty books of fiction and non-fiction, including Staying Put, Hunting for Hope, and A Private History of Awe.  He is a distinguished professor of English at Indiana University.