I lived in New York in my early-twenties when I worked in magazine publishing. I suppose I still do some of the time, but the landscape and the product looks completely different than it did then. Last week, I walked by my old apartment and I’m sure we all know that feeling of rounding the corner or pulling up a driveway and seeing “it” — that place where we passed however many nights, made whatever decision, and laughed with so-and-so about what-have-you. Seeing it brings both confirmation of a time in your life you remember a certain way and further self-inquiry. In my case, the building is brick and shorter than I recall and doesn’t have a blue door like I thought it did. Or maybe the landlord painted (it has been seven years). I can still remember his voice over the phone, calling from Staten Island. 

I spent time with the half a dozen cousins who have settled in Brooklyn over the last decade, eating at one cousin’s delish restaurant, Thistle Hill Tavern, walking through Prospect Park with another, meeting up with yet another immediately after he returned from two weeks Tokyo and with yet another for coffee. I got to catch up with friends I haven’t seen since my last trip to the boroughs over a year ago. Many of them now have their babies in tow so we headed to still-sunny parks to follow pigeons and chase open meadows, and my subsequent photos look more like the “babes of Brooklyn” than anything else. 

The highlight of highlights was walking my three-year-old “nephew” to pre-school (without siblings of my own, I’ve been generously allowed to call and love my cousin’s children as my nieces and nephews). He and I held hands, crossing the Brooklyn avenues, with his bestie “Dougie” in his other hand and a much-needed iced coffee in mine, and while it may have only lasted a few minutes, it has carved out a little place in my heart all its own because I learned what it feels like to watch someone you’re related to learn to talk and walk and run into a classroom where his finger paintings on the wall bear your same last name. 

I also got to jet out to Asbury Park, NJ, where my “sister-cousin” lives and where Shepard Fairey recently added some flair in homage to the famed boardwalk’s musical roots. We dipped our whole bodies in the ocean and rode beach cruisers through three towns by just sticking to the boardwalk. I felt like I did when I was seven… that as long as I had my bike I could get almost anywhere.

It was exhausting. But it was delicious to overextend, as you have to do when you have a stretch of days off work and close to two dozen people to see in multiple area codes. By the end of it, I fell asleep during mid-conversation (despite my introduction of “Piscola” to the Jersey Shore) and realized how much notions of “home” change as we move and shift around the planet. 

I recently taught one of my classes the meaning of “hometown” and the difference between one’s hometown and one’s home. Every single member of the class was from Santiago proper, born and raised. They still call their hometown of six million home. In a country where the third of the population lives in one city, this answer is common. I explained my own hometown: a small community south of San Francisco known for its hills and its horses and the fact that there isn’t one traffic light to speak of. 

A long way from Brooklyn, certainly, and a full 24 hours of travel away from Chile. It’s my “hometown” not because I was born there, but because it’s where I grew up during those formative years when we ride bikes and walk to school and when it’s normal to run into half a dozen people whenever your mom takes you grocery shopping. My nephew’s hometown will always be Brooklyn. My mom’s will always be out in the Avenues of San Francisco even though she still lives in my horsey, hilly hometown. I’ve since called Boston, London, New York, San Francisco, and now Santiago “home,” a concept that has to stay the same and continue to change, right? It has to be where we store memory and wherever we lay our proverbial hat. We have to have it and be looking for it all at the same time. 

We keep moving to see and appreciate the differences and the familiarities. Throughout it all, I was playing the comparison game I’m used to playing here. How different this is. Or what’s the word for that again? Only in reverse. I was shocked when a cab driver wanted to carry on a full-ride conversation about hubcaps. I wasn’t shocked because he was talking to me; I was shocked that I could talk back. That I knew the word for hubcap! I was also surprised how much I paid attention to my phone in order to make and change plans and express glee and fondness after they came to pass. (Nowadays, all of five people have my number and 75 key commands are required in order to draft and send any one text message.) In a full week, the phone hardly ever rang per se, and I realized no one actually talks on the phone anymore. I knew that four months ago. It’s the remembering part that surprised me. 

And then there was the food. All the glorious food…

And when a good trip has to come to an end, it’s nice to head, well, home… Safe travels to and from and between and amongst everywhere you call home.