We recently passed the five-year anniversary of our move to Boston. Five years at my place of work; I got (ta-da) an insulated mug in the mail as a gift from the hospital (for my years of service, my favorite thing: kitchen clutter). Five years since we uprooted our lives and started a new one here in the Bay State. Much has changed between thirty and (quite soon) thirty-five. An intervening pandemic. A new life. A continual learning process in both the personal and professional spheres of my life. Enough upheaval for (what feels like) a lifetime. Parenthood.
And in some ways, so little has changed. My walking commute to my office, which takes me over the Muddy River. Watching the vegetation grow up along the streambank each spring (including tall tangles of knotweed and bittersweet, unfortunately). Seeing the geese go, and return; the mallard ducklings; the herons fishing for breakfast across the street from the Fenway; the red-tailed hawk pair that nests atop our cancer center soaring high above the hospital buildings of the Longwood Medical Area, during my weekend long runs along the Necklace and down to the Charles River Esplanade. The continual soul-searching has never stopped, the periodic realignments of head and heart, the efforts toward intention and action and love and kindness. The always figuring it out.
Five years is a long enough time for anyone being objective to feel it must mean something. We’ve lived here in Massachusetts for over half the duration of our prior time in Maryland. One might ask if it feels like home yet, or if we’ve put down roots. Yes and no. Yes – we have our lifeway. We are part of this place, we know the fauna and flora and the local parks and trees and rocks, at least here in our little piece of the semi-suburbs. On our little walks, Jordan points out different-colored hydrangeas; the singular pear growing on a tiny shrub at the end of the block; the ghost stickers that say “Ha-ha!” on the window of the senior living facility on the way to the train station. Two years old and well on his way to three, he can name birch and oak and maple, and he loves playing with the “helicopter seeds” of the latter. I show him river grape (edible), pokeweed (definitely not), serviceberry (“xiao-niao berries” – bird berries! he cries), dogwood. We walk down to the Muddy River in the evening and he tosses pebbles in the water, talks to the ducks, completely lacks any fear of larger waterfowl (from whom Jane and I have learned to keep our distance), makes up gibberish bilingual-toddler names for random stones. He has spent a blessed two years (nearly) at his in-home daycare down the street from our house; made good friends, talks about them constantly and looks forward to meeting them at the park; enjoys his rice and beans and his chicken tikka with basmati and his fried rice and anything with rice and sauce, basically, aside from dino nuggets and pizza. He knows his subway stops along the D line, all the way from Newton Centre to Park Street, and he spends most of his waking hours talking about what trains he’s ridden, what trains he’s seen, which trains he wants to ride, where he hopes they’ll take him, and so forth. He imagines people waving to him from the window of his toy train. He waves back. I see this whole place in dual reality, through my eyes and his. To my child, this is home.
And yet, no – is this home? Still, five years later, I feel this core of grief that never went away, and probably never will. This sense of having lost something so profound and beautiful and infinite that time and meditation and mindful self-reflection may never replace it. This sense of transition, this awareness of limitation, this persistent feeling of being on my way somewhere, coming from someplace else. I’ve always felt this, dating back to Baltimore. I’ve written about it for over ten years. I’ve wondered at times if I’m somehow traumatized, somehow wounded in some fundamental way, that I can never rest and experience the transcendent peace and love that I’ve been yearning for. I meditate on it, and I funnel my meditative failure into a place of explosive growth. The most spiritually attuned I’ve ever been in my life. The most physically fit I’ve ever been in my life. The most present and aligned with my core beliefs I’ve felt in a long time. And still. Something missing. Some important value that I haven’t mapped. I’m opening up to the world in ways I haven’t in many years (e.g. dating). I’m looking to be changed, or at least challenged. I’m leaning into everything I worried I couldn’t be; fear has become a dear friend, and I welcome at least a little trace of him into my life every day. I’m not sure any of this is the answer, but I’m trying.
An odd phenomenon – time dilating and shrinking as the waymarkers of our life become unevenly spaced, as our milestones evolve from academic calendars and graduations to long-term plans and lifetime goals. Five years hasn’t felt like five years – it has felt impossibly long in some respects (work and career) and ridiculously short in others (Jordan speaking bilingually in paragraphs and asking “Why?” to everything we say – wasn’t he just recently a giggling milkfat baby who would stay stuck in whichever spot we set him down in?). And still, the land abides, and the region’s hardwood forests where we walk and camp, and the fields and farmstands we visit, and the little streams, and the lakes and ponds we sit beside and where Jordan pretends to fish. There’s something constant and beautiful here, something unquestionably good, something beyond doubt or reason or wonderment. If that isn’t a marker of home, then at least may it be a place of rest, a place from which we and our little one can take root, and give back, and grow.
