Welcome Home

This weekend on my way to my Code for America fellowship month in Chattanooga, I stopped in Brooklyn. As I walked in my neighborhood and heard the sound of the Sunday gospel choir, I felt at home. I heard the familiar crunch of salt underfoot, was greeted by the smell of incense at the corner store. I saw the faces of my neighbors, knew that just across the street was a friend, or someone I worked with at the Greene Hill Food Co-op. Brooklyn is my home.

It wasn’t always. For more than ten years, if someone asked me where I was from I’d say, “Indiana,” where I was born. It wasn’t till I packed up to leave New York, that I realized, “I’m from Brooklyn.”

This month I have the unique opportunity to be welcomed by a new city, to be get a crash course in what it means to live in Chattanooga. To pretend to be, and then hopefully to become, a neighbor. Some of the feel of home can be created, by the exuberant hospitality of our hosts, and the many introductions that await us. Some will come with experiences, like taking calls at 311, or shopping at the local market. But most of all it takes time and the generosity of those who have deep connections to Tennessee, who have lived in Chattanooga all their lives, who can be our guides as we become, for a time, citizens of a new city.