What it Means to be Home | My 3 Little Birds- Reflections on the ...

I was 22 when I headed north alone in a packed-to-the-brim Subaru station wagon. I didn?t plan on ever coming back. I?d applied to 3 graduate schools without thinking of the symbolic geography: one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, and one at the center. And as I have a tendency to do, I chose the middle:?Ann Arbor.

I?d cried hard that first night in the rental house I shared with 4 others, all brilliant and worldly and intimidating in their own ways. I was just a girl from West Virginia, the token Appalachian, the youngest of the bunch. I felt like an illegal academic immigrant.

Eventually I found my place.

The following April I spoke with my mother at home. The red buds are blooming, she told me as I looked out at a dusting of snow. That?s when I knew that Michigan wasn?t my home.

I returned to West Virginia years later, when my then-fiance chose a family practice residency in my hometown. Its focus was on rural health and policy, his passions. And once again I felt like an outsider, but this time on familiar ground.

We?ve stayed.

My children were all born in the same hospital where I was born. My son and I had the same kindergarten teacher. We?ve played in the same parks, swam in the same pools, kneeled in the same church.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that their experiences belong to them and aren?t a repeat of my own.

My husband and I have wondered many times if we?re making the right choice by raising them here. We take them to cities, expose them to other ways of thinking and living.

If I could make the choice for them, I?d want them all to leave this town, at least for a while when they?re older. There?s something almost suffocating about staying in a place too long.

When I think about the girl heading north in that Subaru, though, I want to tell her this: It?s ok to stray from that middle path you?re on. See what?s out there. Take the back roads. That?s where the best spots always are.

This was in response to a prompt for a writing course I?m taking.

Photo: MikeTN/Flickr

Source: http://my3littlebirdsblog.com/2012/08/what-it-means-to-be-home.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-it-means-to-be-home

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