Oikotropic
In exactly two weeks, 14 days, a fortnight, Ashley and I will be moving from Chicago. We have lived here for two years now, the first two years of our marriage, and it will always have special meaning for us. We’re sad to move away, but we’re also moving on. We will be in Atlanta for the summer (June and July), then we will move again, probably in early August, to start graduate school. I’m pretty stoked.
I’m a nostalgic person. I feel the pull, the lure of old haunts, our street, our favorite restaurants, our friends that we have here. All of this contributes to my rather plaintive mood, but it’s more so the notion that Ash and I are closing a chapter in our life. I say ‘notion,’ and I should probably say ‘fact.’ We are moving on and away, and we are both very excited about it.
Excitement mixed with nostalgia makes for an interesting emotional cocktail. Whenever the final paragraphs in any chapter of my life are being written, I find myself, as probably many do, attempting to freeze time, to hold on to these last few moments in this scene. As it happens, packing up boxes and taking down pictures and covering china in bubble wrap intrude into my wistfulness. And so it goes.
What will I miss? Certainly, I’ll miss the romantic quality that the Big City offers, the lights and the life and the Lake. As much as I’ve grown to understand that I’m a car person, there are times when I’ll miss the train, the long trips at night from rehearsal, easing into a hard plastic seat, staring out at the passing cityscape, the speckled darkness. Odd though it may seem, I’ll even miss walking everywhere. And the snow. I’ll miss the snow.
What won’t I miss? The bone-chillingly cold nights. And the days, for that matter. Many of the things I will miss are, ironically, also things that I won’t miss. I won’t miss the train, because I’ll have my car – same goes for the constant ambulation, strictly speaking. I won’t miss the snow, because I’ll have the warm weather I’m so accustomed to. I won’t miss the Big City, because I’ll have the suburban life in which I grew up, in which I lived the first 22 years of my life.
This city has much that I will both pine for and comfortably wave goodbye to, much of it one and the same.
I’ve loved my experience here. I’ve loved having these two years to grow up a bit with Ash, to be married away from our families. I think it’s been good for us to have this time for ourselves. It has also allowed me to see aspects of myself that I might not have discovered otherwise, or, perhaps, at least not this soon. For that, I am very grateful.
So, here we are. Two weeks away from leaving Chicago, from driving out of Chitown the way we drove in, in a big yellow truck full of our belongings. I hope to be able to take advantage of this last fortnight in a city that will always have meaning for me. But, when it’s all said and done, I’m also very much ready to move away. And to move on.
