True Romance.

This September it will have been seventeen years since I have lived, for any regular stretch of time, in my hometown.  Considering I left home at seventeen, bound for college, and am now 34, I am at the divide.  Half of my life spent in one place, the other half spent elsewhere. What an interesting notion of being in a position where you can split your life down the middle, cut it to its very center, equal on both sides.

The day I left for college, I sat in the passenger seat of our white Ford Explorer, my Dad on the driver's side.  We were packed to the gills, my mother and brother would follow us in a separate car.  As my Dad started to pull out of the driveway, I asked him to drive as slowly as possible, twisting my neck to watch our house for as long as I could before we pulled out onto our street and then out of our development completely.  Even then, I knew that the day I left for college marked a closing of one chapter, the opening of an another.  I could and I would come home again, of course.  However, I also knew, deep down in that part of our minds that always know the truth before the rest of our body does, that I would never return for good; that things would forever be different after we drove away on that cool morning late in the month of August.

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Considering that I have spent fifteen of the seventeen years since I moved away from home in Boston, I am close to reaching the point where I've spent almost as much time in this city as I have anywhere else.  A few years back, frustrated by a myriad of things, I kept tossing around the idea of a move.  Maybe I should finally try San Francisco, I thought to myself.  Or maybe it was time to move back to New York City.  Or perhaps I should try Philadelphia, the city closest to the spot where I grew up.  In full disclosure, I didn't actually take too many active steps in the direction of any of these cities, beyond scoping out Craigslist now and again to see what apartments were on the market.  Still I did mull a bit, churning over the possibility quietly in my mind.

Then something happened.

It could have been the quick succession of new jobs I grabbed in my company or maybe it was one of the many quiet, perfect in their ordinary way, afternoons spent catching up with a good friend at one of our respective homes.  Perhaps it was a night spent dancing late into the night with friends at another friend's wedding, in awe of the amazing people I have been lucky enough to find in my life.

Or maybe it was much more simple.  Maybe it was one night as I sipped a cup of tea and watched the snowfall out on the streets below my apartment, or perhaps, it was the evening where I sat with a glass of white wine and watched the sunset from my porch.   Sometimes, I actually wonder if it was the 2013 Boston Marathon.  For it was that week - as I watched - lived - those horrible and insane days with my fellow Bostonians, as I followed the news like a hawk, as I answered text after email from concerned friends and family, that I became full aware that some switch inside me had flipped.  I realized, fully and completely for perhaps the first time, that I'm not going anywhere.  I have been lucky enough to already have found the spot I needed to land in my life; I am right where I am supposed to be. 

Sometimes, on an idle afternoon, when I am headed somewhere in the city - to yoga, to meet friends,  or simply running errands, I will catch a glimpse of the familiar Boston skyline from a new angle.  It's a city I know so well at this point, like an old friend, and yet, I still have moments that flood me with gratitude and awe.  I get to live here, I think to myself.  Right here in this city, this region, that managed to steal my heart utterly and completely while I wasn't even paying attention.   

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When you leave Logan airport, depending on which route you take, you always hit a crest in the road before dipping down and into one of the two tunnels that propels you toward the highway.  No matter how late my flights land or what sort of weather we're dealing with, my heart always catches a bit in my throat when the cabbie and I round that particular bend; when I catch my first full glimpse of the Boston skyline.  Depending on whatever trip I am coming back from, I left days or weeks earlier.  But now I have landed.  I have returned.  I am back home.