My mother is moving back to Jamestown after being away for more than five decades.

She’ll have come full circle — having been born here and having spent her childhood here, and then driving away from here one day long ago in a white dress as rice was being thrown at the back of a decorated Buick.

Her wedding day was the day she put Jamestown in her rear view mirror — leaving her small town life for those unknown roads ahead, because when we’re young, we all think happiness is somewhere else.

She did well out there in the big world; she’s had a nice life. But now — now that she’s ready to take a deep breath and put her feet up, this is where she wants to be.

Lots of people leave their hometowns, but lately I’ve been hearing about all of the people that come back. I keep running into them — the painter, a mover, a friend and her family, and my mother.

The painter told me he moved to North Carolina and for a while, he and his wife both liked it. The weather was mostly fine, the people mostly nice, and it was a new place and new seems to soothe that itch we have to wander. Also, we like to think of ourselves as people that can plant ourselves in new pastures with ease if that’s what we want to do.

But here’s what happened: his wife started to miss home after awhile. It didn’t happen the first month or even the second; it took some time. But after she got over the pretty mountains, and the sweet tea, and the swings on all those southern porches, she started to miss her family and her friends.

And so they came home.

I spoke to another guy — a mover — who told me he moved to Florida for awhile, tired of the winters here and looking for the sun. He found a good job with a cable company and he stayed for a time, traveling around the state, seeing new things.

“I’d moved away before,” he said, “but then I’d start missing it here and I’d always come back.”

He came back again this last time, too, and while he still curses the long winters, he knows he won’t be packing up again.

Sometimes you have to move away to see what you already had.

I think there’s something special about Western New York. When I moved to Massachusetts in 1992, I was immediately struck by the fact that people didn’t speak to one another in grocery store lines. I tried to talk to the woman behind me at the Stop ‘N Shop on Cape Cod and she looked at me like I had two heads.

I ran home and told my husband, “People don’t talk to each other here

In grocery store lines!” as if I were reporting the landing of a UFO in the grocery store parking lot.

That’s all I ever knew — that anywhere and everywhere people chatted with one another as if they’d known one another their whole lives. I had to get used to the idea that neighbors weren’t all that friendly with one another in Yankee Land, and while I adjusted, it never felt right.

I remember at my wedding, my husband’s friends that came from afar were just enchanted with the people of Western New York who struck up conversations with them all over the place: the drug store, the tavern, the tuxedo rental store.

And so I wonder if that’s what we miss when we move away — this feeling of community, of camaraderie, this idea that you might meet your new best friend walking into the dry cleaner.

It’s not like this everywhere. In fact, it’s very rare. And sometimes you have to move away to see that for yourself.

A friend of mine from across the lake was telling me about her trip to Brigiotta’s for some shopping earlier in the day.

A woman was looking at pineapples and they struck up a conversation about geography. The conversation continued as they shopped, up and down one side of the store to the next, and then all the way through the checkout line.

They’d never seen one another in their entire lives.

But that’s the kind of stuff that happens here, and while it might seem like part of normal life to you, don’t take it for granted.

I’m sure you know all kinds of people who moved away and never came back. But you probably know people who did a U turn, too.

Here’s what I think: you most certainly can come home again, all the richer for knowing exactly what it is you missed.