And if you are wondering what I did, I waited until it seemed real, and then I walked to the corner bodega where someone was screaming that now things were going to go THEIR way, and then I walked to the other corner where people spilled out onto the streets, where fireworks (the real kind) joyously erupted from stoops, where strangers wept into my arms and wept with me, poured champagne for each other, danced on the sidewalk, cheered with their arms in the air, screamed with happiness as cars and city buses honked in symphony with the collected relief, disbelief, feeling of finally that changed everything for everyone. I phoned Hyde Park, I phoned Indiana, I heard from Manhattan and Toronto and Los Angeles and Vancouver and then I watched the skyline of my childhood projected on the wall of the restaurant, everyone in the room both somehow silent and bursting all at once, and in this moment I desperately missed Jeff, desperately missed Oliver, and I watched the city I grew up in make an entire country, an entire world proud, not change everything but change something so so big and I never before felt more homesick or more at home.

A lot of my friends see my proclivity for constant travel as some sort of chronic disease: I don’t know why. Life is really short, with so many awesome places to see and so many lovely people strewn all about who I miss all the time. Why shouldn’t I take advantage of occasionally poor financial judgment, the freedom of a flexible work schedule and the shameful environmental impact of capricious air travel to enjoy this world of ours? I am polycivic. Eat it.

In any case, leaving town only ever makes me love love and miss Brooklyn more more more. The walk to the A train to get to Kennedy always takes me through a little park in my neighborhood. It is supposedly called Fulton Park, after Robert Fulton, inventor of the first commercially viable steamboat, but a plaque embedded into the ground on the west end of the park will tell you that it was originally named Steamboat Park (much cuter.)

I got my first crush on Bed-Stuy coming out of the Utica Avenue Station into this park one year ago. (Ghetto nothing! Even the public bathroom was clean!) and I fall in love with it again every time I have to leave town. In April before I left for beautiful San Francisco I walked through a park full of blossoms. This morning I trekked past remaindered puddles, clearing October sun, wet leaves. I will spend the next couple of weeks of travel looking at inexplicable pine trees and prairies and listening to Biggie, excited to be flitting about the west and midwest but also excited that I get to be home soon for a good long stretch. Home is good. It is good to finally have one.

Steamboat Park is my portal in and out of home, and it is, also (stop laughing) where I learned to ride a bicycle, just now. At an age where one is far less fearless and near to the ground than a small child is. At an age where the little kids in the park ask daily if you’ve “got the hang of it yet” and where countless “friendly” neighbors heckle you for walking your bike to the park not realizing you are not street safe to ride it two blocks.

So to Susan K. for the bicycle and all the indignant Torontonians (sorry your bikes got stolen so often it never got to be you who donated me those wheels, Sasha) I thank you for berating me into what I obviously already knew. But also thank you Brooklyn for being so easy and inspiring to get to know: I’m kind of glad I’ve already traced the lines of this neighborhood in so many other ways that now I get to love it anew, maybe the way it was supposed to be.

So, yeah. There ain’t nothin’ quite like waking up early to bike through the projects towards the friend you just stole from Canada and a cup of coffee. Time enough to love, pause, squeeze your city tightly before slipping past that little bronze steamboat to points yet to come…