Returning To The Place I Left

Tomorrow I’m going back to Boston.

I’ve spent this last week in Istanbul living my normal Istanbul life: playing hostess to visiting friends, wandering around the city taking pictures, riding ferries, napping on the couch in my sunny salon of a room. And yet I’ve also been packing up my life, tying up loose ends, trying to prepare myself for two months away from this city, two months in the USA.

Minus my five unexpected days in Vermont last summer, I’ve been away for a year and a half.

I’m a little nervous.

I anticipate that my Boston stay will be emotional. After all, this is the city I lived in and left, the city where the sense-memories remain the strongest. I can’t wait to eat at all my favorite places and wander my old neighborhood and contemplate the quiet at Spy Pond, but I feel anxiety about confronting the inevitable changes my old haunts have gone through. Of course, I’ve changed too, and the non-static nature of life is what makes it exciting.

It will be the first chance to really reflect on this last year and a half. Moving to Istanbul was one of the scariest and greatest life decisions I’ve ever made, but now it’s just my life—sometimes, I forget to stop and take stock of the ways I’ve changed. In Boston, there will be an inevitable reckoning. I welcome it, with a fluttery unease.

After Boston, I’m off to see my parents in California, which will be newer for me and more comfortable. I didn’t grow up there, I’ve never lived there. In California, I intend to let my parents feed me while I take things very easy. I’m grateful that my folks live in San Francisco now and my sister lives in LA; what cool places to visit!

California is remote and impersonal enough that I feel nothing but curious giddiness about that part of my return to the States. It’s just Boston, the old home, that fills me with anxious anticipation.

What will Boston be like, a year and a half after I left? What will I be like?

Will the things I loved still hold my heart?

Will I miss Istanbul when I’m gone?

Will I ever finish packing?

We’ll know on Wednesday!