I realized this blog has been a little neglected. We were in Mississippi most of October, and truth be told, it took most of November for me to get caught up on In the Warm Hold. I'm finally there and I felt like I needed to pay this space some attention. I'm going to pick up my "First Quarter Rewind" posts but since we're actually approaching the fourth and final quarter, I'm going to need a new name for it. I feel like there's a lot of fun stuff I want to share, but before that I think I'm long overdue for a feelings post.
I'm sure it was more than obvious that I loved Summer here. So many things about it made it rank among the best seasons of my life.
September came and it was HARD. It was probably the hardest month I've had here. I think most of that had to do with the fact that we were trying to make a lot of decisions, the most pressing one being how much longer we were going to live here but also a lot of other things that we needed to work out but could really only proceed on to once we made our moving decision. We just talked and talked about things and it was exhausting, to be honest. We knew we wanted to be back in Mississippi by Fall 2015, but we kept debating another Brooklyn Summer. A few months may not seem like a huge deal, but as alluded to, this past Summer was like magic.
October was largely dominated with getting ourselves back to Mississippi, getting Cookie married, enjoying Mississippi and our friends at a sort of frantic pace to get it all in, and then getting ourselves back to Brooklyn. It was also difficult, but so, so enjoyable. And it confirmed for me in a lot of ways the decision we finally had arrived at- which was to move home at the beginning of May.
November seemed to fly past us. If September was the hardest month, I think November felt the quickest. I'm not even sure why. We weren't super busy or anything. I'm sure it was because it took a little while to ease back in and once we did it felt like the month was nearly gone. It was an amazing month overall and it was wonderful to be back in the place we call home for now and just immerse ourselves in it. Toward the end of the month, during and after Thanksgiving, I did get really homesick. Much more so than I had in awhile. It was a good few days of it, but I came out of it eventually.
December seems to have brought a lot to the surface. I'm realizing how fleeting our time here is. I'm trying to take it in even more than I ordinarily do. There are so many times that my throat tightens and tears well up because I realize we're doing something for the last, or only, time.
Some of it is the big stuff- we went to see the balloons being blown up for the Macy's parade the on the eve of Thanksgiving and we're planning to make a special trip into Manhattan to see the big tree at Rockefeller Center. There's a handful of other things like that. But a lot of times it's the more mundane that pulls at my heart like a stubborn little tug-o-war playing child.
Every night- every single night- when I sit down at my computer to blog or email a friend or whatever, I make a point to sit (really sit!) and look at the lights strung around the courtyard. They're those bigger bulbs, about the size of a plum; but shaped more like an avocado, of course; and they're all different colors. In the past that hasn't really been my style exactly, but it's so magical and perfect to me here. They stretch out like a rainbow Candyland gameboard along the different paths that form the courtyard area of the complex. It feels cheerful and festive and beautiful and I love to just sit and be in those moments. I've tried taking a picture through the window and they come out horrible, understandably. I keep meaning to head down there and take some shots and I've promised myself that I will before the 25th.
The one big heart/head thing I have that I can't get to subside (and I know that realistically, it will probably be a long long time before it does) is that literally every day there is at least one moment where I feel either a powerful homesickness for what (and who) I miss in Mississippi or a poignant heartache for what (and who) we're leaving behind in Brooklyn. The hardest days are when I end up having to navigate both.
I know, in truth, this will probably be the reality of my life for a good while. Probably even after we get back home and settled, I'll deal a lot with the heartache and with a new found homesickness for a place that has been, very truly, HOME for awhile.
I've mentioned, either here or on my other blog that my friend Carrie made the point that just like loving a person, falling in love with a place is a risk. I can think of very few (actually, I can't think of any) times in my life where loving a person wasn't worth the risk to my heart. And Brooklyn has been worth the heart-risk a thousand times over.
I'm so thankful for it.
Even though 2014 is the last full year we will call Brooklyn "home"; Peyton, Annie, Graves, and I will carry little pieces of this adventure in our hearts for the rest of our lives. And that's incredible, and beautiful, and in some ways to me still knock you--out shocking.
I am thankful. I am joyful. And I am home.
For now.
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