moving

Places I’ve Called Home

/ Kelsey Ryan / 1 Comment

 

To the places I’ve been lucky enough to call home, if even just for a few months:

Oh, how thankful I am for you.

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Thank you for connections and reconnections, for a point of comparison, for all-embracing acceptance.

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Thank you for grounding me. Thank you for warmth and love and foundation.

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Thank you for growth, for seasons, for failure, for success.
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Thank you for rivers and belltowers and history and ruins. Thank you for the joy of hard work with my hands.

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Thank you for narrow paths, for independence, for reduction, for direction. Thank you for hard-won proof that I am getting there.

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Thank you for opportunity, for expectations, for introductions.
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Thank you for horizons of big possibilities, and greater things ahead, for stretching and stepping up, in all its forms. Thank you for daily surprises. Thank you for being home right now, for the foreseeable future.

 

With each move, I trade a bit of myself for each location I leave. And I’m better for it.

A Love Letter: Philadelphia

/ Kelsey Ryan / Leave a comment

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I think this city looks just so in black and white.

Like film noir, Philadelphia was my uncertain, trench-coat-wearing, rainy evening, saxophone-playing mystery love town. I spent sweltering Mays, Junes, Julys, and Augusts here, blustering around West Philly, clacking my heels around Center City.

Philadelphia was the city that taught me to open my windows in summer, even if there were bugs.

To walk fast, and act like you know exactly where you’re going.

To appreciate row homes and Restaurant Week and trolleys and misspelled street signs.

I couldn’t have asked for a better name to say, when people asked me where I lived. Philadelphia, I’d say, and feel so secure in my superiority. Philadelphia was a city that conferred a certain hardness, a particular grounded beauty. And because I lived there, that meant I got a piece of it, too, right? The city of Brotherly Love. The city of murals, of cheesesteaks, of the worst public transportation the Northeast has ever seen. My city?

My city, if only in one small way.

It was as north as I’d ever lived, and as central as I’d ever dared to be. Philadelphia is to me what New York has been for countless Midwestern hopefuls who dream of something bigger.

I gave Philadelphia, its condensed suburbs, and my alma mater the least they deserved, and I wish I had invested more. I try not to feel regret, and for the most part, I don’t. But every so often, I’m caught up again in the relentless mystery of Center City, and I find myself aching to return.

Philly, you stupid, terrible, wonderful, parking nightmare of a city. I miss you.