Five years in Boston

This week marks five years since we landed in Boston, after a month of so many good-byes (and so much packing) in our West Texas college town, and four days of driving a moving truck cross-country.

We arrived at nearly midnight on day four, parking our unwieldy truck in the driveway of new acquaintances whom I hadn’t yet met (though J had). Our college friends Nate and Abigail, who had moved a month before we did, came to take us to their house, where we crashed in their living room for the night. Abi ran down the sidewalk to greet me, and I nearly collapsed into her arms. We had made it. It was an end, and a beginning.

The next day, we moved into the apartment Abi had helped J find, when he flew up for a weekend to meet his new boss and scout out a place for us to live. Our landlady, Gina, showed us around the empty rooms: creamy walls, wood floors, plentiful windows. “I hope you’ll be happy here,” she said simply.

We never had a set timeline for our Boston adventure. We were hankering for something new after nearly eight years in Abilene (where we met and fell in love and earned our college degrees), and J’s job hunt had foundered in Texas, leading him to cast a wider net. We figured we’d be here for three years or so, till he earned full licensure as a marriage and family therapist (with the necessary hours, supervision and mounds of paperwork), and then we’d see. We moved here knowing exactly three people (all fellow Abilene transplants), and we had not the first clue about what it would be like.

Five years in, I can say with certainty: it’s been a messy, rich, full, glorious adventure. And it has been hard.

We have loved exploring Boston and New England: gorgeous, historic, charming, so utterly different from the Texas plains where I grew up. We have delighted in apple picking, trips to seaside towns, the ease of driving to other states and even to Canada. I have gloried in the bookstores, the green public spaces, the farmers’ markets, the wonders of Harvard.

Our community here is much smaller than in Texas, but we have made some firm and dear friends. (We could not have survived, in particular, without Nate and Abi, or without Shanna, another college friend who lived in Boston for a while and then moved to Atlanta.)

I am deeply grateful for colleagues and writer pals and the small but tightly knit community at our church, who have been our lifelines over and over. Many of them are fellow transplants, who remember what it’s like to be strangers here, who have walked alongside us as we built a life from scratch in this exciting, frustrating place.

Because Boston – despite its appeal in a thousand ways – is not an easy place to live. It is full of snarled roads and complicated public transport, elaborate parking regulations and surprisingly insular communities. It is hard work to build a life here if you’re not a native, if dropping your r’s and shoveling snow don’t come naturally. It can be lonely and isolating, and for a good chunk of each year, it is cold and snowy. We miss our families, the soul-deep friendships we left in Abilene, the spicy Tex-Mex food that doesn’t seem to exist up here (outside our own kitchen). Our life here is rich and lovely, but it has never gotten to easy.

I get asked a series of related questions often: What brought you to Boston? Where did you live before? Do you think you’ll go back to Texas one day?

The answers to the first two are simple: a job and a new adventure; West Texas (and Oxford). The last one is more complicated. We’ve never been sure how long we planned to stay, and we’re still not sure. Three years after I wrote about being in the middle of our time in New England, we are still there. We knew when it was time to move up here – trusting our instincts and taking the leap – and I believe we’ll know when it’s time to go.

The gift, and possibly the lesson, of this time in Boston has been to pay attention: to accept the gifts of the present moment and not get too caught up in wishing for what was, or what may be one day. The constant challenges of living here are an ever-present reminder to be here now. We may not stay forever – and every winter I wonder why we moved here at all – but we are here now. This is our life. And it is challenging – and good.

Happy five years, Boston. We are grateful for all your gifts. And we’re not done with you yet.