This week 2 families in my neighborhood are moving out. These are families whose parents lived here, who grew up here and who raised their children here, who retain the memory and history of Newburyport. And they are leaving.

They certainly aren’t the first “old timers” to leave my neighborhood. (In fact I count 6 families just within the last few years.)

I want to reach out and say “Nooooooooo, don’t go. We need you here so much.” We need the memories and history of this place that you denote. But it feels like grasping at water, only to have it slip through my fingers and off my hand.

My neighborhood is/was one of the few (maybe only) places in the South End of Newburyport, MA that was “undiscovered.” Undiscovered no more.

We are becoming “up and coming” just like so many of the neighborhoods in Newburyport, MA.

Not that that’s a bad thing, but I miss the people who have moved out. And quite frankly I miss the “mix” of people. A mix of “new” people as well as people who personify Newburyport’s history.

For the most part my neighbors haven’t said “why” they are moving out, but it appears to me that economic realities seem to play a major role in all the decisions to move.

And one of my neighbors, a wonderful, vocal Newburyporter had this to say. “I’ve got a doctor on one side and a CEO on the other, and I just don’t feel like I belong here anymore.”

And that may be part of it too.

I find that I am “shocked” every time an “old” family moves. And I fear that we could be losing Newburyport’s “flavor,” its feistiness, its memory, its history, its “Newburyportness.” That we could become yet one more bland suburban enclave without a living embodiment of our past.

The fact that often the insides of old houses are being ripped out without thought these days seems significant in more ways than “just” a physical building being gutted, with only the façade left standing. It’s becoming so prevalent now, that it almost seems symbolic.

When I see old buildings being gutted, it feels as if the memories and the history that make this historic seaside city significant, are being destroyed as well.

And as I was listening to my neighbor’s moving plans, it felt as if part of Newburyport that has given the city its memory, its history, its inner character (at least while I’ve been here these last 26 years) was in the process of being “gutted” too.

Mary Eaton
Newburyport