Field Notes from The Big Apple
On Going Home
Four (four!) months ago, I moved out of my parents’ apartment in arguably the world’s most exciting city — New York — to a tiny village in England’s rural — very rural — South West.
This month, I’m back in the Big Apple for Christmas.
What follows are a handful of half-baked realisations, muddled musings, and dubious conclusions about being home, growing up, and moving on.
Enjoy!
On Saturday, I fly back home to New York City for the first time since moving abroad. With little trust in the British railway system and a healthy dose of excitement, I arrive at the airport an absurd five hours early for my 8 pm flight — evidence I am increasingly turning into my mother. Add the 2-hour delay and I spend a total of seven hours in Heathrow’s Terminal 3, wheeling my carry-on from one uncomfortable seat to the next.
By the end of the seven hours, I have committed the safety announcement to heart, visited Boots three times, tried seven perfumes in the Duty Free section, discovered four new songs, and witnessed two full-blown, kids-on-the-airport-floor, mothers-at-their-wits-end, fathers-furious family meltdowns.
And yet, I don’t mind the wait.
There is something that feels particularly grown up about waiting for a flight back home across the pond for Christmas.
I toast the affair with a glass of white wine in the terminal’s only sit-down restaurant. $27.
I arrive in New York City at 3 am, plug in my American SIM, and before I have even stepped foot in my apartment, I have dodged two Uber scams, spent $80, and nearly gotten run over twice. Oh, how I missed New York!
Going home — Going Home, if you will — has proven to be an exciting and simultaneously unsettling experience.
In the short time that I’ve been away, things have already changed:
Favourite restaurants have shuttered.
The supermarket has been reorganised.
Friends have moved.
My closet is now empty except a few random t-shirts I don’t quite have the heart to give away.
I have the distinct feeling that I no longer live here and that I am visiting for the week.
I pass a few blocks from where I worked for a year after I graduated college and I quite literally have to turn around.
When I pass my old gym, I feel the weight of an entirely bygone era of a once daily routine.
Whatever New York chapters lie ahead for me, it’s clear they’ll be entirely unique from their predecessors — an obvious, yet equally difficult pill to swallow.
And yet, some things — perhaps the most important things — haven’t changed at all.
I meet my best friend who has moved into an apartment on my street (on my street!) and within seconds, we fall into familiar rhythms. We settle into old ways and find new ways to look at the exact same situation for the one hundredth time. At dinner — as we always do — we carefully critique the restaurant’s decor from head to toe, no fork or lighting choice left unmentioned. This is why I love her.
We decide over Paper Planes that there are at least four things you need to have mastered by 23:
You cannot have any unframed posters on your walls. We’re not in college anymore.
You must have some kind of a hobby. Any hobby. You don’t need to actually be good at it. That’s for the rest of your 20s.
You must have found some form of exercise that you enjoy doing daily. It doesn’t have to involve going to the gym.
You must have a few solid preferences: A coffee order, a wine order, a cocktail order, a signature scent, and (because we’re us) a colour palette.
In retrospect, our bar is incredibly low for 23-year-olds. We may need to reconsider this list. Stay tuned.
I feel I’ve lived about 110 lives this year — and I’m not sure I’d be rushing to live any one of them again! It has been a year of lessons learned, unretained, unlearned, then learned again a harder way; avoidable situations utterly — almost impressively — un-avoided; old chapters reluctantly closing and new chapters opening. I am crossing my fingers (and toes!) for smoother sailing in 2026.
But for now, I am home and all is well.
My dad is in the kitchen making espresso martinis.
My mom is perfecting her Christmas tree.
Emma Peters is playing on the speakers and there are treats out on the kitchen table.
Merry Christmas xx
welcome home 💛