We pulled into St. George a couple of days ago, and coming around that last corner into the city, something hit me. Just a flash. There and gone in a few seconds. But it stuck with me long enough that I’m still thinking about it, so I figured it was worth writing down.

For years, St. George was my escape.

We had a home in Ivins while I was still practicing five hours north. Most weeks I’d finish up at the office on Wednesday, get in the car that night, and make the drive down. The moment I came around that corner, something in me let go. Down here, nobody needed a crown seated. Nobody’s payroll depended on me. The days were nothing spectacular. Time in the pool, a bike ride, a hike, maybe a trip to the lake. My older sister and her husband lived a couple of blocks away, and we’d spend evenings playing games with them. On Sundays I went to church and played the piano for the primary kids.

Think about that for a second. Up north I was Dr. Garner, running a practice with seven treatment rooms. Down here I was the guy on the piano bench while a room full of kids, ages three to twelve, sang their hearts out. And I loved it.

Then every Sunday after church, I’d get in the car, drive five hours north, and put the title back on. Monday morning, the pressure was waiting right where I left it.

That was the rhythm for several years. St. George wasn’t really a town to me. It was a pressure valve.

So when I came around that corner this week and felt that flash, my first thought was that I missed our home here. We sold it when we moved to Florida. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized it wasn’t the house I was missing. It was what this place used to mean. The relief. The permission to stop being the dentist for a few days.

And here’s what surprised me. The feeling passed almost immediately. It got replaced by the thought of seeing my daughter and her family, and honestly, by what’s real right now. I didn’t have to push it away. It just didn’t have anywhere to land.

Because the truth is, I don’t need an escape hatch anymore. There’s nothing to escape from. The thing I used to drive five hours to borrow every week, I now own outright. Florida isn’t my vacation from real life. It is my real life.

But there’s a strange cost to that. When your refuge stops being a refuge, it becomes just a pretty town where your daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids live. Still beautiful. Still full of people I love. But the magic it had, that specific relief of hanging up my lab coat for a few days (mine were never white, by the way, I always wore the colored ones), is gone now. Because the lab coat is gone.

And I’ll be honest about the other part too. I feel like a visitor here, because I don’t own a place of my own anymore. Same thing up north in my hometown, where I’ll be later this summer. Thirty-seven years of practicing in Utah, raising a family in Utah, and now I sleep in a guest room when I come back.

If you’re planning your own exit, put that on the list of things to expect. You will become a visitor in the places that made you. On paper, that sounds like a loss.

But here’s what I’d tell you after two days back. It isn’t a loss. It’s proof the transition worked. The old me needed St. George to survive the practice. The new me just gets to enjoy it. This weekend I’ll be at my daughter’s house with about a hundred people celebrating America’s 250th birthday, and not one of them will call me Dr. Garner.

They’ll call me Grandpa. And that title doesn’t come off on Sunday afternoon.

I wrote more about what this letting go actually took in what my faith taught me about letting go, if you want the fuller story.

Ray