Once I left Ballard for five weeks in the fall. When I returned my favorite place for lunch had gone out of business, my radio station had gone off the air and my best friend had moved in with her fiancé – on Mercer Island.

When things are lost, whether it’s a compact disc or a business, I mourn them for a long time, torturing myself with an empty disc case or an obsolete menu as though to rub salt into a wound.

I’m about to make the annual trek back east, and given the number of changes in my life and Ballard in the last year, I’m already worrying about what may be lost while I am not here to guard them. I try not to think about my $71.73 credit that has already been lost at Epilogue; that’s minor compared to losing such a great used book store.

When I return from New England it will be official that my Ballard-born daughter isn’t buckled in beside me. She has packed her bags and set off for the freshman dormitory.

Whenever I drive home from the airport these days I still get confused about where I live now. Twenty-one years of turning left off of 65th Northwest doesn’t go away overnight.

What will be the major change when I return? Will Ballard in the Park on 24th Avenue Northwest be close to done?

Will the QFC on Crown Hill have ended its lease and closed its doors? The last time I was there in August a familiar face from the 24th Avenue location pointed out the link to an on-line survey on the receipt?

“Is this a survey about QFC in general or what to do about this location?” I asked her.

“This location,” she replied. Katie looks so young but also so wise and calm.

While passing the meat department I’d overheard a shopper say to the butcher, “I live here in Ballard but I don’t go down there. I don’t go down to Ballard. No parking. It’s just bad. I have a life. I don’t have time for that.”

I was a bit shocked by her words. I’ve heard people dismiss downtown Seattle and other neighborhoods, but downtown Ballard?

True I’ve heard from some older drivers that it’s hard for them to drive to downtown Ballard, but every one of them was over 90 years old. This woman was younger than me.

I felt immediately defensive. The Farmer’s Market is increasingly rich, ever more similar to the European model and I’m proud that it doesn’t cease in the winter like a wimpy fair weather friend.

It’s true that you have to get to Café Besalu before 8 a.m. on a weekend, but now there’s Honoré on Northwest 70th as well. The Ballard Corners Park is finally a reality in all its stone-couch glory.

There are more planting strip gardens than ever and the Limback’s reader board still reigns. Parking isn’t what it used to be 50 years ago or even 10, but I love downtown Ballard, east and west.

I have a life to too. So, perhaps, this is the year that I try wondering about what will have been gained while I’m out of town instead of lost. After all this is the Ballard summer that everyone is finally having a good year for home-grown tomatoes, and the fruit fly crop has never been finer.

Tuesdays in Ballard has been a wonderful thing and I have been particularly enjoying weekly taste tests at the Java Bean corner table.

If you cut back a hydrangea hard it tends to come back stronger than ever. There’s been some hard pruning going on with Ballard businesses but there are always new ones.

A new curator at Nordic Heritage Museum, an architect already at work on plans for their future location, new friends along the alley, a new kitten stretched impossibly long beside me.

So I will be away for a few weeks, planning to return to these pages on Sept. 23. Put batteries in the smoke detectors, support your favorite place for lunch, don’t let friends decamp to Mercer Island, in other words, stay Ballard. Change, but not too much.

Peggy Sturdivant can be reached atlargeinballard@yahoo.com.