Boston spring finally showed up and I went outside immediately and stayed there. A Friday walk through the Arnold Arboretum at peak cherry blossom season that turned into way more than a quick stop.

I have wanted to go to Europe my entire life. Not a specific country at first, just Europe, the idea of it. And then Norway became the answer and suddenly the trip that had lived in my imagination for so long had a shape.

I did not technically land in Europe for the first time in Oslo. I landed in Copenhagen. A passport stamp and a kind customs agent later, Norway had already started doing something to me.

Growing up near Brownsville, the Port Isabel Lighthouse was just there. Part of the landscape. Something you passed on the way to South Padre Island without really stopping. It took moving to Boston to make me actually go inside.

There is a particular feeling that comes with driving back into a city you used to live in. Not quite nostalgia, not quite homecoming. Something in between that does not have a clean word for it.

Boston in early spring does this thing where it gives you one perfect week and then takes it back. Magnolia season is that week.