Writing With Abandon

Reflections and ramblings about life as an educator, writer, reader, knitter, and over-thinker. Trying to do the writing only I can do.

Category: Uncategorized

  • Orange Halves

    Be sweet to me, baby

    I want to believe in you

    I want to believe in something

    The music pours out of my new headphones, enveloping me in its rhythm. Michelle from Japanese Breakfast is a “pop genius,” Greg says. (She’s also a great writer — if you haven’t read her memoir, Crying in H Mart, yet, you should).

    It’s amazing how just a few minutes ago, I felt ready to go to bed, ready to give up on this slice, but with a bit of music, my whole mood and energy can shift. I saw Ana and Gianna’s posts in my email inbox, and I thought, “What the heck. I’ve got a minute.”

    Today at snack, Kim and I were talking about the absolutely miraculous way that people enter your life and suddenly become so important to you, it’s hard, impossible even, to imagine your life without them.

    “To think, at this time last year, you didn’t even know each other!”

    “We didn’t even know each other!” I said.

    “Oh my god, yes! That’s crazy!”

    On Sunday, Gi and I discussed a similar theme on our long 3-mile walk by the river. About the closeness of the friends you make as you get older. How, with you growing more into yourself, you develop perhaps deeper or more compatible friendships. Ones in which you may not share childhood memories or a similar upbringing, but which are unbelievably fulfilling, a joining of two kindred spirits and minds and hearts.

    When I lived in Spain, I learned that they use the idiom “media naranja” (orange half) to mean one’s soulmate, or better half. In Miami, I’ve been lucky to find a few different orange halves.

    I still remember when I first met Ana after she gave a Tuesday PD on writer’s workshop. I remember seeing Gianna in the front row of the theater on her first day, going up to her at snack time later that week to introduce myself. Kim’s smiling face and bright eyes in our classroom after her new teacher orientation, me laying all my cards on the table so she knew what she was getting into as my work wife. Your first joke, your eyes meeting mine across the room and then looking away.

    Could I have known then that each of these humans would become an orange half of mine in their own way?

    Maybe.

    I may not be religious, but I do like believing in something.

  • Sunrise

    Sunrise

    For the past few years, I’ve been lucky to be able to watch the sunset from my apartment. I don’t often get to watch the sunrise, though.

    As Miami enters its wet season, the heat and humidity greet you as you walk outside, intensifying as soon as the sun starts to hit the pavement. I’ve been struggling to get out and go for a run after work because the sun sets after 7:30, which means it’s still brutal at 4:30. Runners, if they don’t want to get heatstroke, need to steal their moments before the sun comes up and after it’s gone down.

    I struggle with the idea of waking up earlier than I already do to go for a run, but a couple of morning walks I’ve had in the last couple weeks have tempted me.

    The sunrise has a different nature than the sunset.

    The sunset is loud, announcing its presence with fierce sunlight piercing into the room, illuminating a layer of dust that I need to attend to. It’s red and orange and hot pink, like the rainbow popsicle you get from a hotdog stand in Central Park, dying your lips and tongue the color of pomegranate seeds.

    The sunrise is softer, like a cat slowly creeping to nestle in your lap. It’s light blue and peach and pink and yellow, making me think of a baby’s soft blonde hair, or a picnic, or a calm lake. And yet, it bursts with the energy of a new day and a hundred possibilities.

  • All The Things We Do

    Today after eating with Kim and Ana and talking about reader’s workshop and writing conferences, I fell into a deep “I’m a terrible teacher” mindset.

    “I haven’t conferenced. I’ve sucked at reading their work,” I texted Ana. “And now I feel bad that they’re not reading daily, but we can’t change the routine again this year.”

    She grabbed me as we passed in the cafeteria: “I was literally having the same thoughts yesterday in the shower.”

    Then she suggested making a list of everything we are doing, so we can see where there’s wiggle room. What can we knock off our plates so we can do this?

    “But I also like my work-life balance this year,” I told her. “And I don’t want that to change.”

    I walked over to Kim and opened a new document on my computer.

    “I want to make this list, but also so we can see that we’re actually doing a lot.”

    “We do SO much. I love this idea,” Kim agreed enthusiastically. “I used to do this for parenting, too.”

    I appreciate Kim’s enthusiasm for all the things.

    So I started typing as we both shouted things out:

    ///

    ALL THE THINGS WE DO

    • Prep the materials we need for that day (copies, manipulatives, charts, post-its)
    • Plan lessons and units (writing, reading, read aloud, math, investigations, SEL, word study, sentence study, morning meetings, closing circles, integrated projects)
    • Create anchor charts for various lessons and units
    • Check and give feedback to their math work
    • Check and give feedback to HW
    • Email parents
    • Attend meetings during and after school hours (Hiring Committee, Literacy Committee, Tuesday PD, parent meetings)
    • Support students when they need help during independent work
    • Manage social emotional needs — conflict resolution, redirections, etc.
    • Transition them all over the school
    • Do mindful moments and brain breaks
    • Take them to snack and recess and lunch
    • Plan and execute field trips
    • Plan and rehearse for graduation / end of year things (middle school panel, blast off week, graduation rehearsals, etc.)
    • Write, direct, and produce a 5th grade show, which included rehearsals daily for the weeks leading up to it
    • Give kids band-aids (physical and emotional) when they need and clean poop off their shoes after recess sometimes
    • Collaborate with coworkers to do integrated learning
    • Do mentorship ALL THE TIME (sometimes formal meetings, sometimes informal, always happening constantly)
    • Take our own mental breaks (at our lunch and recess)
    • Brainstorm together constantly
    • Put out fires as they come up
    • Meet every other week with Male
    • Make each other laugh so hard we cry
    • Create partnerships and groups for collaborative work
    • Shepherd the children like wayward sheep at the end of the day
    • Manage time all the time (it’s like I have a TimeTimer living inside of me)
    • Manage arrival and dismissal (20 mins in the morning + 20 mins in the afternoon)
    • Take verbal punches from the children daily #FifthGrade
    • Get and give hugs (and a little bit of lice)
    • Document everything! (photos, videos, audio recordings, transcribing, creating wall documentation – printing, cutting, putting it up)
    • Work with small groups
    • Check in with students one-on-one during independent work
    • Create and modify assessments
    • Create rubrics for assessments
    • Grade assessments and projects
    • Grade writing (unit work + on-demands)
    • Hold celebrations for writing that often include other teachers and students
    • Write positive compliment post-its for each kid, almost every week
    • Find games and other early finishers activities
    • Complete progress reports (cumulative grades, comments/narratives, inputting them into Google Slides, saving them as a PDF and schedule sending to parents)
    • Hold parent teacher conferences
    • Do F&Ps three times a year
    • Complete middle school recommendations
    • Administer MAP exams, then download and send the results to parents
    • Reevaluate and reassess how our teaching is going, then adjust and shift based on what we think is best (sometimes involving whole new planning and prep, such as for read aloud, reading stations, etc.)

    WHAT WE’RE NOT DOING

    • Writing conferences and small groups
    • Reading their writing notebooks / using them as much
    • Protecting indie reading time
    • Aligning our investigations to the social studies and science standards explicitly (general topics, but not the nitty gritty)

    ///

    I shared the document with Ana.

    “OMG YESSS. This is your slice today :)” was her reply.

    I may still be ending this day feeling like a worse writing teacher than I was last year. But I do recognize that I’m doing SO much. And I hope that anyone else who ever feels this way realizes that they are, too.

  • “Projections,” Not Plans

    What I had hoped for today’s slice was a reflection on how our new and improved read aloud routine was going. On Friday afternoon, Kim and I met with Ana for an impromptu coaching session to rethink interactive read aloud and how to make it work better for us. We’d taken a month-long hiatus what with all the events before spring break and the debate on Friday (which was so friggin’ awesome, by the way, but that’s for another post), so we were eager to start again.

    “Never come to a meeting empty handed.”

    We gathered our ideas, Ana and I exchanged some voice notes on WhatsApp, and then yesterday, before a brief conversation at lunch, I made some new anchor charts and Kim and I planned out the questions.

    Routines + vocab
    Main strategies chart
    Orienting + stop and jot lot

    “Girl,” Ana texted when I sent her the charts. “Please blog about this.”

    “That’s my plan for tomorrow’s slice!” I wrote back.

    The plan was for me to model this week. We’d figure out the teacher think-alouds and turn-and-talks together, but I’d take the lead on teaching, we’d debrief each day, and I’d help get the kids comfortable with the routine before gradually releasing Kim to lead the teaching next week.

    Of course, things don’t always go to plan. Is that why, in Reggio, we call lesson plans “projections”?

    At 5 am, I awoke to a loud bang and the sound of running water. The refrigerator filter I’d replaced last night broke inside its canister, spewing water everywhere. I didn’t know where the water shut off was and building maintenance didn’t arrive until 6:50 am. I watched the water seep out into the hallway, pooling on the rug, feeling my heart beating and my anxiety rippling through my body, nowhere to go as I had nothing more I could do.

    Since then, the water has been shut off in my entire apartment (meaning I’m using the bathrooms on the amenities floor any time I need to go), the leaking has stopped and been mostly cleaned up (just drying now), and there is an appliance technician on the way (you know how those things go — it’s a waiting game).

    Like a trooper, Kim took over writer’s workshop, math, and read aloud with maybe only a little bit of fear, and I know she knocked it out of the park even if she doesn’t think she did.

    We caught up on the phone when the kids went to PE, and she said something along the lines of, “It’s like you have a plan, and then the plan goes out the window when you teach. Or, it just never goes as well as you plan for it to.”

    Welcome to teaching, where you never know what you’re going to get that day, and just have to go with it. You can only plan so much. It’s the nature of a job where you work with so many (little) humans.

    At this point I am over-exhausted. I’ve been getting sick, with a scratchy throat and a painful swallow, so maybe the universe wanted me to stay home? But I certainly haven’t gotten any rest.

    Today I may not have taught read aloud, but I have: learned how to shut off the water in my apartment; befriended five of the employees in the building; managed a handyman issue without my handyman (Dad’s in San Francisco this week, so he’s on west coast time); watched a movie; leaned on my friends and felt their hugs through their messages; and written this slice.

    Now it’s time to close my eyes and see if I can sneak in a nap before the technician arrives.

  • Polishing the Silverware

    When my mom’s dad passed away, at 100 years old, my mom and her siblings went to his apartment to take stock of what he had and see if any of the grandchildren would want anything. She sent us files organized by room and type of item (silver, glass, artwork, furniture, etc.) and a spreadsheet to indicate our interest. I perused the photos. There was a wooden ashtray that I liked, some oblong drink glasses, glass bowls, and a glass box that I’d always seen on my grandmother’s dresser.

    “That’s all?” I remember my mom asking.

    “That’s it.” I didn’t need or want anything big.

    Fast forward to July. I was in New York for a few weeks before heading back to Miami, where I’d be staying at my boss’s place in Key Biscayne while I continued my apartment search.

    My mom and sister and I had gone to the jeweler’s on a humid day to figure out what we wanted to do with the sapphires from a bracelet they’d found of my grandmother’s. I wanted to make a necklace and my sister decided on a bracelet. My mom had also brought along a bunch of other things to see if she could repurpose them or if they had any value. Among them were some deep silver plate flatware with intricate designs on the handles.

    “Are they worth anything? Can I sell them?” My mom asked the jeweler.

    “Well, we could buy them by the weight,” the jeweler explained. “They may be worth more if they’re a complete set. But you know, then you have to do the work of photographing and selling them.”

    “I wish one of you just wanted them,” my mom said, looking at me and Tillie. “There are two full sets!”

    “Oh, nobody wants anything old anymore,” the jeweler remarked.

    Later that week, I went to my friends, Izzy and Jacob’s, for dinner before Greg’s reunion show. My anxiety was high, thinking about seeing all my college friends for the first time in many years. Worried about what they’d think when I shared the news of my breakup. If they’d judge me a failure, even though I knew that leaving my marriage was one of the bravest things I had ever done.

    Izzy and Jacob’s apartment is the same one they’ve lived in since we graduated, but has morphed throughout the years as they’ve seen a roommate come and go. Now, it was filled with old furniture Izzy inherited from her grandmother: a four poster bed; a strange, velvet upright hallway bench, serving as their couch; a coatrack; a standing lamp; silver flatware and goblets (goblets!) for our water and wine.

    As they served me dinner (honey teriyaki salmon) and poured my water from a silver urn, I thought back to the silverware in my parents’ house, sitting in its wooden box.

    The next day, my last before I left, I told my mom I’d take it.

    “Why not?”

    “Oh, good!” She exclaimed. “You can put it in the dishwasher too, just not with regular silverware.”

    In August, once I’d moved into my new place, after a week of using one fork, one spoon, one knife, repeatedly, a box arrived from my mom that we’d packed a few weeks prior: 3 oblong glasses (the 4th had broken in transit); 6 glass bowls; the wooden ashtray; the glass box; and the silverware, all nestled tightly in bubble wrap.

    “It just needs some polishing,” my mom told me. She sent me a photo of what I should buy: Twinkle Silver Polish. And so I polished it all one day, marveling as the tarnish magically disappeared and the silverware, literally, twinkled.

    This Sunday, I finally had the time to polish it again. It had been on my to-do list since the February break. As my friend Mariah called me to catch up, I put on the rubber gloves and got started. We hung up when she had to head to Easter lunch with her family, and I continued on my own. My left hand started to cramp, but I kept going.

    Finally, all polished, rinsed, and washed, I laid them out in neat interlocking rows on a drying mat. I washed my hands and hung the gloves, then waited for them to dry so I could put them back in their drawer.

    Halfway through polishing.
    All done!

  • Day 31: Taps

    It’s Saturday evening and I’m watching the sun set behind the buildings across from mine. I was thinking about what to write for my last slice of the Slice of Life Story Challenge 2024, feeling both a sense of accomplishment/relief (one less item on the daily to-do list!) and also sadness, as slicing has become an activity that I have found so rejuvenating this month.

    Last night, Ana and I were sharing with Gi how fun this challenge has been for us. I think particularly about how much more I enjoyed it this year, how I built a stronger sense of community with fellow slicers, how I found blogs that I subscribed to and thoroughly enjoyed reading, and how I felt an inspiration for writing that I haven’t felt in a long time (“big magic,” Liz Gilbert might say).

    “You should definitely do it with us next year,” Ana encouraged Gi. “It’s so freaking fun.”

    As I look out the window, watching the sky change colors, I find myself thinking of the song we used to sing at camp at the end of each evening, Taps:

    Day is done. Gone the sun. From the hills, from the lakes, from the skies. All is well. Safely rest. God is nigh.

    We would play around with harmonies each time, my friends Alice and Claire and I especially. Then off to our cabins to wash up and get ready for bed, have cabin chat, and go to sleep. Every evening ended the same way, and there was a sense of peace knowing that the next morning, after waking up at 7:30, after the day passed with its activities and meals, we’d end it again with some goodnight circle songs, and always, Taps.

    Last year, on the 31st day of the challenge, I reflected on who I was as a writer. I considered blogging more often, writing for the very small audience I’d built, but never managed to do it. I think I wrote one post between then and now. Perhaps it was the focus of my blog that kept me from it (teacher-facing solely), or my imposter syndrome, or the who-cares-what-I’ve-got-to-say, or any of the various life-gets-in-the-way excuses.

    This year, I pushed past the discomfort and just wrote. I learned that a simple post about banana bread can remind someone else of their own recipe, have them grabbing the ingredients from their pantry and baking for the loved ones in their lives. I saw how my friends who followed along enjoyed the stories I told, how they were “insiders” knowing the characters I wrote about. This year, I really felt — feel — like a writer again, in a way I haven’t in years.

    And then magically, serendipitously, the evening that Ana wrote her slice about whether or not she’d go to Ralph Fletcher’s Quoddy Writing Retreat for teachers this summer, I received an email from him letting me know a spot had opened up and was I still interested?

    HECK! YES!

    So, a promise to myself: to keep at it. A weekly slice. Because there is comfort in writing regularly, like the comfort of singing Taps on a summer evening in the Berkshires.

    Thanks, fellow slicers, thanks, Two Writing Teachers, for hosting, thanks to my readers who encourage me, and thanks to my writing partner (she knows who she is).

  • Day 30: My Handyman

    I think the plunger is too big, I text. It isn’t sealing and keeps flipping on itself.

    No just keep trying it, my dad replies.

    I send a photo.

    That is what they do.

    That airpocket that forms is what pushes the shit thru.

    I am standing in my bathroom in my underwear. It’s 9:35 am. I have a dull headache from the margaritas last night at Ana’s.

    I originally thought about slicing something from the evening: we talked about everything from work woes to motherhood, Gianna and I with our mouths gaping open as Lizzie and Ana shared the hardships and joys that come with birthing and caring for a baby.

    But when I got home at midnight, the toilet bowl water was very low and it wasn’t flushing fully. Weird. I was hopeful it would go away and magically fix itself by the morning, but when I got up at 7 after some wild dreams (which I also thought about for slicing), it still wasn’t flushing. The toilet in my apartment is a button-flush, so all my previous toilet clogging knowledge was off the table. I also didn’t have a plunger.

    So I did what I always do when I need help with anything home repair-related or tech-related: I texted my dad. Let me know when you’re awake.

    I proceeded to do the NYT word games and watched a YouTube video about replacing the flusher mechanism inside the tank. Ugh, I thought. I don’t want to do that.

    Luckily, my dad called. We FaceTimed and he gave me some instructions: get a plunger, get a bucket, fill the bowl with water, watch what happens, plunge-plunge-plunge until it goes whoosh. It will likely make a mess. If it doesn’t clear out, then call a plumber. On Easter weekend.

    I am lucky that my building has amenities. (Unlucky that they have no super or maintenance person.) I stopped at the pool floor on my way out to use the restrooms, then walked to Ace Hardware, picked up a basic plunger and a bucket, and turned back toward home.

    Good luck, my dad texted after I sent him a photo of me walking with my newly acquired items.

    I got home, cleared the floor of the bath mats and took my robe off its hook. I stripped to my underwear and filled the bucket, armed with the plunger. Let’s do this.

    But nothing was happening. That’s when I texted my dad again.

    Might take several tries until you get it just right.

    Okay, I replied. Second bucket.

    This time, I felt something as I plunged, plunged, plunged. The air pocket he’d mentioned. I filled the bowl again, kept plunging, noticed that the toilet paper that had started there was all gone and heard a slight whoosh noise. I took my chance and flushed.

    SUCCESS! I texted.

    Mazel tov.

    Wish I had a dollar for every time I have had to do it. Now you know. Knowledge is power.

    It sure is.

    Just like when I changed my lightbulbs by standing my step ladder on my coffee table, or when I fixed the curtain chain, or when I put a new sliding door handle on the balcony door, I felt accomplished. And grateful, once again, for the generous, helpful handyman of a father that I have.

  • DĂ­a 29: Conversaciones oĂ­das sin querer

    “No sĂ© cĂłmo arreglarlo,” el hombre mayor dice, exasperado. No tiene mucho pelo, pero lo que tiene es blanco-gris, y lleva un bigote. El hombre frente Ă©l tiene mi edad, pienso, con pelo rubio y un bigote.

    Tomo otro trago de mi agua de coco, y trato de concentrar mis ojos en mi libro. Pero sigo escuchando sin querer. EstĂĄn teniendo esta conversaciĂłn en un cafĂ© pĂșblico, despuĂ©s de todo.

    “Tengo 60 años y cuando me hieres los sentimientos, es difĂ­cil decirte que me los estĂĄs hiriendo.”

    La conversaciĂłn cambia direcciĂłn, a la mamĂĄ del hombre mayor, que Ă©l nunca podĂ­a decirle cuando le herĂ­a los sentimientos.

    “Pero no tiene que ser asĂ­ con nosotros,” el hombre menor dice. “SĂ© que te pido mucho, pero si puedes tratar de decirme cĂłmo te sientes en el momento, no tendrĂ­amos estas peleas en las que discutimos de todo lo que pasĂł en una semana.”

    El hombre mayor se queda en silencio.

    EstĂĄn en una relaciĂłn. Tal vez estĂĄn a punto de romperlo.

    Sigo intentando leer.

    DespuĂ©s de unos minutos, el hombre mayor pregunta: “¿QuĂ© vas a hacer?”

    El otro: “Estoy mirando fotos de mariposas. DĂ©jame saber cual te gusta. Si lo vamos a hacer, me gustan todas que no tienen muchas partes negras.”

    Se quedan unos momentos mĂĄs antes de irse. Supongo que es normal discutir con tu pareja y recibir el mismo tatuaje que tu pareja en el mismo dĂ­a.

  • Day 28: When was the last time you talked to a stranger?

    “Have you tried that? Is it good?”

    The cashier at Trader Joe’s, a young 20s-something woman with dark hair and blue eyeliner pointed to the Spicy Peanutty Noodle Bowl with Chicken that I get every time I go.

    “Yeah! I like it,” I replied.

    “Is it very spicy or not too bad?”

    “I’d say it’s not too bad. I’m usually a medium spicy kinda girl.”

    “Yeah, okay, I like medium spicy too,” she said, scanning my other items. “Cause I was thinking about having it for lunch, but you never know with spice
 and it’s in the middle of the day, you know.”

    I laughed. “Well, I think it’s good. It’s definitely got a kick. But it’s not like wasabi, I hate that.”

    “Oh, me too.”

    We continued to talk about different levels of spice, with her coworker, a middle-aged blonde, chiming in as she joined to bag my groceries: “I can’t do wasabi, but I put hot sauce on just about everything.”

    “I like jalapeños, too,” the cashier said. “If there aren’t too many seeds. The seeds are what do it.”

    “Not for me,” the blonde said. “I’d rather not leave the spice up to chance. By the way, do you want a new one?”

    She held up the red pepper I’d grabbed.

    “Sure, but weird request: can you make sure it has 4 lobes at the bottom? They’re supposed to be sweeter.” (I looked this up just now while searching for the correct term for the pepper parts and apparently it’s a myth. Go figure!)

    “Well, I did not know that! But I most certainly will look for you.”

    As I got home a bit later and unloaded my groceries, I found myself thinking about this 12-minute podcast episode that Ariel sent to me during the pandemic: “The Lost Joys of Talking to Strangers.”

    In the episode, Madeline K. Sofia speaks with Yowei Shaw, who reports on her interview with social psychologist and professor Elizabeth Dunn about the importance of strangers. After noticing how her boyfriend’s grumpy mood would improve (and stay that way!) whenever he’d have a random encounter with a stranger or acquaintance, Dunn began to study how short interactions with strangers affect our mood.

    Dunn discovered that these interactions did boost peoples’ mood and affect in a positive way. Drawing on her own studies of couples and cafĂ© customers, as well as others conducted by Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder about commuters on buses and trains and people in waiting rooms, Dunn started to develop a theory. Essentially, when we talk to strangers, we try to be friendly and cheerful because of societal norms. And when these interactions go well, they lift our mood and make us feel more positive, as well as affirm our existence and give us this sense of connection.

    The podcast episode reminisces about these random interactions with strangers. When we were in quarantine, we only really spoke to those we lived with or our closest friends and family. We missed these bursts of happiness and connection. Now, in 2024, they’re possible again.

    I think about my errands-filled morning and the many interactions I’ve had with strangers already: the two people at the office where I went to pick up our security deposit; the woman working at Warby Parker who was stunned by how my 11-year-old pair had lost its polarization, and offered me 25% off a new pair, which she helped me pick out; the woman who gives me a facial every month; and then the cashier and bagger at Trader Joe’s.

    I take a bite of my noodle bowl and wonder if the cashier decided to try it. I realize it’s got a bit more than a kick. But it’s definitely delicious.

  • Day 27: Coming Home

    I remember when Miami started feeling like home.

    It was after winter break my first year here, when I left New York and arrived back in the heat and humidity, going straight to the pool to thaw.

    I hadn’t wanted to move to Miami, not really. I had done it for us, because we had wanted to leave New York and we had wanted to give A a chance at a career that he could be happy with.

    “You’re moving to Florida?” I remember my friends saying to me in disbelief. I had felt the same way: I’m moving to Florida? Me, a liberal New Yorker who walks everywhere and loves public transit and is anti-gun and pro-choice? Florida?

    “Well, not Florida, exactly,” I’d say. “Miami.”

    It was like what I’d say when I’d introduce myself to people while I lived in Spain: Oh, I’m not American. I’m a New Yorker. From Manhattan.

    Miami didn’t feel like home, though, not right away. It’s a transient city, with many of its residents working in nightlife and entertainment, most of its residents speaking Spanish, and the majority of its drivers believing that red lights are just a suggestion. I felt I stuck out like a sore thumb. Sometimes I still think I do.

    And yet, it’s home. Home for now, at least.

    I know Miami’s not where I’ll be in the long term. I hope that Miami’s not where I’ll be after next school year. Life often has other plans, though.

    When we decided almost 10 months ago to call it, I didn’t expect to stay. But Miami was home. I couldn’t see myself going back to New York, and I didn’t know where else I’d go so suddenly. And then the way my community here just scooped me up and cradled me as I picked up the pieces of myself and found my way into my new life, my new apartment, was something I don’t know if I would have found anywhere else. For a transient city, some real gems have found their way here and into my life and my heart.

    That will be the hardest thing when I finally do leave to go build a home somewhere else: saying goodbye to the friends I’ve made here.

    Driving home from St. Augustine today, I felt the all-too-familiar, bittersweet feeling associated with trips ending: sadness that it’s over, but gladness and relief to be home.

    I watched the landscape change from tree-lined highway to construction and heavy traffic, the Miami skyline appearing on the horizon, and I thought, This? This is home?

    But it is.

    Pulling up to my building, then dropping my bags after walking through my door, the light shining through and the warm scent of my apartment filling my lungs, I knew I was home.