It all comes rushing back.

The instant my foot touches midtown Manhattan concrete, a part of me is home–and nauseated, thanks to the unfailingly jerky car ride from Queens. From that cab, The Husband and I point out our personal landmarks: my first apartment in the city, now a Marriott Courtyard; the East River running path; the segment of Park Avenue we walked from Hunter College to KFC after church on Sundays. We point and identify and the taxi’s TV blares a commercial for Chuggington Live! and I think about how that ad would have blown right past me when I lived here, but now? We’re so bringing The Kid back to see that. But for now…drinks and burgers at our hotel’s rooftop pool!

For the next few hours I sip Prosecco, gnaw down on The Burger Joint’s offerings, catch up on my reading, and gaze around at the 360-degree view of my former-and-somehow-always home, New York City. I’ve been away from it almost as long as I inhabited it–five years–and the passage of that half-decade next month seems momentous…and sad. I’m only getting further away from it, its noise and bustle and streets less familiar by the day, and as with the weaning of Little Brother, there is a different life and freedom beyond what was–the what is–but the lingering if slight grief for the past as it seems to evaporate past my grip is a part of our now, too. And though I’ve never watched Doctor Who–YET–the quote reaches me through a blog and I’m so thankful when I see this exchange between Sally Sparrow and Kathy Nightingale.

SALLY: I love old things. They make me feel sad.

KATHY: What’s good about sad?

SALLY: It’s happy for deep people.

It’s happy for deep people. And just like that, I feel understood.

Because the rest of the weekend is a blast. And it’s exhausting. And it’s fun, and it’s hard, and it’s sort of everything the way life is when you’re not wearing your Instagram blinders.  To be specific, it’s this:

Dinner at our favorite place on Friday night followed by a walk through the West Village and cupcakes on a park bench, rats scurrying past just like in all the best love stories.

A run through Central Park on Saturday morning along my old route with a finale of homeless-man-yelling-at-me, both occurrences affirming that I’ve never really left, followed by bagels at our neighborhood shop (they’ve expanded–YAY CAPITALISM!), followed by the Mockingbird conference. Which included: a twenty-minute misplacement of TH and me before we realized that we were about to become part of an AA meeting intended for the gay and lesbian community (I think it speaks volumes for Mockingbird’s eclectic style and inclusiveness that it took us that long to figure out we were in the wrong spot); an introduction to the people I’ve been writing with/bouncing ideas off/encouraged by for a year and a half; a conversation between Nadia Bolz-Weber and Tullian Tchividjian that, between the tattoos and beanie and words, played out like a soundtrack of the invention of grace.

A brunch for eight that included the Soul Sister I’ve never actually laid eyes on, followed by a walk from the East Village to the Hudson with her full of laughter and seriousness and, you know, everything. Then a trip to the new World Trade Center with TH that included the realization that the observation deck isn’t open yet but the fountain memorial is, so we stood there as the water flowed from the footprint of was toward the newness of what is.

A meeting over dessert with my ninety-year-old former NYU coworker, who told me the same stories he’s told me a hundred times before, and as we said goodbye on Central Park West so that I could head south and he, west, I turned back one last time and saw him, bent forward so that he’s now about my height, and my eyes filled with tears of sadness and gratitude and all of it until they overflowed and sunglasses became necessary.

Dinner with TH in our old neighborhood Italian joint, followed by a casual “breaking-in” to his old building (it still smells the same!!!) and trip to the rooftop where he proposed. We took it all in: the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the penthouse apartment next door, and wondered aloud about why we weren’t up here more and how we took it for granted and all the things you say after you don’t have something all the time like you used to. And as we spent the next few hours over friends and drinks and one too many bottles of rose´, and the next morning I excused myself from the table to throw up in our room because I am a lady, then we took a car to LaGuardia and I threw up in (okay, near) a trashcan there because, again, lady, I said another long goodbye to the city that beat me up and made me myself and sent me into this life I have now. I thought about our time on the roof and how our now-life, in so many ways, began there, and how the answer to appreciating it all is just to look. To look at the scenery, at the hotel bookstand with Good Night, New York City and snap up the copy to read to TK and LB later, because what was can always be a part of what is. The then gives birth to the now. There will be a time when poopies in the potty will be expected, and we won’t believe he used to not talk, and I’ll have a hard time remembering whether Prince is north or south of Spring.  There will be a time when homecomings are less frequent than home-goings and this makes me sad–until I remember what sad can be, and how Nouwen says joy and suffering are two sides of the same coin because with grace, everything is just being made more beautiful. I try and remember this as our excitement at seeing the boys turns into the power struggle of late-day exhaustion and bath and bedtime, and as my head hits the pillow a thousand miles south of the city and deep into a suburb, and I drift off to sleep with the words echoing in my head–the words of pop but also redemption and art grace and everything: we found love right where we are. Where we were, are, will be. And just like that, I am–and always was–home.