Ohh, Boston You're My Home

Today’s been kind of a tough day. I made my desktop background at work a picture of the Boston skyline, and though I barely have the chance to look at it, the picture has me thinking of home. I miss Boston, and though I don’t think about it too often to ease the effect of homesickness, it’s always there in the back of my mind. Even though I grew up outside of the city and was home for 3 weeks in August, I feel like it’s been years since I was there.

I scrolled through some pictures of Boston on Flickr and that didn’t make it any better. I thought of the harbor and downtown, all business. But quickly down the streets under constant repair (have they finally been fixed by now?) and you wind up by the Fleet Center. I don’t care if it’s the TD Banknorth Garden or whatever it is now, it will always be the Fleet Center to me.

The North End is just up around the bend, with excellent Italian food and tiny cobblestone streets. Colonial architecture and Quincy Market, where dozens of bars, restaurants, and designer stores make their home. Hardly anyone knows that Quincy Market is where slaves were once sold before it was outlawed in Massachusetts. But that was a long time ago.

I think about the dishes I miss—the New England clam chowder and lobster. The restaurants I’m familiar with from back home, the dishes I could count on having regularly which now are things to be cherished, like a Caesar salad, for example. On talking to my friends and hearing what they’re up to, where they’re moving to in and around the city, it makes me regretful that I’m missing out on time with them and the experiences they’re putting together. But like I’ve told myself before, it would be no different if I had been offered a job in Los Angeles and had to move there. I’d be just as far removed.

It makes it harder also to think that when I do go back to the United States eventually, I won’t be going back to Boston permanently. At least for the time being anyway, because it looks like I’ll be doing my grad school in the Washington D.C. Metro area. I miss the fall and the changing of the leaves in New England, and football on Sundays, and sitting in basements watching movies with people who I don’t need to tell my life story to because they already know it from being there, among other things. So today is kind of a tough day.