Despite the liberated schedule and uncluttered calendar that often come with a period of transition, I must confess that transitions are still hard for me. Having returned to San Francisco from Cambridge, Massachusetts in May, traveled internationally in June and July, and finally moved down to our temporary-permanent residence in Pasadena, I feel it’s about time I settled down– body, mind and heart. But I can’t seem to sit back and feel it.
Each morning, I look outside my window at unfamiliar spaces and I drive on unfamiliar roads. The Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s are arranged rather differently, so I often find myself wandering through aisle after aisle before completely forgetting what I was looking for. My previous twenty-something neighbors have been replaced by young families, whose presence is evidenced by the little shoes I see outside their apartment doors. We’re the only couple on this floor without children, it seems.
But then there are those moments when a smiling stranger or kind cashier reminds me that this is already someone’s home. I’m not the first one here; instead there’s a pattern into which I will find myself a part, a pattern that will become so familiar that I begin to swim through it without a moment’s pause.
There’s a newness to this post-college season of life and I am not sure that it wears off in the fall, the following year or even the next few years. This season is about learning and building: learning to participate in a broader community of multigenerational individuals living complex lives; building a life that is beautiful, simple, promising and hopeful.
It is a life that is built one day at a time, with morning coffee and home-cooked meals. It’s meeting new neighbors as they naturally come and go, falling into their rhythm of life and learning to put ourselves in the trajectory of friendship. And it’s relishing the glimpses of familiarity that begin to become more frequent, and most certainly more welcome.