Once upon a time, there was a girl. She moved across the country to a place where the sky was largely grey. She'd fly back East for Christmas and feel awe as the sky turned a blue that was as sharp as ice and cut the eyes. The jetport was white concrete in the middle of the jagged buildings of Boston, pushed up against the water. As you took off from the tarmac, the plane cast a shadow on the white-capped harbor, and the sandbars grew larger the farther they spread out to sea, some with small buildings or lighthouses to warn ships ahead.
That girl, obviously, is me.
I've been to Boston most often in the winter time, and it is always very cold. It is an in-between place for me, a place I move through towards the trains and buses and airplanes and cars I need to take. In the lengths of time between these things, there are spaces. It is winter, and there is a small crusting of icy snow over the park. We're in the neighborhood where my first kiss lives. He's in a tiny apartment owned by his parents, working 18 hours a day in finance. I don't entirely understand what he does for a living, only that it's stressful enough for him to need a tiny oven that fits on his countertop. The oven has a scanner that reads your individually wrapped meals, and uses the data to heat the food to the right temperature in the right amount of time. You have to buy the oven in order to eat the food, but I'm not here to judge.
I'm here to tell you about the cold.
There's a park outside of his apartment. In the winter, the ground is an icy coat of snow. A bridge crosses over some water that is hard and grey like steel. People let their dogs run off-leash through the snow, and the little legs kick of ice crystals and glitter like shrapnel under the icy sun.
I'm here to tell you about how cold it is when I fly home.
The water in Boston Harbor always looks white-capped. There's a park by the airport, with a promenade that follows the shore before curling into a jetty. When you walk the jetty, the wind whips your face with your hair and then hits your face for good measure. You can listen to the water hitting the sides of the rocks and the roar of the jetliners overhead. I stop there before my flight, listening to the planes and the water against the rocks and losing feeling in my cheeks as the wind hits my face.
From the airport, you can take a local train downtown, then walk to the train station. The train station isn't warm. Even the bathroom is cold, with white glaring lights. You can wait in the space for your train, fill the time with a phone call to your family, and they will ask you about the wind in the background, about the loud static announcements overhead, about the chatter of the people on distant benches. It is hard to find a place that is quiet. It is impossible to find a place that is warm. There is a small chain doughnut stand where your mother orders a small bag of hash browns.
I have been to Boston in the summertime, but it was a long time ago. There were jellyfish in the aquarium, floating in a blue glow, and the profile of my first kiss's face cut out against the water. There was a long walk to Bunker Hill with my history class in high school, climbing 294 stairs to a small window that looks out over the city.
I did want to move to Boston once, but it was a long time ago, before I found warmer places much farther away. How far do you need to go to be warm? How close do you need to stay? Where is family and where is home?
This past summer, I visited the house where I had my first kiss. The family lives about forty minutes south of Boston, and it never is cold there. We were having tea and pastries, and his mother told us they were selling the house. I felt a physical need to go upstairs, to see the bed where I'd spent that night. But that had been many years before, and I wasn't allowed to just walk up the stairs to their bedrooms. I contented myself with looking at the couch. Ten years later, it was the same soft yellow color, faded with time and wear. He'd tasted of wine. I wore a sundress that pressed my small breasts flat. I'd sewn up the front buttons so the sundress wouldn't gape and expose the soft flesh, and later, he'd try to unbutton them that night in the bed, laughing. I snuck into the guest room early the next morning, still wearing his shirt, which is now in a small space of my closet carved out for past lovers.
That summer was very warm.
The park was very cold. There was a layer of icy snow over the ground. His mother tells me he has a small oven that scans his food, very futuristic. The dogs run off-leash through the snow, kicking up ice crystals. I've come from very far away, debarked from a plane that flew in over whitecaps. I miss my home. I miss summer. I miss being warm in a place where the sky is usually grey.
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(This Christmas was the first year I've spent away from the family that raised me. I moved really far -- over three thousand miles to the other side of the country. It's way too far to drive home, and I'm not about to take a plane in a pandemic. The sky was grey here, but it was warm inside, with the fire lit. There were no trains, or planes, or cars to carry me through spaces. I woke, and put the kettle on for tea, and sat by the fire while I waited for the water boil.
There's something to be said for staying close, for not having to get on a plane to get you where you want to go. And how home can migrate across many miles to another side of the sea, and how much warmer it can be here, even if the sky is grey.)
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