What Home Looks Like

     I lived in the same house for the first 25 years of my life.  Other than going away to college, the furthest I ever moved was across the hall of our suburban bi-level.  So the first permanent move out of my childhood home was uncomfortable to say the least.  I knew I was stepping into a new life with my soon to be husband and life would never be the same.  Although it was what I really wanted, it scared me too.  I still hadn’t figured out who I was.  Was I someone's daughter, sister, friend, or wife?  Could I be good at all of them?  Was I good at any of them?  I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to be when I grew up.  Yes, I know I was 25 and had a college degree but I was a procrastinator.  All I knew was I we were going to get married and live happily ever after.  I was naively looking for the fairy tale ending not realizing life was a marathon that was just beginning.

         That was nearly 20 years ago and each move has taken me further and further from that place in time and space.  I am now quite sure of who I am and I do not take it or anything else in my life for granted.  We've worked hard to reach this place.  To our family we’ve added 2 girls, a cat named Spot and an absentee dog.   We just took our 8th move in 18 years of marriage.  This one has taken us to Europe.  Before we left, my girls and I took our annual road trip to NJ to spend some time visiting family and friends.  Returning to what was once my childhood neighborhood and home is now a step out of a comfort zone rather than a step back into one.  It’s not my home any more. 

       The subtle nuances of the street on which I grew up have changed.  The houses look smaller than I remember.  Some look exactly the same as though they’ve been hopelessly trapped in 1972.  Some have grown and changed with time and some have grown shabby.  In my memory they are all fresh and clean with the 12 year olds I knew living in them.  Some of those houses now give life to new generations of some of the same families with new 12 years olds.  This includes my childhood home.  My sister lives in it with 3 generations of her family.  They’ve made it their own home, the same yet different.  And although it hasn’t left family hands I haven’t actually been there very often in the past 10 years.  So it, too, looks different to me.  It feels different.  It smells different.  My eyes haven’t had time to adjust to these differences so I look around for something familiar.  I see my daughter's face, we smile and I feel at home.

         As far as my neighborhood goes, as a child I didn’t know what kind of neighborhood it was other than it was mine and I kind of liked it.  Now it is different.  If I were moving there from some other destination I probably wouldn’t choose it.  I don’t mean it is not a nice place with valuable people in it.  It’s just not for me although it’s still part of me.  It is where I grew my roots and first stretched my wings.  The school up the street is where I learned the word wanderlust.  The park at the end of street is where I had my first kiss. 

         I saw someone who lived a few houses down when I was growing up.  He still lives there in the same house.  He never left it.  He still behaves like a hot-headed 15 year old boy.  He too is hopelessly trapped in the 70’s.  He, like many others, is in the same place doing the same thing and won't move on.  You don’t have to move out but you should move on in life.  When I visited certain, once familiar, places it felt a bit awkward.  Not the adolescent feeling of being out of place kind of awkward but something much more subtle and elusive.  There was no place for me.  I have moved on.  

        I do know, however, that it is the change in my perspective of life that has changed the most.  I suppose that awkwardness was always there and is one of the reasons I chose to wander.  I could feel there was a part of me that needed exploring and I couldn’t do it there.  I would have been like a potted plant that has become root bound, unable to grow to it’s full potential.  I suppose I was more melancholy during this trip than usual.  We were leaving for Poland shortly after our return to Georgia and I had, and still have, no idea when I will next visit. I know my perspective will change even more while I’m gone.  It is one of those ever changing constants in my life.

         In some ways leaving is harder now than it was the first time.  It’s harder because I am aware of what I am missing and what I am taking away from my family.  But like that first permanent move from my childhood home it really is what I want.  It is where I can be completely myself.  Since we began our nomadic way of life I’ve always told my girls that wherever the 4 of us are together, that is home. I truly am at complete peace no matter where I live as long as it is with my husband and my two girls.  And someday I’ll look back and I’ll have to smile to myself because those two girls will probably be off changing their own perspectives somewhere.  That is the risk I take in sharing my wanderlust with them.  But for now we journey together and once in a while I will look back and always appreciate being able to find my way home.

The Beginning.....

“Wanderlust” noun: strong desire or impulse to travel.

I remember when I learned the word “wanderlust.” I was in the 7th grade and it was a vocabulary word. I’d never heard such a word before. I lit up and thought “I have that!” I immediately loved the word. It sounded grown up and sexy, mostly because part of the word was actually “lust.” I wanted to see the world, I lusted to see the world. But I didn’t want to just visit the tourist attractions; I want to live them. I want to become a local of as much of the globe as I can; a global citizen if you will. When you visit a place as a tourist it is a special experience but I always feel like an outsider. Like the people who lived there knew something special and secret and would only share it with me if I lived there. Tourist attractions. We must see them. They are attractions for a reason. Some of them are ancient and wonderful historical sites, some are novelties but interesting nonetheless and some are just plain cheesy. But the nuances of life on the ground is something else all together. You can’t see it, feel it, smell it, or really know it without putting in the time of living it.

So we've moved around a lot. The uprooting has it’s costs that many aren’t willing to bare. We must leave family, leave friends, make new friends, find new schools, find new groceries stores and find new foods of to eat. We miss birthdays, births, illnesses, deaths, anniversaries, holidays, and just being there while children grow. We miss participating in some people's lives because we are participating in the lives of new people. We need to change our wardrobes, ours shoes, the cars we drive and our driving habits. We purge our belongings every few years; sometimes later realizing we got rid of something we wish we hadn’t. Some need the security of constancy in their lives. I need the security of change. The constant challenge of being forced outside my comfort zone just to get through my days is an exciting security to me. The new friends bring new experiences, flavors, cultures and languages or accents. This was true for all moves I’ve had no matter the destination. Learning to “Bless her heart” in the Southeastern US was as new to this Jersey Girl as learning to say “Dzien Dobry” in Warsaw The new friends bring wonderful experiences and challenges to my daily life. We get one walk on this earth and I literally don’t want to walk the same path everyday.

It is hard for some to grasp this as a “need.” It was hard for me to understand it as a need in myself. When I was a newly emerging adult I tried very hard to fit into the mold I thought my family wanted for me. Grow up, get married, buy a house as close to them as possible, put them first. It wasn’t until almost ruining a perfectly good marriage that I realized that that was not good for me, my husband, or my family. That was also not what my extended family actually wanted for me. Yes they wanted me close to participate in life with them but they wanted me happy too. When we started inching away by moving one hour away I really didn’t get the flack I imagined I would get. The truth was they kind of always expected I’d do something a little different. It just goes to show you that sometimes our perception of peoples expectations of us and their actual expectations can be vastly different.

My family has always been happy to visit our new destination even though I’ve missed their milestones and continue to do so. With all the social media these days it’s easier than ever to stay tapped into their lives. So I send my wanderlust out into the blogosphere as another way to connect with the people I love.