Tom & Alissa

A year ago, I moved to Brooklyn; I can’t really believe it’s been a year, but there you have it. I’ve lived in Brooklyn longer than I lived in Manhattan, two weeks longer, and I love the borough, though we still hope to move back to the Village some day. I’m in a lovely cafe fifteen blocks south of my apartment because we still don’t have air conditioning and the air in the apartment is too muddy to breathe.

This all means I’m coming up on two years in New York City. I mentioned this to mom recently and she sort of gasped. “How things have changed,” she said, and she’s right. In those two years I’ve graduated from college, ended one relationship, began another, got married, moved twice. My father was diagnosed with leukemia a few months after I moved here; he passed away last August, right before my wedding. My brother went to “real school” for the first time, after eleven years of homeschooling, and he’ll graduate from high school in three weeks. My mother went back to work in an office for the first time since my brother was born eighteen years ago, and my family moved from the rural house where I spent my teenage years to the house where my mother grew up. Our lives bear almost no resemblance to what they were two years ago, in some good ways and some very sorrowful ways. But I suppose that is what makes a life; the changes.

Also, tomorrow is Tom’s 25th birthday. He’ll be two years older than me for about five months. (Okay, I know that’s bad math, but math is not my strong point.)