belonging

It hit me pretty strongly while I was there for the holidays that I no longer belong in Provo. Macey's is no longer my grocery store, I no longer belong on the campus of BYU (or Provo High, or Dixon Middle, or Grandview Elementary either, for that matter), and, though I'll probably always know how to wind my way around the back roads through town, it is no longer a place I can say I belong at. For 23 years it was a great place to call home, and, for as long as I've got family and friends living there, it will be a place that I love to visit. But Provo is no longer home for me.

As much as I enjoyed the two years we spent there for graduate school, it only makes sense that, now that Blake has graduated, I no longer belong in Muncie. I will forever treasure the friendships that were formed there, I loved the opportunities we took to explore the green and farm-filled Midwest, and I loved the feeling of purpose I got through the support I gave to Blake, through the job I daily worked at, and through the positions I held at church. But Muncie is no longer my home.

It only seems right that, since Brooklyn is my home now, that I should feel like I belong here. But I don't yet.

I don't feel like I am aggressive enough to fit in with my native Brooklyn neighbors, nor am I an immigrant from an exotically foreign country. I don't have a out-of-the-home job that introduces me to new people, and either because they work long hours in Manhattan or don't understand English, the only people in my building who I know are the Polish supers. I am a rare breed in this relatively well-off neighborhood in that the child I tote around with me on errands is not one that I have been hired as a nanny to take of, but is, rather, my own, and because I stay home to raise him, there is no need for me to get in with the daycare crowd.

For a variety of reasons, including the fact that I was whisked to away to a lovely, yet hidden, calling as nursery leader, the weak communication between the Primary and Relief Society organizations in our ward that has kept me from knowing what my visiting teaching route is, the language barriers that have made it difficult for me find who I'm supposed to talk to to remedy that, and also because I have not yet had the courage and energy to put forth the necessary effort, I do not yet feel like I belong to my Brooklyn ward. Though the people in the ward are indescribably nice, we all live relatively far apart and lead very different lives, and I'm still lacking a similarly situated close friend who can help fill my quiet days with the conversations my six-month-old can't have with me.

I have, in short, had a bit of trouble finding my niche here, a place to fit in, that feeling of belonging.

But I realized yesterday that, while feeling like I belong in my ward and getting to know the other people in my building are things that I still desire, I have perhaps forgotten to focus on the reality that there are, in fact, a few places here in Brooklyn where I do belong.

I belong at the laundromat. Every Tuesday morning when I haul our dirty clothes the few blocks to wash them, I am accompanied by the same two other women also there to wash their family's pile of laundry. And even though we don't know each other's names, we do know each other's faces, and while our clothes churn in the washers and toss in the dryers and get folded on the counters, we engage in pleasant conversations. They tell me about their children, most of whom are grown, and I let them coo over Garrett, who, to the surprise and wonderment of them, as well as the Chinese lady who owns the laundromat, usually sleeps peacefully and adorably in the Snugli while I go about my work. "God bless," they tell me each week as I bid them goodbye. "We'll see you next week."

I also belong at my local Rite Aid. A healthy handful of employees, including the security guard, the cashier, one of the pharmacy techs, and a friendly floor employee, recognize me as the regular which I've become and Garrett as the teddy bear he turned into this winter. As with the laundromat, we know faces and not names, but I can't help but feel like I belong when the gruff security guard exclaims as I walk through the door, "Cute, cute baby! Here - I'll hold him while you shop," or when the heavily Brooklyn-accented cashier sighs for the umpteenth time over that sweet baby I always have with me. And it made me all kinds of happy when, yesterday, as I ran in to buy a package of batteries, the floor employee, who, several months ago, was a part of the conversation at the pharmacy counter where I explained the reason why my prescription came from an Indiana doctor rather than a Brooklyn one, stopped me in my tracks to say, "Hey, I wanted to ask you - what do you think of a New York New Year's compared with a Midwestern one? I'll bet it's a lot louder here."

And so, in a strange sort of way, I am starting to belong here in Brooklyn. I realize that truly belonging anywhere takes time as well as effort and, seeing as I've only been here for a few months, this is only a beginning. I still have names to learn and a close, drop-in-anytime sort of friend to find, but it's more than a little relieving for me to realize that the beginnings of my belonging here are starting to get established.