It's worth noting that exactly a year ago - Saturday, October 27th, 2012 - I moved out of Binghamton. Technically speaking (and as, it turns out, I mentioned in the entries closer to that time), I didn't move that day to Rhode Island; technically, that wouldn't be until midway through January of 2013, after I'd landed my job and officially started renting here. But I ended that day in a bed in Rhode Island - although not the one at the house where A. grew up; rather, it was one in the hotel room that my mom, who'd come to help me move, had gotten not too far away.
In that year, I've gotten a job, all but formally joined the church I expected to, joined a young-adults group. I've seen that church enter staff turnover; I've hired writing-lab employees and seen a few leave - one because of me. I've seen Binghamton several times, although not, I believe, since this past March; it's possible, though I'm not sure it's definite, that I've seen Alfred not at all. (We didn't go to the square dance; I'm trying to think of when else I might have gone. Leah and I stopped there once during the August before the move - could that really have been it? Or did I find some excuse to get there during my summer travels?)
I listened via internet radio to the Bills game today, ignoring the potential easiness of just turning on the TV and watching the Pats; I sort of want the Red Sox to win the World Series, maybe, I guess, but probably only because of wanting a city that's been bombed to have an extra thing to cheer about. But when it comes to my mind's definition of "the city," that is starting to change from New York to Boston, and I appreciate and am starting to embrace a new identity as a New Englander.
I remember being in fourth grade, missing Gates-Chili, but liking the new house and I imagine also the new school district - wishing that I could have the old friends in the new place, that I could have the best of everything. I feel much like that now. If only living in New England didn't mean not living in New York. If only I could measure the distance in minutes, like Chili Avenue to Westside Drive. If only I could have all the old people in the new place, or (more ideally) A. and the new job and some new people in the old place.
Still, most every weekday I get on the highway to a job that's better than I probably ever imagined that any college job I held could be. And, most of all, within twenty minutes' - twenty minutes'! - drive is a boy who used to be six hours away.
I don't think there's a tidy way to hold both of those things in the same hand. I still feel new to this place. I don't like being gone from New York. But still it's true that I like being here.