I had only moved one other time before moving to Boston in 2023–into my great-aunt’s house down the street, where my family has lived for generations. This is one of my favorite fun-facts to tell new people, and I often accompany it with more. The closest stop-light to my house is over 35 minutes away, and so is the nearest Walmart or McDonald’s. A part of the movie adaptation of Stephen King’s “Pet Cemetery” was filmed at a blueberry field in my town, and E.B White based “Charlotte’s Web” on my peninsula’s annual fair. You can see the ocean from my bedroom window, and you can bike down there in 5 minutes.
In Brooklin, the town over from mine, I work at the Lookout Inn. My aunts, uncles and cousins have all worked there at one time or another, and so have both of my parents. I hear the same comments from all of the other Mainers every night during dinner service. A conversation typically goes like this:
“Now deah, I’ve wondered this all night and I just gotta ask. You must be a Webb, ain’t that right?”
“Yes, I am. Ben’s my father, and David and Baby are his parents. I live over in Sargentville.”
“‘Magine that! You look just like your old man. You’ve got his nose, but you’re some cunnin’, lot more than him.”
I get that all the time. People from all seven towns on Blue Hill Peninsula know me, and I know them. Everyone is intricately woven together in some way or another; mostly for better, and rarely for worse.
It was a struggle, at first, to see myself in a city that previously had no evidence of my being there at all. Sure, I had visited Boston before, but only long enough to see a concert and get breakfast at Tatte before going back home. I didn’t know a single person, and for the first time ever in my life, I was left by myself with no shared history, no common ground, and no connection to anyone at all. Over time, though, through countless times spent eating alone in the dining hall, I found my people and my place. It only took a few months before I felt just a little bit more at home, and that made all the difference.
As I’ve become increasingly settled in Boston over the past two and a half years, I’ve been able to find a part of me here, too. My favorite restaurant, Zaftig’s, is 0.3 miles down my street, and the nearest Blank Street Cafe is 0.6 miles away. I know my walk to school by heart, and I know exactly what time the next T will be at my stop. Every Monday at noon, the same two strangers and I ride the same inbound train together. I don’t know where they’re going, and they don’t know where I am either, but that’s something that we share.
I used to struggle with finding balance between home and Boston, and I still do sometimes. I visit my family in Maine around every two months, and I experience the same trail of emotions. The first two nights that I’m home in my childhood bed, in my room where half of the decorations were ripped off of the walls to bring to my first college dorm room, I believe that I would be happy if I never left home again. Then, the third night, I find myself itching to get back to the city. It’s too quiet at home, sometimes, without the police sirens, train bells, constant chatter, and my roommate’s cat meowing at me every single morning. I miss my coffee, the StarMarket down the street, and riding on a packed train at 5:30pm on a weekday, because I forgot to beat the evening traffic.
On the other hand, the things that I miss about Boston while I’m home become my biggest struggles when I come back to the city. My coffee is too expensive, no one knows any grocery store etiquette, and everyone steps on my feet on the T. I could never make a strong enough pros-and-cons list for either Maine or Boston and feel comfortable with my choice; neither feel like enough on its own. I used to think that I had to decide between them; there were plenty of times I almost did. The distance between my two homes is 265 miles, all spread down the top half of New England. I still come home to Sargentville and feel like I’m stretching myself too far down the coastline, and I still come back to Boston and feel like I fit a little better each time. I’m just learning how to leave and come back.