It was a warmer January than most, short-sleeve weather just a few days into the new year. The BF and I had decided to take advantage of the burst of unseasonal sun and go sit on Oak Hill in Piedmont Park — a short walk from our house in Atlanta. The grass was straw-colored and brittle; the trees were bare, giving us a good view of Lake Clara Meer. A few brave neighbors shared our idea, pretending this was a Sunday morning in spring.
We didn't talk for a long while after sitting. I squinted into the sunshine and snapped a few photos. Large cranes sat at rest over Midtown. I remarked that we'd be long gone by the time those buildings were finished. We would return to find a different skyline altogether.
He talked about how he'd sat on the same hill a few years before and looked out over Midtown, then packed his stuff and moved to another state the next day. Our own belongings were already in boxes by then, the last shipment destined to meet us in New York three weeks later. The BF said with certainty that he'd be coming back to the South someday.
I wasn't so sure. I relied on a phrase that I picked up from my friend Amy: "Life is long." Between us, it meant that you never know what's going to happen, and the thing you thought impossible a week ago might today become reality, embraced or otherwise.
This January, it appears that the BF's words that day were indeed prophetic. He's been given an opportunity in his career that neither of us could have predicted, and one that requires him to return to Atlanta. Where he goes, I go. So, we're going.
The timing fits with my current situation; as a freelancer, I can basically live anywhere so long as I have broadband. I also welcome the chance to fling myself deeper into personal writing back in Georgia, the setting of the book I've been sweating these past several months.
It's a bittersweet departure, sure. Living in New York has been a banquet and a baptism by fire, the kind of ordeal that changes a person thoroughly. I can only guess how apparent those changes will be once I'm back in the city where I came of age. It will be a different Atlanta, no doubt, but the jury is out on which of us has changed the most.
All day I've been thinking of Dusty Springfield's “Goin’ Back.” I Googled
the lyrics tonight and read them for the first time. I'm not sure I ever really thought about what the song meant until then. Afterward, I pulled the track up in my iTunes. The next entry in my library also fit the situation: “
Going Back to Georgia” by Nanci Griffith. As Nanci sings, “New York, New York is a friend of the traveling kind,” and the song speaks of leaving the big city even if you like that way that it shines. I can relate. But if all goes as planned, our forthcoming Atlanta chapter will be only a brief stop on a twisted path to other as-yet-unknown locations. I’d wager that my fling with New York will resume somewhere down the road. Life is long, and you never know what's going to happen.
