New Beginnings

Today while I sat in the very comfortable blue chairs that sit in the prized location of our living room, I decided to put on some music. This was despite my better judgement since I was working on reading a rather dense book for one of my PhD classes starting in September and needed full concentration capacity. Having recently acquired Spotify thanks to my bf, I decided to peruse the vast database to find a new playlist to try. I found one called #vainsuomihitit, or “only Finnish hits.” Feeling adventurous, I decided to give it a whirl.

I had never heard any of the songs on the list and, when I listened to them, I knew that they were not songs I would actively choose to listen to. Yet, hearing the words—only a portion of which I could understand—made emotions well up. They reminded me of Finland, where walking down the street I would hear this beautiful language being spoken and see it written all around me.

A typical Aurajoki picture

Now in a Finnish mindset, even looking into my parents’ back yard made me think of the Finnish cottages I have spent so much of the summer in. I imagined the river that is the subject of every cliched picture on my Facebook wall from international students’ posts and felt a longing to walk along it, while cyclists whizzed effortlessly past—the crowds are never so dense as to make this difficult, this is Finland after all— and people sat on the grassy hill along the river enjoying the last days of summer. I missed the quick breeze that began to bite at dusk even in the midst of summer. I even missed the feeling of darkness in winter that made you forget that it was only 3:30 in the afternoon.

I have been quite happy being settled at home for this past month so this sudden longing for Turku surprised me. It is, perhaps a mark of how as we grow older, new places begin to creep their way into our hearts and become the place we consider home. We replace the steadiness of the place of our childhood with the place (or places) that will be where we find stability as adults. And our relationship with those places is quite different than the place where we grew up. The latter is rooted in nostalgia while the former is rooted in responsibility and the future.

My new Finnish bed sheet for NYC,
thanks to the bf

The idea of home has been on my mind recently because the place I call home is about to change as I head to New York City to begin working on my PhD program. New York City is not a place I particularly want to live but it will be the place where I work for my future and where I will continue to pave my own path.

I cannot in all honesty say that I am eager for this next move. But the idea of continuing the growth that began in Turku in a city that literally grows every day does entice me somewhat. So while I will undoubtedly miss the nostalgia of home and have left a piece of my heart in Turku, while I plan on covering as much of my grad school apartment in memorabilia that remind me of both, I will try to take what I can from my new home. Because in it lies my future.