Home? Home is a funny word. That’s because the meaning changes as we grow up. As children we’re taught that home is a building with a cute exterior and a warm front door. There may be a white picket fence or even a faded stucco wall that we, and only we, know the story of. That chip is there because your brother cracked it with a baseball two years ago. The split wood along the window frame is from a storm this past summer. Your mother was sweeping up glass for what felt like days afterwards and making sure you and your siblings avoided the remaining shards lest you need stitches afterwards.
By the time we’re twelve or thirteen and have seen a bit of the world we realize that home is subjective. It’s a place, but at the same time it’s not. It’s a fluid idea that shifts around a bit but is always tied to a location of some type. For a few it’s a single house which has seen multiple Thanksgiving dinners and countless Christmas mornings. For others, home is a town with meeting places and libraries and familiar parks where a first kiss happened. Still others see home in a country. A certain topography such as rolling hills, thundering mountains, or expanding plains. When you take the time to look at it all it makes sense. But we still haven’t grasped the concept.
I think we've all heard the stories. A little washed up town. Boarded up windows on every other block. An extended family of strangers who all know you and, eventually, you know by heart. You can tell the story of the old hick up on the hill verbatim, almost as if you lived his life. Everyone has heard the story of how you and your brother were caught lighting fire crackers off inside the hen house. And one day, eventually, this kid. This one of a kind academic, athlete, what have you, will make it out of this town and to the big city. He'll make it. He'll never look back and the only thing he'll remember about his hometown is the people he left behind for this alien lifestyle in a faraway land.
That is not my story.
My story is actually the polar opposite. It starts on a military base, no more than 15 miles from downtown St. Louis. I grew up not really having a 'home,' per se. Home was where the Air Force told us. For my family, we didn't finally settle down until 2006, when we finally set up shop in the suburbs of the Metro East.
And that's where most stories end. Mom or dad retire about the time the children are first entering puberty. Any and all moves from then on are done strictly out of necessity. The home my family bought and moved into in April of 2006 is the one I sit in as I write this out. It's where, I'm told, my parents will be until at least 2020, when my youngest brother finally graduates high school. For now, that’s home.
But I never lost my wanderlust.
On Thanksgiving Day in 2010, I ate turkey and green beans in Orlando, FL. My family was in the Midwest.
Thanksgiving 2011? I spent that on a beach in Hawaii while my family froze in the subzero temperatures of a St. Louis winter.
In August 2013, I moved out for the first time and lived in Lexington, KY, while attending school as a Wildcat. (Curse you UConn...)
May 2015 I set out to travel the country with a drum corps for the first time. In May 2016, I did the same thing.
And, most recently, in August 2016, I left Big City, USA, and the life of ready-made attractions for Podunk, West Virginia.
Ok... that's not really fair. I moved 9 hours east to a little riverside town known as Vienna, WV. Population: 10,633. Ohio Valley University, my new institution, had a student body of 482 people. This pales in comparison to even my high school where I graduated alongside over 650 other people as part of the Class of 2013. Getting to know everyone in my school wasn't something I was prepared for, and it's still something which perplexes me after a full semester.
But the change of pace has been nice. Hopping from installation to installation for the better part of 12 years followed by a near seven-year stint in a city of close to 2.9 million people jaded me. I never found it difficult to meet new people. If something ever went south in a relationship or a friendship, the odds of ever seeing that person again were next to nil as long as I made a point to steer clear of our typical hangouts. Now? Now I have to be a grown up. I'll be the first to admit that. Because now I have to swallow my pride and actually attempt to fix things. It's all the more difficult due to my social views which are staunchly not small town values.
It’s only in adulthood we realize the folly of our ways. When we come to know that home is not a place, though locations can help keep things concrete. Instead, it’s a group of people. A family. Be it blood relatives, adopted siblings, or a group of college drinking buddies who invite you to weddings down the road, these families come to dictate our lives and define everything about us.
That being said, I feel America is missing something. On the whole. Big cities and the people who inhabit them lack personal lives. There's an absence, almost an emptiness, which permeates the urban subconscious. They lack love. Understanding. Passion. Urbanites don't have a go-to group or a secret spot in the woods. The people of the concrete jungle miss out on the small town vibe. But the country mice are not much better. What is life if it is spent in the same town? The same home? The same bed? What is a life spent in reservation and exploring the known? I'd hardly call it a life. I say take the jump. Leave the comfort of your town! Explore the world. Learn the differences between people and embrace them for their beauty rather than rejecting them as symptoms of a world cursed. I just feel travel is the only cure. Meeting strangers. Exploring back roads. Leaving the GPS off and burning the maps, following the signs whizzing by on the interstate.
I blame myself for this cure. It's almost an illness, really. Living out east for school means I have to drive 'home' during breaks. And sometimes I get lost on purpose. Because around mile marker 21 on eastbound I-64 in Illinois, there's a sign that says "Mount Vernon - 60, Louisville - 240," and all that comes to mind is, "Think about all the stories and places and people between those two cities. Go explore one of them."
I never really grew up having a home in the traditional sense. For me, home was where ever I ended up that night and woke up the next morning. Be it a familiar bed, a cot in a gym, or the floor of a motel. Home? Home is where you make it.
