(i carry it in my heart)

The very first thing my father asked me when I told him I was contemplating a move to Manhattan was if I was going to become a Yankees fan.  I wrinkled my nose in disgust, as if he'd just suggested I eat worms for dinner.  Never, I replied with a shudder. Never.

When the Red Sox clinched the American League championship last week, securing their spot in the 2018 World Series (yes!) I felt my first true wave of homesickness.  I drank my coffee out of my Red Sox mug that morning, I logged onto Boston.com to read all the Series coverage, I texted several fellow Bostonian baseball fans in excitement.  After 18 years of calling Boston home I knew how palpable the excitement was in that fair city, even hundreds of miles away I could feel it.

And on this most recent quiet Sunday, after a morning yoga class that I didn't truly love and a frustrating hunt through still unsorted piles of items in my still unsettled apartment, I felt another pang of loss; of missing Boston so completely that it stopped me in my tracks and forced me to catch my breath.  Rather than push that feeling away, I stopped what I was doing briefly, sat down on my couch and I just let myself be sad for a minute. The moment passed - good minutes and bad minutes are allotted the same sixty seconds (and how unfair is that?) but it was a minute I needed right then.  A reminder.  When you love something, when there is something engraved on your heart, your mind, your memory, it is always there, I think. 

I hope.

Of course, when I moved I knew I would be homesick.  I knew I'd have waves of nostalgia for my old treehouse, my Boston life, the day to day routine I'd carved out for myself.  When I signed my New York lease I realized those feelings would just come with the territory of this new Adventure, striking at moments I did or did not expect it. 

But.  I have realized admitting something is half of the battle.  So instead of pushing away my moments of missing Boston this week, rather than deny them when they surface, I'm acknowledging them. Giving them the space they deserve, admitting when I miss some thing, some one, some place.

It helps.

Two weeks and one day ago my beautiful Grandma passed away.  The loss of her is not something I am ready to write about here, not something I may ever want to write about here.  There is a new hole in my heart with her absence and I miss her with an ache I have never known before.  All of my life I have found inspiration and strength in the power of words; I believe they are our greatest tool.  In this instance though, at least in these early days of mourning, I am at a loss.  Wordless.  I know not what to say except I miss her.  I love her. 

Admitting that helps.    

Tonight, I got myself to a different yoga class, at a different studio.  I liked this class, I enjoyed the teacher.  I met myself on my yoga mat where I was today - where I have been here in week six of this New York adventure. After class I walked home through Central Park, the fall air is just the right temperature and there was a full moon overhead, guiding me toward home.  My new home.  For even as I miss Boston, I find myself opening up a new spot in my heart for New York, it is widening and stretching to let this new city in, giving her room to shine in her own right. She is working her way in, slowly proving herself, peeling back her layers of beauty.  I'm exhilarated every morning as I walk toward Central Park (Central Park! at the end of my block!) to catch the subway into the office, I'm amazed and thrilled every single time I give my address to someone and I get to say New York, New York.  This does not make me love or miss Boston any less.  I believe I might always consider myself a Bostonian living in New York - or a New Yorker up in Boston when I find myself in New England.

All of this is to say, and I'm not quite sure where I'm going with all of this anyway, except that I think it is quite possible to love two places fiercely and completely without abandoning one for the other. 

Just as it is quite possible to keep someone in your heart, always, even when they're physically no longer here with you.  The heart will expand for them, will save the space for them, always. Forever.

And that helps.