Finding Home
When I was in college, most of my friends were culture-shocked missionary kids. They had grown up in assorted countries and had a tendency to deride America, especially the small-town Midwest where our college was located. “The Midwest has no culture,” my roommate’s boyfriend would assert, without explanation. I was never quite sure what he meant by this. Didn’t the Midwest have language, food, holidays, literature, religion and all the other things that make up human culture?
It seemed to me that my friends, if they traveled to Mars and found a society exactly like the Midwest except that, say, the people communicated through musical honks instead of words, would be full of anthropological zeal to understand the richness of that culture, to dissect its meanings and revel in its oddities. But if the same society had a flat accent and went by the name Indiana, they considered it worthy only of contempt.
I don’t want to be too hard on my college friends; I have never had to deal with the level of culture shock that they did, or had the lonely sense of being alien to the same degree. But spending time with them convinced me of one thing: wherever I lived, no matter where, I was going to immerse myself in it and learn to love it. I was not going to be the supercilious outsider, sneering at the pedestrian concerns of those unenlightened by my sophisticated view of the world. In short, I would willfully be as big a rube as I possibly could.
I cannot tell you how much joy this has brought me over the years. The demolition derbies and the country music and the funnel cakes and the crawfish and the chili and the accents - my life has simmered like a big pot of gumbo made from the mundane and unexpected in the Midwest and the South. While there are still places whose geography does not appeal to me, I am confident that wherever I end up, I will find people to be the same mixture of fascinating and appalling, and almost never boring.
I still meet the occasional supercilious outsider. New Yorkers in the Midwest demand, “I don’t understand. What do you DO here?”, implying that life in New York is a never-ending whirlwind of museum visits, Broadway shows and eclectic dining experiences. I suspect that some of this is posing, but I’ve never met a New Yorker who appreciated the suggestion that his highly developed palate might result in part from the fact that he can’t afford housing that includes extravagant luxuries like a kitchen. New Yorkers seem to not only believe that their hometown is the greatest in the world, but genuinely expect everyone else to recognize it too. While at times I have found this gratingly irritating, like the American Idol contestant who insisted that the reason she did not get chosen was because Paula Abdul was “just jallous,” I am learning to see it as charmingly loyal, like my brother’s quiet certainty in his favorite shirt, a plain cotton tee that states, “My wife is hot.”
After all, she kinda is.
I don’t think my city is hot, or the greatest city in the world, but I have lived here for thirteen years now, and I have grown to love it. Its fatty food and hearty beer, its working-class prosaicness and its pompous art deco architecture, its old stone churches and seedy neighborhoods, its parks and hills and public steps. I have walked hundreds of miles in this city. I was married here and my children were born here, and it has seeped into my bones. I would miss it with an ache if I ever moved away.
My parents have moved a lot in their lives, and view towns and cities as places to go for opportunities, not places to live for love of the place itself. They still pressure us occasionally to move closer to them. Maybe someday we will; as I said above, I know I would find things to love wherever we lived. But after all the moves of my childhood, I find myself warmly grateful to this city for being a place where I can send my roots down deep, grateful that I have at last found my home.
owlhaven
This was great! Thanks for sharing!
Mary
Moriah @ Please Pass the Salt
Veronica - this post really spoke to my heart. After growing up as a military kid, I feel exactly the same way about this little southern city that has now ’seeped into my bones.’ It really does feel good to have a place I now think of as home. And I got a huge laugh over the NY comments because I have some cousins living there and, well, I know of what you speak.
jubilee
I truly enjoyed this post. Well put.
Steph @ Diapers and Divinity
Having grown up in both Indiana and Georgia among many other places, I loved your thoughts. I find myself reacting a little differently, though. I’ve found such cool things everywhere I’ve lived that it’s hard for me to settle down anywhere. I guess I’m afraid of what I might be missing out on once I’ve soaked in where I live. My husband’s a “roots” kind of guy, though, so I’m sure we’ll figure it out.
Mad
I love the place I currently live but I hate the way the locals feel as if they have to define themselves against elsewhere, namely Toronto and Alberta. The parochial, petulant jabs wear me down. “Let it go,” I keep wanting to say. “Just let it go and live.”
Rebecca
Lovely post. It has me wondering where you live… though I know you won’t tell.
This is very pertinent to my life right now, as we are about to move to the third city in three years. It’s a good thing I love to move because this next stop is temporary too. But, your post makes me wonder about putting down roots. It must be nice. I hope someday I fall in love with with a city as you have. In the mean time, I’m going to make the most of each city we pass through along the way!
Tonggu Momma
As someone who moved 18 times before age 21… I totally agree. With everything you said.
suburbancorrespondent
No, no, what really puzzles New Yorkers in the Midwest is how nice people are. It’s confusing, and we don’t know how to put our guard down.
The Schwa
Veronica…. another great post…. maddening as it is, our town is also eclectic and just plain homey.
Jennifer (ponderosa)
Well. This is exactly what I tried to say in my last post, except that once I was a supercilious outsider and now, as you say, I willingly play the rube.
The inhabitants of the town I’m in now, by the way, rival New Yorkers for snobbish loyalty to place. I like it. Mostly.
Minnesotamom
Fun! I just wrote about my home area (northern Minnesota) yesterday. It’s funny the things we come to appreciate when we let ourselves…
Marmee
After moving too many times as a child, I love the area that my husband and I have called home for the past 16 years. Our children were born here, and I have loved it from day one. I never want to move away. A great mix of country rural life meets crunchy small college town tree huggers. Now you KNOW I’m talking about the Puget Sound!! The Pacific Northwest has such a hold on me, I don’t think I’d be happy anywhere else. And that’s a scary thought. What if I have to move one day??
Byranie
I have lived in CA for six years now and I feel that many northern Californians are just as bad as the New Yorkers you mention. I love where we live in CA, but I wish people here would see that there is culture everywhere.
Kit
Great observations - I now resolve not to be a supercilious outsider ever again - examining my conscience to see if I have offended in the past - I’m sure I have. I love where we live and there is such a mish mash of cultures here, you can take a bit oif this and a bit of that to put together your own take on culture, but it is still tempting to think your own particular mix is the best!
Sue
Beautiful. I live in a place that is often parodied, even by locals, but I love it with my whole heart. It is truly home. Thanks for this lovely post.
Jennifer
I have lived in many, many towns and cities in a handful of countries. I lived in New York City for a few years and it was one of the most exciting places I have ever lived. It was not comforting (that was the last town we lived in) or the most ideal place to raise a family (am hoping that will be the next one) but it was absolutely amazing. I understand completely why New Yorkers so fervently believe that New York is the very best place to live. That said, it was the best place for me when I lived there and I do not regret moving on. However, lots of New Yorkers see all those foreign films and visit to museums and galleries and other cultural events. It’s not just posing.
Happy Geek
What a smart way to look at life.
Immersing yourself in and enjoying what you have. I have lived here, there and everywhere over the past 12 years and always enjoyed a place more when I didn’t compare it but just loved it for what it was. When I started wishing for what it wasn’t, then I missed the good stuff.
That being said, I wouldn’t be terribly sad if I never had to move again. There’s something about settling down that grows appealing now that we have kids.
TeacherMommy
As one of those third-culture missionary kids transplanted from familiar West Africa to the cold of Michigan, I sympathize with both sides. On the one hand, travelling and seeing the world outside American borders gives one a wider world view; on the other hand, Michigan is now home. I think it takes a sense of balance–the willingness to immerse yourself in your current environment while still holding yourself sufficiently removed to not become too insular. That’s the problem with many Americans–and many British, French, Ivoiriennes, and so on–who focus only on what they know.
But yeah, we have culture. Just different culture!
Beck
Ooh! Oooooh! There’s a line in a Louise Erdrich novel - I can’t remember which one - where a character thinks that there are many better places in the world, but the place where she lives is home. And I really have emphathized with that over the years - where I live is COLD and snowy and has horrible roads and baddish schools and there’s not much to do and we’re far away from anything even remotely urban - but I still kind of love it. It’s me.
zoom
This reminded me of the Apostle Paul when he said to the Philippians, ” I have learned to be content in what ever circumstances.”
Robbin K
Um, I hope that you would, perhaps, differentiate from those New Yorkers who are from THE City, and those of us from Upstate. Because Upstate is rather shockingly like the Midwest. Only with prettier trees (at least in my opinion).
I am a native Upstater who has lived in the Midwest, Southwest and South, and went to school for a time in Europe. Now, in the main, I consider myself a Southerner. It wasn’t so much a cultural decision, as much as the fact that New York has in overabundance the one thing I cannot tolerate.
Cold.
Beth
It’s a nice place to LIVE, but I wouldn’t want to visit.
That’s how I feel about my current home. and my past home.
NYC is great to visit, but I will never live there.
Kimberly
I live in a small city. I think it made 4th on the list (someone’s) if “Greatest small cities to live in” or something like that. Of course, in reality, it exists b/c it is a suburb of Washington D.C. And, if I tell anyone who is not from around here that I live in “Vienna”, they look at me blankly. So, I quickly add, “Virginia suburb of D.C.” and they say, “ah, yes.”
Around here everyone talks about the culture, too. Whatever.
But you do need to immerse yourself wherever you are. Otherwise you end up like a friend of mine who lives in L.A. with her hubby. They moved there immediately after their wedding three years ago so he could work in the film industry. And he is doing well. And she still sobs every time she talks to her friends on the East Coast, because she “just HATES it” there. I keep wanting to tell her to get a grip and find something enjoyable.
nicole
I love where we live. I have lived in two places in my life. Where I grew up, and now where I went to college. I think any place can be loved if you take the time to make it your hometown. I’m sure I would love living in other places too, but I’m happy to call this place my home for as long as possible.
Miscellaneous From Missy
Yay for home!
Kelly @ Love Well
I admire your attitude. It’s one I’ve come to adopt as well, after many (sometimes painful) moves. I often look back at the 8 months we lived in Phoenix. It was hell on earth to me, a Midwesterner. But if I hadn’t spent the whole summer crying into my pillow and moaning about how horrible life was in Arizona, I might have actually enjoyed a few things about that state before we moved on. It was a missed opportunity. Eventually, I grew up enough to determine that won’t happen again.
Kimberly
Somehow, I think this relates:
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3942