HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- It's that time of year. The moving vans are maneuvering the narrow streets downtown, and newcomers are unpacking. More than 30 years ago, I was one of them, unloading one household and setting up another.

Shortly after we settled in, I sat on a schoolyard bench while my daughter took her piano lesson across the street. While she practiced her scales, my son played on the jungle gym.

If a passerby had told me that very school -- East Clinton Elementary -- was about to be sold and the land beneath it made into upscale houses, I wouldn’t have cared. I was a newcomer, not really invested.

But now, more than three decades later, I am. I care what happens to schools and parks and neighborhoods and roads. I’m delighted that the WPA-built school will stand and a public park will circle it. I can still sit on that bench I found all those years ago.

I live here. I’ll stay here. It’s my home.

But anybody who’s lived in a place for a long time, still daydreams about moving somewhere else every now and then. Here in the northern kingdom of Alabama, who hasn’t wanted to pull the Gulf of Mexico up closer, like some kind of blue and green rug, so that a trip to the beach was a two hour jaunt instead of a six hour one? But my friends who moved to the beach came back. They didn’t know anybody, they said. People just drifted through.

And who hasn’t wished for Alabama’s summers to be cooler and its politics more progressive? My friends who moved to L.A. eventually returned, too. It was too busy, they said. Obviously, lots of people move and make new lives for themselves, but that takes time.

When I see a moving van, I think of just how much time it does take to feel rooted to a place and what you have to figure out once you move. I had to find out where to get a good haircut and where to go for a ladies-who-lunch. I had to find the best gym that allowed me to watch Jeopardy and shout out the wrong answers, all while walking on the treadmill.

As a newcomer, I found a church, a writing group, a hiking trail, and a place to buy a dress for a party. I found a doctor, a dentist, an organization, a group of pals.

Eventually, I figured it out. I learned the worst time to head up University Drive (that would be most times) and the place that sells the juiciest roast chicken. After a few years, the cashier at the grocery store told me not to buy cat food since my husband just had, and the woman at the dry cleaners joked about red wine stains on my napkins. Again. The man who ran the Subway near my office knew me as “tuna on whole wheat.”

Last year, driving by Maple Hill Cemetery, I realized how many funerals I’ve been to and how many weddings, too. I counted up how many springtimes I’ve watched the cherry trees bloom in Big Spring Park, first with my children, and now with my grandchildren.

I’d give this advice to the hundreds of newcomers who move here each year: You don’t have to be an engineer or a rocket scientist to live here. You don’t even have to be from this place. Most people aren’t. You just have to stick around long enough to have the right to complain about things and try to make them better. Then the town you moved to becomes the town you live in and you’re home.

Huntsville resident Beth Thames is a retired college English instructor and freelance writer. Contact her at bethmthames@gmail.com.