So it appears that many of us feel like we can go home again!
Would someone cue up the Nashville Teens’ version of “Tobacco Road”, please.
Q
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I’ve never really felt at home in Calgary, even though I lived here for the most of my life. I guess that inertia kept us here - it was often easy to get a job, family and friends are here. I was a little scared to pack up and move to California, but hey, I didn’t feel much love for Calgary, so why not?
I feel in love with the East Bay right away. I couldn’t believe how quickly I adapted to living in Oakland / Alameda - it felt like my real hometown. When I knew that the visa situation was drawing to a close and we would have to return to Canada, I cried every day for weeks. Now that we’re back in Calgary, I don’t feel indifference towards it - I hate it. The last six weeks have been some of the most miserable I’ve had in years. Every single day I try to find a new angle to get a long term visa to the US. I’d happily live the rest of my life in California, northern, southern, I’m not picky.
We are going to be spending the next year or two in Northern Manitoba, so I’m not really doing too well in the “moving towards California” plan!
I was born in Madison, WI. Grew up there. Went to University there. I love the city to death.
In my final year of college I suffered a nasty breakup. We had been dating since my sophomore year in high school. I wanted to marry her; she left me.
Shortly after, I left. Half because that’s where a job was; half because I wanted to get away.
I still can’t visit the city without a hundred things reminding me of the breakup. Everywhere I go there are memories, most of them painful. My parents and brother still live there. I visit on the holidays but always feel like an outsider. I love the city but can’t stand it. I usually make excuses to leave a day or two early.
I live in the Chicago burbs these days. Nice enough, but after four years it still doesn’t feel like home.
I want to go back but I can’t. At least not yet.
I grew up in a teeny little non-town in Alabama. I was the fifth generation of my family to grow up in that area. It never felt like home to me, and it still doesn’t. I went to university in a town fairly near by, and to graduate school a few hours away. Every step along the way put much needed distance between me and that place. I’m living completely outside the South now, and even though there are things I still love about the South, I know I’m never going to go back.
Bonding, then. Yes, I have a bond with my hometown, and it’s not a positive one. I’m bitter about how we all were educated, if you can even call it that, and I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that most people I went to school with (who didn’t marry into the military) ended up back there. IMO inertia isn’t always about personal preference.
The New Jersey suburb where I grew up is a miserable, dismal, characterless place without a single redeeming quality. I’m actually there right now, because of family pressure to go. The closest I currently have to anyplace that feels like home is school in New Mexico, a state which I can thankfully leave when I graduate in May. Great place to visit; awful place to live.
I will not ever live in New Jersey, nor the greater Philadelphia region again. Philadelphia is a so-so city, if you can stomach the crime and corruption; it’s just not someplace where I feel a desire to live. As far as I can tell, the only possible reason to live in New Jersey is because you work in New York City; the entire state is a horrid pit.
The only place that’s ever really felt like home is, regrettably, in a country I am not a citizen of. So I have no idea where I’ll eventually end up, but I can say with absolute certainty that it will not be here, because I’d much rather live in a box under an overpass in Atlanta than move back to New Jersey.
Interesting that so far all mentions of the Garden State have been “this is not my home.” Hmmm.
I don’t really have a hometown. I was born in Houston and left before I was three, not remembering any of it. South Pittsburgh feels kinda home-like, but I never lived there, only visited for many, many, many extended periods of time. I think Atlanta was the first place I felt like home, and that was when I was 18.
Who knows!
Do I have to do EVERYTHING for you kids???;)
Enjoy.
It’s called “Tobacco Road” and it fits this thread like a glove!
Q
I don’t really have a hometown either, because my dad was in the Air Force and I moved around a lot as a kid. I identify with Oxfordshire because that’s where I spent the majority of my schooling. In adulthood I moved on and moved on and moved on, and lived in Hong Kong and travelled all over Asia, and lived in Ireland for a long time, before finally deciding to go back to Oxfordshire.
By bizarre coincidence, however, last year I was promoted to a job in London that looked down on the roof of the hospital where I was born, so I guess you could say that was genuinely full circle.
Born in small town Maine and aside from 4 years in the military, have lived here for 60+ years. Live one Town over from where I was born. I like the pace of life here. Been to enuf big cities to know that for me, they are fun to visit and a pleasure to leave behind.
My part of Maine - (the southern tip) is becoming more and more popular with those fleeing MA. The commute to Bahston is not as long as some of the folks who live around Rt. 128 so they move up here. If I live another 60 years I might have to move further North. I now have neighbors within 500 feet and that’s too damn close for comfort.
This thread is kind of funny to me because I’ve been having this conversation a lot with people lately. I was asked a number of times when I was going home, to which I had nothing to say but “I’m not going anywhere, I live here”.
I grew up partially in San Francisco and then in one of its bedroom communities. When I was 23 I set off on a rambling sort of life - I’ve had five addresses in the intervening seven years. I spent six weeks slumming at my parents’ house this last summer and it was weird being back. It’s a lot different than how I remembered it - more upscale and yuppified, fewer cows and more vineyards - and didn’t feel particularly homey. Also, it’s obscenely expensive to live in Northern California.
My goal after I’ve done with my grad program is to work in international development, so I don’t expect this to change any time soon. I’ll be wandering around the world for most of the rest of my life, probably. More a spiral than a circle.
I left against my will in 1967, during the Vietnam War. Stayed gone for 30 years and moved back ten years ago. It’s been good financially, and it’s been good to see my relatives and the country again, but it’s time to move on once more.
I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky in (mostly) the late forties and fifties and sixties. I graduated from University there and even spent six years in the US Army while living there. I have now lived in Brisbane (Qld) Australia for nearly forty years.
While there are some nostalgic memories of growing up in Lexington, I could never go full cycle and move back there. I spent my real ‘growing life’ here in Brisbane - raising two children and making my way career-wise. I own my own home three kilometres from the Brisbane CBD, I still love my wife of thirty seven years, am retired and am content as I approach geriatric status. I could not even return to the US - I am now more Aussie than native-born Aussies. Shit, I peel prawns on the beach on Boxing Day picnics and really enjoy Moroton Bay bugs for extra seafood enjoyment. 
Interestingly, only one of my (five) siblings still lives in Lexington. Others live in California and Nevada. My two children live in London and Melbourne. My parents grew up in Kansas and Cleveland, Ohio but chose to live in Lexington. So there’s a history on not going ‘full-cycle’.
Cincinnati here. Fourth-generation Cincinnatian.
I moved away for college, thought that I might not ever live again in my hometown.
Graduated from college, and lived in another large city for five years.
Then I moved back to Cincinnati with my new wife (got a good job)
Lived in Cincinnati (second time around) for seven years.
Then my wife & I moved to Portland, Oregon – almost on a whim.
We thought that we might never move back to Ohio again.
We lived in Portland for three years.
Then we moved back to Cincinnati (again!).
I’ll probably now live in Cincinnati the rest of my life. I know this city too well, and have left it twice before, only to be drawn back again. I’m too old now to “start fresh” somewhere else, and besides why would I want to? Cincinnati is a great town, a great place to raise kids, and my roots here are so deep it would be painful to live anywhere else.
I’ve thought about writing a book on this very subject some day, actually.
I still live near where I grew up. I like it, friends and family are here, lots of hills and woods and fields, things are reasonably cheap and it’s not crowded. Not much reason to leave! Only place I’ve been that I liked better was Switzerland.