I'm sitting at Cosi, in one of their big red couches and for once, there is nothing urgent I need to be doing before class. I don't have a paper due in an hour. And I'm not late for some meeting or other. Sometimes, I let life get the better of me like that. Indeed, most of the time I know I do it to myself. I tend to over-commit and get over involved in everything and anything.
But for now, for this hour, I get to sit and nibble at my salad (with gorgonzola, cranberries, pears and grapes, with flatbread) and sip my coffee as the world passes me by. And I think "ah, this is everything I will miss about here." You see, I am going home. Maybe not forever, maybe not even for a long time, but for this summer I am going home.
As always you have to give something up to get something and so for this summer, I am giving up new england and for one summer, I am going to see if I can survive making Singapore my home again. Yes, survive. Home, as always, brings up a complicated mix of nostalgia and trepidation. One summer, would hopefully tell me enough about whether I can do this for good. Give up my yogurt granola parfaits, cooking experiments, long beautiful walks in return for crowds of people, an endless mile of the same shops and a faster pace of life.
8 years, willing or no, makes a place you live in home and leaves more of a mark on you than you leave on it. What has new england left on me? A love of lobster? A sense of independence? Confidence? I pray that at least some of these marks are indelible.
