Home

 About a week and a half ago the message at my church centered on one's return home, especially to a home town where one doesn't feel welcomed. That's had me thinking about it since. 

I've returned at different times to the area where I grew up, and sometimes it's been good and sometimes not. I think that's most people's experience. I'm a part of the estimated 25% of men who have moved far away from their hometown and I have been for a lot of years. There were periods when I stayed at my parents home or even lived in a cabin at the end of the road I grew up on. But I knew in each case I wouldn't remain there.

Which when I look back seems strange. I grew up thinking my area was a reasonably all right place and I would remain in its environs for life. I mean, it had access to nearly everything I wanted: a big city (NYC, where a lot of my friends moved to), lots of bookstores and schools (including my alma mater), deep woods and nearby mountains (the Berkshires and one end of the Appalachian Trail), good local music I could listen to for free when I wanted, even one of the best art collections in the country (the Clark Art). 

Still, I left early in my late teens, and I've stayed away as far as I can for what's probably the rest of my life. On occasion I imagine it's because of the potential me that might have been if I'd remained: a conservative rednecked mouth-breathing rethuglican. That image warms me for my decision to stay away.

But I really know that's not true. A lot of my friends who are still in the area are not that way at all (especially of course the ones who moved south to The City but even a fair number who stayed in nearby counties). I suspect the truth is it's not the environment that makes you but your reaction to it.

Besides, if stultifying right wingery is what I'd hoped to avoid, I wouldn't have spent the bulk of 30 years living in the central midwest and a few years ago having retired to the deep south. It should seem the opposite.

There's where a part of the paradox may lay, that having grown up in the bastion of red state behavior in one of the bluest states I find myself in adulthood more comfortable in the bluer segments of some of the reddest states. 

I'm well aware it's a privilege to live somewhere one is comfortable, not afforded to everyone. When I was younger and I found where I was staying didn't fulfill me, I'd leave. It was a comfort, knowing I was a step away from being gone if I wanted to be. That's how I disappeared from a lot of people's lives too and as I grow older I wonder where and how they are. The internet and Facebook have been great for catching up and I'm glad for that. But I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to watch the people I knew age and change, both for the better and worse.