My senior year at Brown, I was dating Kevin at MIT. Aside from the emails and IMs and phone calls that are the crutch of any long-ish distance relationship, we saw each other most weekends. He had a car, and I had the Boston commuter rail and the T. On my weekends, I’d go flying out of TA hours on Friday, back to the dorm, pack a bag, and run down the hill to the train, which I always made with about a second to spare.
Coming home was equally hectic, since I’d always wait till the last minute (are you sensing a trend?), leave Kevin’s house late, and then put my faith in a faster-than-possible walk and an on-time red-line train, before racing through the South Station construction to get on the train down to Providence. When I graduated and had cause to take the commuter rail, I always left from Back Bay, so I haven’t been in South Station since. It was fun to see it finished (though I missed the person selling flowers next to the huge expanse of plywood downstairs). Some places just stand as pillars of your past. Even better, just as I showed up, it started snowing. The sky was still all sunny, and the flakes were huge. If you look in the upper right corner of the picture you can see them against the brick.
I love Seattle, and it’s always felt like home to me, but every now and then I just deeply miss belonging in Boston. It was good to be home.