It took more than a 18 months, but finally. I'm home.

My visit with my mom this past weekend was a blast.


On her first full day in New York, we took a nice walk in Greenwich Village, saw where I'd soon be attending class at NYU, and ended up at Brent's work, where he took us up to the conference room on the top floor of his building that overlooked lower Manhattan.


Afterward, we had a great dinner at this tiny, Italian place called Max's, which makes homemade pasta.

The next day was my birthday celebration, which was awesome.


Mother's Day was great this year because, of course, I got to spend it with my mother. To celebrate, I made a smorgasbord of deliciousness for dinner and then took my mom to a Broadway play. Though it ended up not being my favorite, we couldn't deny the dancing was phenomenal.


Then came a revelation on Monday after a dinner at Angelo's Pizza and before my mom and I headed to my basketball game, where she proceeded to videotape about a minute of our combined four games. In that minute, I swear she captured about 99 percent of the mistakes I made during those games - including turning over the ball and falling down while going in for a layup. She completely missed even seeing the actual layups I made along with the almost 3-pointer, and more importantly, failed to get them on videotape so I can prove to my husband that I can too play basketball. My dad rocks at videotaping anything. My mom... not so much. (Here's my team. Except for a smiling Rob, don't they look like an excited bunch? Well they are when they're not completely beat!)


Anyway, my revelation came when my mom and I traveled to Brooklyn to finally go to the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, where they hand-make the ice cream. And yes, it was delicious, but it was also far away, and I had to ride an unfamiliar J train.

But the factory is right off a pier on the river, so while we ate our ice cream - in waffle cones, naturally - we sat down by the river and gazed over at the island that is Manhattan. I thought I'd feel peaceful at the waterfront, but instead I felt weirdly uncomfortable, like the feelings that were nagging me when transferring to a train I had never ridden before. At that time, I thought it was because there was a very real potential of getting lost, and I H.A.T.E. being lost and loathe all the helpless feelings that go with it.


But then I realized that I felt uncomfortable because I was in unfamiliar Brooklyn looking at what's become a familiar Manhattan. I was looking at my home and I felt uncomfortable because I wasn't in it.

Those suspicious were confirmed when we got off the train in Manhattan and headed toward my basketball game in a neighborhood I knew well. I felt better because things looked familiar. And oddly enough, though it goes against everything I believed before moving here, I felt safer, which is a feeling I get more often than not in New York - unless I'm riding the subway alone after midnight. (Did it once - will never do it again.)


I walk my dog around my neighborhood at 10 or 11 p.m. every night and though I'm aware and alert, I've never been fearful. In a city with a population that has grown in the past year by more than the entire population of Toledo, it's hard to be anywhere alone. And because I don't drive anywhere and am rarely in a cab (which I take in lieu of the subway if I'm going home after midnight on strict orders by my husband) the constant potential to be in a car crash has virtually diminished. I feel safe here because it's become familiar.

Never thought I'd say it, but when I refer to home now, I mean New York City.