I’m finding this whole thing so interesting. Because it is bringing out so many issues for me. When I left my high school to attend college in upstate New York, I was called a traitor. “What’s wrong with UMASS?” everyone wanted to know. To this day, almost 15 years after graduation, out of a class of 178 students, 18 of us live outside New England. Some of them went somewhere else and hated it. And came home. And never left again. Except to go to New Hampshire on Sundays for beer.

And when I go home, they look at me like I have four heads. Because I lost most of my accent. Because I no longer think of Boston as The Hub. Because I forget that bars close at 1 and forget about last call and that the train stops running an hour before the bars close. Because I don’t fit into any Boston boxes of race or color or religion or sexual orientation. And I’ve never been able to see living there again. Because I am not there in my head or my heart.

And you know, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the reason I left and the reason I can never go back full-time (except for my precious summers), is because of comments like Cara’s “I’m a New Englander through and through”.

What does that mean?

It means you cannot love another city? It means you cannot leave? It means you never ever root for another team? It means that? In which case, I suppose I am not a New Englander at all. Despite the wheres and hows I was raised.

Since adulthood, I've always thought a good part of differentiating between being a New Englander and being from New England is the ability to see outside the borders. Because none of my posse, no matter how much I love them, can stand to be outside Boston for more than a week. They get confused and sad and lonely and they want their stuff back the way it was.

And that’s fine. I get it. I understand that living outside boxes is weird. I know it is hard to explain to people that a packy is where you get beer and that you can’t get it on Sunday. It means you have to adapt and grow. And that’s hard. It’s easier to stay home and watch the Bruins.

So that’s the case. I left. And I see other things. And I stopped calling subs grinders. And I married a black man…I even bring him to weddings in Boston sometimes. Where he cannot get a cab downtown. I lived with Mexican Americans in a whole new climate. And then moved to the dreaded New York City where everything sucks even though no one I know in Boston has actually ever been to NYC. I think people from different counties of Ireland should be able to live near each other without calling each other names. In fact, I think black folks should be allowed to live where they want. I think Jews should be as comfortable in Manchester-by-the Sea as they are in Brookline. I like trains that run all night and bars that stay open til morning. My definition of people from all over does not mean that I know people from Rozi AND Dot. I can tolerate all sorts of diversity of opinions without resorting to making other people feel excluded from the world. I love to wear black and to dance with transvestites and want 138 Chinese-Mexican fusion restaurants to choose from. I like to be able to be who I want to be where I want to be that person. I like throwing out boxes. I like living my own way and love not being treated like a leper for it.

And yet, I am clearly not from New York City. I wear khaki. I call sprinkles jimmies. I still call the liquor store a packy. I don’t summer in the Hamptons or the Jersey Shore. In fact, I have never been to the Shore and I thought the Hamptons were in New Hampshire. I didn’t grow up on Long Island or Manhattan or even Westchester. My dad didn’t work in the city. I stand in line, not on it. I wear duck boots in the winter. I think skiing takes place in Maine, not the Poconos. I think chowder is white and I know that the word scallops has a soft “a” like hallway. I have aunts, not ants. I think high fashion comes from Laura Ashley and I think the best weddings are on Cape Cod. I know what the Beanpot is and went every year until I was 23. I think bowling involves a ball that fits in your hand. I wasn’t allowed to wear black til I was 18. I was raised a Congregationalist. My best friends names are Fitz, Murph and Sully. My first 5 boyfriends all had shamrock tattoos on their chests. They got them in New Hampshire because you can’t get them in Massachusetts. I was stunned to learn that not everyone in the country knows where New England is and what 6 states make up the region. I was also stunned to find out that no one else celebrates Patriot’s day and that no one really cares about Bunker Hill.

It leaves me where I was in elementary school. Too Jewish to be Irish and too Irish to be Jewish. Not pretty enough for the cool kids and too pretty for the dorks. Not enough of one box behavior.

My adoptive city does a great job of assimilating those who want to be a part of it. But I can’t get rid of the lessons I learned growing up. It is Boston that taught me I am different. Boston that taught me I don’t fit anywhere. And New York that embraced the mongrel within. And yes, I call myself a New Yorker. No, I do not call myself a Bostonian. I haven’t done that since 1993. (And incidentally, if you can find where I called myself a Bostonian, please email me with the details, I will need to find the drugs I was on that day.)

I am a New Yorker now. I have been adopted. But adopting a 7-year-old Korean child into a white family in the mid-west does not make that child Norwegian. So I’m still from Boston. I don’t know what to do about that except to say if it isn’t enough for some imaginary criteria about what that means, then I am really glad I left.

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