Home, not just for the holidays

Although I lived in the same house until I was fourteen, I've since accumulated twelve different addresses, in one stretch moving nine times in eight years. I have strong feelings about particular varieties of packing tape and will always count good movers among my favorite people on the planet. I once packed up a three bedroom house with only the help of my newborn baby girl, and I'd be surprised if I someday leave any legacy that surpasses the value of the collection of moving boxes I once passed on. What am I, some kind of migrant? itinerant? bedouin? Hardly. In some ways, I'm not sure I ever really lived anywhere new at all.

I've never lived in a state that isn't contiguous to Illinois, and I only lived outside the Central time zone because, until this year, Indiana was chronologically perverse. If I ignore, for creative convenience, the quirks of Green Bay, most places that we lived fairly quickly felt like home because, honestly, they were a lot alike, and we weren't anywhere long enough to discern the differences.

Now I live within fifteen miles of my high school, in the town where I went to college, in a place where, last weekend, I was stopped three times during a ten minute trip to Target for the obligatory, "Christmas! It's crazy! Thank goodness you're not ready, either" conversation. If this isn't home, I don't have one, but from a certain point of view, maybe that's still true.

Not long ago, I was called out as a "move-in" during a ritual exchange of maiden names and family trees among some long-time residents of this town. I swear I could see those women edge closer together as they sorted out who was really "from here" and who wasn't, us v. them, their "us" including a woman who doesn't even live here anymore, because, you know, she lived here before, and the past trumps all. Nobody here had ever cared where I was from to my face before, and my silent reaction, as it often does, basically boiled down to a mildly indignant, "What the hell? What's it to you?"

But truly, I do get it. I see what it is to them. This town has grown a lot, and I appreciate how it has changed. After all, I was here before the great "move in", whether those women count my time or not. Frankly, I think it's a lot better now, but its changes also mean that those women have moved without packing a box. Their keys to the city, last names and high school graduation dates, don't work as often as they once did, and if I were them, I'd probably be practicing my secret handshake of belonging, too.

Moving so often, I got used to having no history. I'm accustomed to knowing more about a place than it knows about me, of never belonging to any club. If I had a past to hide from or had ever bothered to reinvent myself, maybe that habit would have a purpose, but, I'm the same me I've always been. Except that now--maybe-- I can swallow my disdain of those smug women and admit that they have something that I don't.

It's good to be from somewhere, to be more than passing through. The outside isn't always the ideal location; the inside does have its perks. I've always been a Midwesterner, a St. Louisian, regardless of my state. But I'm growing content to recognize that I'm not going anywhere, and that I've been accumulating the bits of experience and attitude that tie me to a more specific place. I don't aspire to any clique, and somebody slap me if I start sorting people into groups, but, all things considered, I think I'd finally like to make myself at home.