Strongly Worded

Comings and Goings

So my lovely friend Melinda is moving to Chicago tomorrow. She and her husband hosted a "Scare Us out of Town" party on Saturday night. (They dressed up as a baby and Ozzy Osborne, respectively. The Ozzy costume incorporated a small bird (stuffed) with its head chomped off. )

As the party wound down, I found myself sitting between Melinda and our friend R., musing about shared good times. Along with K., the four of us have been primary friends for a good while now. Collectively, we've experienced nine job transitions, enrolled in five post-graduate institutions, broken up with seven men, married two others, moved ten times, and started two blogs.

I get all panicky when people move away. One of the hardest things about being a twentysomething in a cool area like Greater Boston is the constant migration. People go away to grad school, or move closer to their or their significant others' families, or they are misguided enough to leave for othe reasons.

I feel particularly panicky with Melinda's departure, because it makes me the last urban holdout in our group. K. has moved to Rhode Island for grad school. R. has bought a house in the suburbs. And that leaves just me breathing exhaust and lead paint in my overpriced city apartment. Without Melinda, will people still trek out for craft night at my house, with the traffic and the parking problems? I comfort myself by thinking that E., the newest member of our crew, continues to rock out in her (urban) Cambridge apartment, but I hear that she, too, is "looking to buy" which may mean another suburban defection.

R. is finding inroads to her new suburban community, which also scares me. I love hearing about the dearth of ethnic food and the strip malls. (C'mon over, anytime! There won't be any parking, but we've got Thai, Mexican, Indian, Italian, Tibetan , Japanese ... all within walking distance of my house ...). I love hearing about the not-so-progressive suburban neighbors. (You might get towed, but I can provide you with all the political correctness you could ever want!)

But I am frightened when I hear about the social scene that has cropped up in the dog park. R. has enrolled her puppy in obedience classes, and thus befriended two former city-dwellers. They are a young, hip couple with whom R. bonds in the company of their canine companions. The couple lives very close to R. and her husband. How can I compete with that? I have no dog. I have no fresh air. And I live about 40 minutes away.

I try to stave off these feelings by considering the "net gain" of friendship. Luckily, the Greater Boston Migration Phenomenon works both ways. Many people come here for school and end up staying forever, like a handful of grad school classmates, including my beloved friend Stef (and yes, I acknowledge that "forever" may be a little premature). Many people actually buy overpriced homes in the city itself (two of my friends recently became urban homeowners, which fills me with joy, because not only do they live nearby, but they will live nearby for the foreseeable future).

That doesn't make it any easier, though. Tonight I have to stop by Melinda's house and drop off the Deb Talan CD she lent me. Which brings back memories of the time when we went to see Deb Talan back before she got famous, performing in a yoga studio in Arlington, and Melinda had her pager in case she got called for a hateful-job-related emergency, and I cried during the sad songs because I had just broken up with the then-love of my life ...

There's no way around it. I will miss Melinda, her dark humor, her Midwestern sensibility, abd her unabashed appreciation of pop culture. I'm glad that, at least virtually, she'll stay just around the corner.

Posted by Dori at 4:02 PM