As I stand in front of Beauty’s city limit sign, taking the photo I always snap when we relocate to a new place, I ignore my mother’s irrational woe betides! about love and instead focus my lens on what this sign represents to me—my future.

See, Mom and I move around a lot. And by “a lot,” I mean seven moves in the last five years … seven different cities up and down the East Coast. We’re pros. We can skip town faster than a mobster who got tipped off that the cops were on their way.

One place is like another, and after a while, they all start to feel the same.

Except Beauty.

It’s the place where the all the important things have happened in my life. It’s where I was born—the birthplace of every Saint-Martin woman, all the way back to that silly love curse. It’s where Mom and I lived until I was twelve years old, and where I’ll finish high school next year, fingers crossed.

But most importantly, if things go as I hope they will, it’s also where my life is going to change. Monumentally. I have epic plans for the future, and they all start with this sign, right here. Everyone else may just see “Welcome to Beauty,” but not me. I see:

Hello, Josie Saint-Martin. Welcome to the Beginning of Your Life.

“It’s freezing out here, shutterbug,” Mom calls from the small moving truck parked behind me on the side of the highway. Our car, aka the Pink Panther, a 1980s cotton candy colored VW Beetle with too-many-thousand miles on the odometer, is hitched to the back. “Haven’t you taken this one before? Forget tradition. It’s not going anywhere. Shoot it later.”

“Don’t rush me, woman,” I call back, capping the lens of my vintage Nikon F3 camera before I settle it into the brown leather case that hangs around my neck. The City Limits photo is tradition, sure, but taking photos of signs is my artistic vision as a photographer. Some people like photographing landscapes or people or animals, but not me. I like billboards, snarky church signs, obnoxious neon diner signs, street signs riddled with bullet holes. They all tell a story. They communicate so much with so few words.

And Mom is right about one thing. Unlike people, signs are always there, twenty-four seven, waiting for you to take their picture. You don’t have to text them to ask if they’re coming home for dinner. You don’t have to be mad at yourself for being disappointed when they text back: go ahead, order takeout and eat without me. Signs are dependable.