Home again, home again.

It's dark at night here. Funny, how I've learned to sleep with light, learned to live always able to see. And funny how it feels to come back to this darkness--it feels safe inside, warmly lit, but walking to the car, letting the dog out before bed, I'd rather not.

It was early spring when I first started thinking seriously about moving north. I'd been missing New England since I left in 2001, always eager to visit, always longing for more trees than Central Park (as if I ever went there) could ever offer. But it wasn't until the end of March or the beginning of April that I started to realize: the time was coming.

I was up visiting JRoss, driving to Hampshire for a conference or to see his office or to pick him up. As you approach the college, farm land stretches out to either side of the winding road. Split rail and wire fences reach across the fields, penning in cows and horses. There are beaten barns and enormous farmhouses. I said to JRoss, "I like that house." And he said to me, "I love how much you love it here." And I realized: I do.

In the early weeks of considering this move, I imagined moving into one of those farmhouses, renting an apartment an older couple had built in the attic or what was once a carriage house. And then I came to Vermont to visit my family and I realized: were I to live in a house like that, it'd be dark like it is where I grew up--no streetlights, no passing cars, no neighbors. And it would be terrifying, in a way that it wasn't in my youth, partly because I rarely spent nights home alone and partly because I didn't know darkness from light in the way I do now.

So, thankfully, the apartment I've found is in a house where other humans also have apartments, on a street that is quiet and quaint but filled with life, walking distance from downtown and, hopefully, lit, though I haven't been there at night. September first is fast approaching, and it's time for me to start thinking about making this new home. And from scratch, having left everything in Brooklyn with the bed bugs.

Brooklyn, I miss you, but I don't miss those bugs. They are with me in my sleep, still. They will make it hard to visit.