Rob and I got in the car on Saturday morning and set out to visit a new city. It's so weird to look at a map and discover the new places that are now just a long-ish drive away from your home. I'm so used to getting in the car and going to Charlottesville for the day or DC for the weekend, and it was fun to realize that, for a few hours more than it takes to get from Roanoke to Washington, we could be in Chicago.

On Saturday night we had a romantic dinner at a really cool sushi restaurant before seeing Phoenix play at The Aragon, and then we woke up on Sunday morning and sat outside with coffee at Intelligentsia. It felt like any other trip until we got to Millennium Park, where I unexpectedly got emotional at the sight of that huge bean.

Rob and I are a thousand miles from everything we know, and never in my wildest dreams did I think that we'd be so far from home. Minneapolis was never on my list of places to live, and Chicago wasn't even on my list of places to visit, and yet, standing there in Millennium Park with my hand in Rob's, looking at myself in the reflection of the sculpture, things suddenly felt like they were exactly the way they should be.

We stopped for a delicious lunch at Primehouse before heading back home. We got burgers with truffle fries and I had a Bloody Mary. Rob got an "Over Drive," which was a carrot-orange-ginger juice with vodka. It came in a cute little carafe and it was so good.

I'm obviously not that adventurous if I think that spending a weekend in one of the United States' largest cities is some kind of defining moment, but something happened while we were roaming the streets of Chicago. The weather was perfect and the sky was bright blue and I shed a bit of anxiety. I felt a bit more like myself (or maybe just the person I'd like to be), and I felt even more thankful for this man--the tall one who isn't afraid to drive in traffic--and for this life we're doing together.

Sometimes I forget that we've shared three apartments.

The first one was in Roanoke, where I found anxiety and started graduate school. I felt like such an adult, grinding my coffee beans fresh every morning and parking in my garage. Rob lived there over the summer, and then Christmas break, and then moved in for another summer after his graduation from Hampden-Sydney, but it felt less like our apartment than it felt like it was mine, even if it didn't fit.

The second one was in Charlottesville, with weird green carpet and a tiny kitchen, but a little office/guest room that made us feel like we had a home. We spent hours in libraries and computer labs, at bars with cheap drinks and cornhole set up under a string of outdoor lights, and were constantly with friends. I felt like less of an adult, with a part-time job as a barista and afternoons full of research, and I loved it.

Now we're in Minneapolis, in the high-rise apartment with a balcony and a pool we never use. It's big enough and everything is new and we finally have that bookcase from IKEA that I've always wanted. This is the apartment we have as an engaged couple, and it's the first place we'll live as newlyweds. What other defining moments (other than that impending Minnesota winter) will occur while we live under this roof, I don't know yet. But I'll look back one day and see it from the future, and I'll tell you what this place was like and what it means to us because of that.

After a year apart, I forgot that living together is something Rob and I have done before--the norm, really. We've left little parts of ourselves places and picked up and taken things with us, and now we're here, together (again).

I was homesick this weekend.

It happened in the strangest way--right alongside feeling like I'm more at home here than I have been in the past month. There's one lone box of clothes to be hung up in a corner of our bedroom, and everything else is more or less in its place. All of my books are here. I've cooked countless meals in the kitchen already. Every morning, I wake up beside the man I'm going to marry in less than nine months and he goes to work and every evening he comes home and we have dinner. And yet, I have parents and a brother and a sweet old dog in Virginia, and when I talk about them, they are always "back home."

I'm now trying to accept the fact that it's okay to be happy and sad at the same time--to love it so much here and miss my family and friends and mountains so dearly. Life is rich and complicated, and the shiny vacation feeling of a new place and new furniture and a farmers' market every Saturday might be rubbing off a bit, but real life is just as beautiful.

"You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you."

--Frederick Buechner