For All The Homebodies Out There…

Even though I was recently home for the seemingly long period of nine months due to Miss Rona, as a chronic (and recently vaccinated!) homebody, I am always looking for a respectable excuse to travel home. No matter how much I truly do adore New York and the never-exhausted joy of looking at Find My Friends to see so many people I love within a 1-mile radius on this tiny island or simply the excitement of simply walking a block to get a delicious bagel, I also equally love good ole’ Jackson, Mississippi because of the people who live there (& also because of fried okra.)

However, as Easter rolled around and my parents and I looked at flights, never even considering the fact that I would stay in New York for Easter, an unfamiliar pull tugged at my heart. At first, I thought I must be imagining it. Surely, I wanted to go home for Easter. Yes, I had already been home once this semester and yes, the cherry blossoms were looking particularly beautiful, but I dismissed this urge to stay in the city as nothing more than pre-exam stress. But as a few days passed and I kept putting off getting a ticket, I wondered if my desire to stay in the city wasn’t a pre-exam stress dream but rather a gentle shift in what the word home means.

Because if home isn’t a specific place, but rather simply the irreplaceable feeling of being both known and loved, then New York is just as much home as Mississippi. And even more so, it’s a home I’ve built– where the key on my keychain unlocks an apartment that is solely filled with the things I have chosen to put there and where the sky is a special kind of pink. And so, as the time to get my ticket came and went, I found myself waking up in New York on Easter morning with no Easter basket from my family but instead a yummy breakfast with my roommate, an afternoon picnic in the park with people I love, a long walk, even painting my dresser blue. And the best part about the day was that it really could’ve been any other day, except it wasn’t, and I was reminded that if you get to spend your life with the people you love, you’ve already won the cosmic lottery.

Central Park Cherry Tree by Jewewls Tauzin.