Can you feel at home in two different places?
We have now lived in our house in Bristol, Rhode Island,
longer than we lived in our house on Rayle Place in Bloomington, Indiana. Because we didn’t have the foundation of
being surrounded by family, friends, and familiarity (you’re pretty familiar
with a place if you have had time to earn four degrees from the local university),
it’s taken awhile for Rhode Island to feel like home. We don’t have the benefit of children to
connect us with the local Bristol community through meeting other parents and
spending time in schools and other activities.
Both of us work outside Bristol as well.
Plus, as Rhode Islanders know, Bristol can be an insular community. Periodically, arguments pop up in the local
paper about who can call herself or himself a Bristolian, and it’s about how
many generations your family has been there, not how many years you yourself
have lived there. In other words, Nels
and I will never be Bristolians.
At the same time, we have connected to the community in
various ways; Nels in his Fantasy Football League and me with Bristol Yoga
Studio, and then of course through wonderful neighbors like the Kallmans and
friendly chats with people on the East Bay Bike Path. Coupled with friends from Rhode Island
College, after eight years, along with fixing up the house so it reflects who
we are, the place feels more and more like home.
When we come back to Bloomington, as we did last week, it
feels like a time warp. Conversations
and relationships pick up where they left off, as if the conversation itself is
ongoing, even if the participants stepped out for months or years. I haven’t seen my first mentor and only
principal Chuck in a little over a year, but we sat in the back of a boat on
Lake Lemon while our friend Sarah gave us a tour and talked about everything
from educational policy to Dexter to
relationships with parents seamlessly. Up front, our other three friends had
their own conversation and occasionally jumped into ours. I wasn’t the outlier or visitor; I was just
one of five, as Chuck put it, kindred spirits.
Something similar happened at the softball field the next
night, although I will hasten to say that it’s not as if everything and
everybody stayed the same, as if frozen in time. The guys are grayer, the women have more
laugh lines (my sister-in-law says women age better than men these days. Sorry, guys).
Individuals have changed jobs and life trajectories. Parents have died, kids have been born, and
the kids who were in elementary school are now in college or out on their own. So even though the conversations may have the
same tenor, they differ slightly in content.
Regardless, the similarities were more striking than the changes.
When we first moved to Bristol, I would go on walks around
the town, looking at the houses from the 18th and 19th
centuries, and marvel at how familiar it felt.
After I found out many of the homes were built by merchants and captains
who benefited from the slave trade (Bristol had several rum distilleries and
was thus part of the Triangle Trade), I lost my romantic viewpoint, but I bet I
could walk into the old colonials and Victorians and the smell and feel would
resonate. Maybe it’s a sense of déjà vu (as
David Crosby sings: “We have all been here before”). Whatever it is, I appreciate the hardware
store owners who helped us figure out what tools we needed for de-wallpapering
and painting, the postman who gives out lollipops, the librarian who recommends
books based on our check-out record, and being able to walk to the yoga studio
or coffee shop if I choose.
It’s also about routines.
In Bloomington, even if we feel accepted, we are still guests. In Bristol, I can settle back into my daily
routines: write, run, work, eat, rub Mr. Spock’s belly, hang out. This also feels like home, especially when I
connect back with friends and colleagues, whether they knew I left or not.
Home is not
necessarily about where you grew up.
Home is where you feel peace and belonging and a sense of security. A sense of rightness with the place and the
people. Being with people who get
you—and still like you—makes a place home.
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