To the world we dream about, and the one we live in now.

A few nights ago I dreamt I was back in my old beloved Cambridge apartment. Or, more accurately, I dreamt I was able to return - that my landlord had realized once and for all that it had never been a good idea to force me to leave, that he never should have tried to sell it as a condo, that I was welcome to return just as soon as I wanted. In my dream, I was back in that living room of mine, with its bright bay windows, the sunlight pouring in like it does on the prettiest of fall New England days.  None of my furniture or my belongings were in the apartment, it was all still bare. Instead, it felt like it was waiting there, empty and ready for me. My bedroom was still to the left just as big and spacious and open as I'd left it, the kitchen to the right, my door to the back porch, open. My heart! My heart was so glad and happy it felt like it might burst.

By day I try not to let myself think back too much to that apartment for too long as ultimately the linger memories of it make me sad. But that night as I dreamt, I remember rolling over and realizing I was in the middle of a dream but feeling so comforted, my heart so content that I was allowed to move back Home, that I begged my brain to keep right on dreaming; to let me linger in that place just as long as my mind would allow.

Every place I have ever lived has offered an immediate feel about itself - some places felt like Home immediately, as if they'd just been patiently waiting for me to arrive; others have felt fine - totally adequate and safe and warm, but really just a stepping stone along the way for something else, something that would feel more permanent.  Clear as if it was yesterday I can remember stepping into that Cambridge apartment the spring of 2008, before it was mine, and knowing, within the first minute I was there that this was the place for me.  It was a disaster of a spot right then, mismatched paint colors on the walls, dirty, windows in desperate need of a good scrub...but I felt those bones right away, more than I had ever felt them before and I just knew.  I just knew it would be my home.

I have friends who have shared similar stories.  There's the one my old co-worker would tell about the condo he and his wife eventually bought, how even when it first came off the market and was sold to someone else he still knew it was going to be theirs someday.  When that initial offer fell through, it unfolded as he'd known all along it would, and he and his wife got it.  Another friend of mine "stalked" her house before it was ever listed; somehow she just knew that was the place for her and her family.  That house has been there home for a little over two years now.

Lately I have felt rather untethered. To say I'm Homesick would ring true, missing my old Boston friends and routines and wandering those city streets that I knew by heart.  Home. Logically, I knew there was no chance for me to stay in that apartment, my Home of ten years in Cambridge when the landlord made me move.  I had always said I would stay until I got kicked out - the spot was too perfect to ever leave on my own accord.  And so the universe eventually pushed me out, I made space for what is currently my New York adventure.

I am glad for this time in New York City; I am proud to be doing and living something I had always dreamed of, ever since I was a little girl. Still, I am homesick for Boston with an ache that I knew I'd have, it's a steady thrum low in my heart; I do not imagine it will ever leave. Yet even when I feel a bit blue and sad I can appreciate where I am these days, I get a thrill when I walk home at night in Manhattan, the skyline shimmering, all of those apartment windows lit up with for all of those different lives, their many different stories.  My apartment here on the Upper West Side is lovely; big by New York standards, a wall of windows looking out on to the street that captures a collective 'wow' from anyone who visits.  She's a good apartment and I know I'm lucky to have her (especially after spending a few days seeing what else was on the market in my price range). Still, I miss 29A.  I ache for that treehouse of mine back in Massachusetts just like I knew that I would on that sad day when I had to close the door one last time behind me.  I miss my childhood home in New Jersey with a similar ache, I can still picture every room, every door frame, each creak in the floor. At night, when I cannot sleep, I find myself re-tracing my steps through that childhood home - my bedroom, the kitchen, the woods just outside the front door.  Or I place myself back in Cambridge, standing in my kitchen, watching the breeze blow the curtains in my bedroom, or sitting in my living room, watching my neighbor tend his garden out my window.

Fitting, that these are the two spots I lived in the longest in my life.  I can't ever go back to either one; and that breaks my heart. I know I will never set foot in that old New Jersey home nor my old apartment again and maybe that's why they are always so close to the forefront of my mind.  If I don't forget them, if I remember every detail about them, then they aren't ever really gone.  Nothing lasts forever - the good and the bad - but oh, for those places we have known with every inch of ourselves, a true Home coming.

There are just so many lives to live; so many pathways and roads we each choose - or are chosen for us by the Fates - that blow us this way and that, that move us to so many homes and Homes throughout our days.