Though I never lived in Boston proper, for 10 years I lived "on the other side of the river" and loved so much about the Boston lifestyle. I'd grown up Southern but only somewhat; my mom was from New England, my summers were spent in New England, my mentality was a lot more New England, I learned pretty quickly after moving there, than anything I'd experienced before. Still, the hustle-bustle of pedestrian-packed sidewalks, the incomprehensible nature of the subway (at first just the act of riding public transportation was shock enough; then I had to sort out a subway system that relied on me to know whether I was headed "inbound" or "outbound" at any given moment); the persistent, interminable winter; the accents that were incomprehensible sometimes (just ask a local to say "mirror" or "drawer" and you'll understand my confusion); the frozen ice of winter on the Charles River; the darkness mid-day, a 4:30 start to night-time for a quarter of the year... oh, there were so many things to adjust to. And adjust I did; fall in love with so much of it I did.
I grew up there. I found my intellectual curiosity there, got my heart broken for the first few times there, embraced a broad extended family of relatives and very dear friends there, learned how to cook there, established myself successfully in a first career there, discovered and explored deeply motivating passions like volunteering and photography there, learned to not only feel but actually be whimsical there. I grew up there; not through childhood but rather into adulthood. At age 18, I was timid; by 28, I'd become a person who would quit her job all of a sudden after a lovely lunch break in Copley Plaza on a beautiful summer day and up and move, with no new job lined up, to San Francisco -- for the sake of adventure (and, of course, warmer weather).
I left that place behind with the fullest of hearts; I walked away smitten, so that each year when I come back I feel the sensation of falling for it all over again. I walked away toward something equally new -- and equally easy to nestle into, to find my place in. I think of myself almost as a Californian now, eight years into living here, but when you ask me where home is, I am just as likely to say New England as the Bay. Home is where the heart is indeed.
