Right now, I'm sitting at my regular café in Ifrane and my life is about to change again in just a few weeks. For the past three and a half years, I have lived in this small, college town and have made a home for myself here. While I'm gearing up to move to a new city with a new job, to begin a new chapter of my life, I find myself reminiscing more than usual. (I am the kind of person who is almost haunted by memories, usually the good kind with a tinge of sadness and regret at missing whatever or whoever I'm thinking of).
This started because a Facebook post popped up on my feed about Colonel Robert Shaw. For those who do not know him, he is emblazoned in history as the leader of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, an all-black regiment made of freed men of the time after the Emancipation Proclamation by Governor Andrew. His story, and the stories of his men, were famously brought to the silver screen in the movie Glory. In Boston, right in the middle of the Suffolk University "campus" (because our campus was basically just Beacon Hill) there was a monument to Colonel Shaw and the 54th regiment. Suddenly, I was standing on the corner of Beacon and Park Streets, waiting for the light, heading to the Dunkin Donuts across the street. Of course, I live abroad but as the historian in my can't help but try to re-orient myself when curiosity strikes me, so I pulled up a map. Then it's like I'm back in college 15 years ago...
But now writing about it, I'm realizing I was brought back to college a few hours ago. I was watching something online and someone was complaining about the smell of dryer sheets wafting around in the clean morning air, and how it was basically air pollution. Immediately (and I mean that moment you get almost yanked by the hair to a memory), it was 2005 and I was walking across the busy main road to Temple Street and there was a vent at the bottom of Temple that wafted that same smell. To me it was like someone sprinkled candy in the air. My mother had long since stopped using any scented laundry detergent or softener, so smelling it was something I genuinely missed. I was sitting on one of the stone blocks placed between large wooden flower planters, listening to the guy who used to stand at the end of the street and play the harmonica sometimes. Now, fully engulfed in this schlep through my memory, I learned that the Derne Street Deli had closed. I remembered they had this ham and cheese sub that I used to adore, and I used to rely on this place for lunch very regularly. I was a commuter from about an hour outside of Boston, so I packed my schedule into 3-4 days and one semester I remember I was there from 8am to about 10pm...just...yikes.
Suddenly I find myself about 2 blocks away at the corner of Ashburton and Bowdoin. I'm walking in front of cars to cross Bowdoin, heading to my work-study office at the Government Department on Ashburton finishing my roughly 10-15 minute walk from North Station. There on the corner, is Capitol Coffee House, one of my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE places in this area. I found myself almost sending a message to them, despite the fact that it has been over a decade and there is no way in hell they remember me, just to tell them how much their little place meant to me. The number of times I finished that walk and grabbed myself a much needed coffee before getting to the office. The steak and cheese subs I worshipped over the years. Their croissant breakfast sandwiches where the bacon was so perfectly cripy that watching me eat one was bordering on inappropriate. And my all-time favorite embarrassing memory of them, when my jaw was wired shut and I was so desperate for something I wanted to eat (or rather drink) that I ordered their cheese and broccoli soup and ended up looking like I had eaten Swamp Thing at the office. The small pieces of broccoli did not magically squeeze between my teeth, but instead became stuck in the net of elastics holding my braced teeth together. Not ideal, but hilarious for my friends at the Government Department who understood my desperation and just kindly told me to go brush my teeth. The point? It was always the little things. The places I frequented and became a regular customer and how wonderfully they were to me over the years. The smells and the sounds that make a place home, even for a short while.
Now writing this, I find myself flashing back to the many places I have called home over the years. There are little things about these places that will always be near and dear to my heart. Mike, the guy who checked IDs at the Cantab Lounge in Central Square, Cambridge who would ask me every time I went when we were getting married. Sitting on the new patio at the The Field, sharing a beer with my roommates. The fact that my little spot in Bishop Allen Drive smelled like Indian food all summer because of the place across the street next to the Co-Op where I used to get spices in bulk for wicked cheap. The VFW where I worked and met so many of my friends, many of them much older veterans, when I moved to Amherst. Riding my bike all around the valley and strapping it to the front of the the PVTA busses. Going for late night post-drinks food at Local Burger. Grabbing a drink at the Yo Ol' Watering Hole in Northampton and striking up a conversation with strangers.
I moved to Morocco with 4 bags of stuff and nothing else. Since August of 2018, I have made friends who border on being family. I am a regular at my shops. At my regular café, one of the waiters saw me once from a distance and held his thumb and forefinger apart to indicate "Coffee?" and I ordered with a thumbs up. I know people's names, I see them around town, I've met some of their families just in passing on the street. I celebrated my birthday with the family who lives in the house my apartment is in. I cannot express how comfortable I have become and how much I love my life here. But remembering all the places I've called home, it conjures memories of how easily I am able to fit into new spaces. Suddenly, I'm slightly less scared to give up my life here and move forward. I wrote a poem when I was a kid about how I wished to be a vagabond, and now I'm seeing that although I do have permanent places to rest my head, home is wherever the wind blows...as long as I have my cats.
