A big move. Kind of. Okay, yes, a big move.

The photos help tell the story.

Whenever I have to load up our pock-marked 17-year-old SUV, I thank the 90s for all those sunny summer days spent in Central Park alone with my GameBoy, gaining what would turn out to be exceptionally important Tetris skills.

While it’s Jon who is the master car-packer of the household, I do have the ability to eyeball a heap of boxes and bins, suitcases and Fresh Direct bags stacked up by the front door, and know that yes, it will fit.

“It won’t fit!”

“It will fit.”

It fit.

Well, everything but the microwave.

It’s been many (many, many) years since I’ve had to move, not counting the children I’ve shuttled to and from summer camp, and in recent years, college.

It’s been even longer since I’ve had to move into a small walk-up rental; long enough that I was worried about the non-functional front door buzzer, until I remembered, oh right. Phones!

Another thing that was certainly not in Boston last I lived here.

As I mentioned — though now I can tell who doesn’t read to the end of my posts, bloop — I’ve found a small faculty apartment on the Boston University campus where I’ll be teaching full-time starting in a few weeks.

I won’t be at the apartment full-time, though certainly I’ll be there more often than not for now. It makes sense as I ease into the routine of a new career with a new timeline in a new-but-not-exactly-new city.

My True North.

There has been something strange and delightful about my time here in these first 72 hours. Especially because I had only seen the apartment once before moving in, and I realized I had so many questions beyond the measurements of the rooms.

Where does the garbage go? I can’t remember, do the lights dim? Can I reach the top cabinet without a stepstool? How do I get deliveries? And shoot, is there even a medicine cabinet?

When we pulled up Sunday afternoon and walked into the bathroom for the first time, I turned to face the mirror above the sink, whispering please open please open please open… and it did.

Note: Why in the world are medicine cabinets mirrored on the inside? Did someone decide there was some need to create the illusion of having even more stuff in there? Now I have TWO Advil bottles! I’m rich! Rich with ibuprofen!

Every moment these past few days has brought some discovery, no matter how small.

Like lying on a mattress on the floor without a bed frame, under fresh sheets, looking up at a newly painted ceiling.

It will be banal one day of course; right now, it feels hopeful.

Morning!

I am getting used to new views out the window, new light patterns in the morning, new sounds — footsteps on the carpeted stairwell, a slightly different fire engine sound, the electronic chirp chirp chirp at the pedestrian crosswalk on the corner.

I am learning the precise rotation of the shower valve for the perfect water temperature.

I am deciding where the glasses go and where the dishes go and where the spices go and whether there will be enough space for the coffee mugs that will surely accumulate because they always do.

I am processing the strange juxtaposition of favorite dresses and well-worn jackets hanging in different closets.

I am working on my curricula on the couch with hours of real daylight to energize me, and not just the tiny sliver that graces us for an hour or so around 4 PM in Brooklyn.

Some of the textbooks I’ll be using. Who needs a bookshelf when you’ve got a radiator cover?

I am imagining walls no longer in desperate need of art that will require semi-forbidden rental apartment nail holes. (I am disproportionately nervous about this; don’t ask. I’m a rule-follower.)

I am enjoying the little coffee cart I created in the kitchen, which only sounds indulgent and twee until you see how much counter space I do not have.

Tell me this isn’t the cutest. I even made simple syrup.

And in just a few days, I have already come to realize that the IKEA dishes are indeed perfectly fine, just as Jon swore they’d be, after a good 50 minutes going back and forth between the various sets and cross-referencing them on my phone against the fancier ones on sale at Crate & Barrel, and can’t you just pick one already please, says my brain, because while Jon is the most patient man I’ve ever known, we have been here since 10:30 and it is now 3:25 and we still have to check out.

True story.

I did not make this IKEA impulse purchase. Please clap.

Strangest of all though, has been the realization that for the first time in 20 years, there are no children’s needs to consider in my tiny apartment.

I don’t have to figure out how to fit big cereal boxes into small cabinets, I don’t have to lug home gallons of milk, I can skip the Pop-Tart aisle (for now), no one will secretly use up my good shampoo, and I have no one to blame for the dishes in the sink but myself.

It’s everything parents always say we look forward to when our kids are little and our homes look like a rainbow vomited plastic toys over every surface. And now, it’s 2025 and here I am.

We do look forward to it.

But the secret is, the closer it gets, the less we do.

(Don’t tell your friends with toddlers, let them enjoy their dreams.)

My youngest daughter is off to college herself in a few weeks. (Another move!) My oldest daughter may be nearby, but she’s entirely on her own. We still have one kid at home in Brooklyn, and that will be a huge change for her, for Jon, and for all of us. Plus, I’m no longer a short subway ride from my parents at any given moment.

But that is all too big to think about right now. Scary big.

Today, I’m just allowing myself to focus on exciting big:

Fresh walls full of potential, stunning beds of zinnias along busy Boston roadways, strangers who ask where I found the shopping caht, a different group of dear friends to meet for dinner dates, a Dunkin’ on every corner.

Oh, and above all, a new job that is absolutely giving me life.

So much newness. So much change.

But then I’ll catch an old street sign, a brownstone I once lived in, the same Mexican restaurant I loved as a student, the above-ground Green Line stops, or a pretty church, and I’ve got my bearings.

I’ve always said that a home becomes Home the moment you stop thinking about the walk to and from the train and your feet just kind of go.

I think the same goes for a second home.

But I’m not rushing it.

I’m liking this too much right now.

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