brooklyn

I finally saw the movie Brooklyn (I'd only been trying to see it since, what? October?), and oh! How, in that musical Irish brogue, did it speak to me!

You know how when you're young and you move far away from everything you've ever known and loved, and go off to start a new life and have an adventure? And then you go back home to visit, and your loved ones and the landscape do their darndest to lure you back. But you can't go back because it's no longer your home, not really. But where is your home? Because the adventure you've been living doesn't exactly feel like home yet either. So you go back to your new life anyway because a reluctant part of you knows that you actually do belong there now, and it's like a surprising breath of fresh air, and you suddenly get swept up in how much you really do love it, deep down. And before you know it, you've become the old hat, the expert, helping the new ones get their footing, teaching them your best tricks, just like you'd been taught when you first arrived. And your heart confidently knows that you are where you're supposed to be.

But then things change -- you change, your circumstances change. You've grown, and outgrown that first adventure, and it's time for a new one. So you pack your bags and set off for somewhere new, and you get homesick all over again, this time for Brooklyn, that beautiful, brutal place where you left a precious part of your heart. But you press forward anyway because what else can you do? You're the one who asked for this new adventure. And it's a good one, and you like it, but every once in a while something tugs at those homesick heart strings, like your new doctor, who, it turns out, was born and raised in Manhattan -- got her medical degree at NYU -- and during your first appointment lets slip a born and bred "fuhgeddaboudit" and apologizes and all you can say is, no, don't. I love it. It feels like home.