There’s No Place Like Home
June 9th, 2006 by aBhantiarna Solas

I had an odd experience the other evening. I was having dinner at a restaurant that served seafood. On the menu was an item described as “whole belly clams, New England style.” Some friends dining with me, asked what that meant. And I couldn’t answer. I grew up knowing the answer from summers spent on Cape Cod and in Maine and from generations of just being in New England. I know that answer in the marrow of my bones and it’s coded in my DNA. And yet … I couldn’t answer. I’ve been gone too long. The answer eluded me.

We could move back. We consider it frequently. There would be hurdles to overcome. LightGirl overhears the conversations and interjects a horrified, “But ALL my friends are heerrreeee!!” As if she would never make any other friends anywhere else.

On the other hand, she makes the central point of our lives. All of our friends are here too. Not just our friends, our support network. Our family is in New England. But our support network is here.

So I don’t know where home is anymore.


4 Responses  
  • Liz writes:
    June 9th, 20069:57 amat

    Oh how I relate. Actully, my family isn’t even in one place so there is nothing but familar landscapes to “home” and this place is too new to be “home”. Sometimes I feel really lost without an anchor.

           
  • kate writes:
    June 9th, 20064:56 pmat

    We are singing the same song, Light Lady. It worries me even more when I visit a place that I consider “home,” but I feel the differences that have crept in between me and it.

           
  • Israel writes:
    June 11th, 200611:20 pmat

    yea, I’ve thought a lot about going back to Seattle… and might still… but, well, I just wonder CAN you go home? The beauty calls me so much… and the memories… but it’s been 11 years. … can you go hom?

           
  • kate writes:
    June 13th, 200612:29 pmat

    You can’t go home, exactly, but you can reconnect with a place that holds a lot of meaning to you. You can increase the odds that the place you experienced as a child is the place your children will experience, too, if that’s important to you.
    I wonder a lot about what I would retain from this place, and these experiences, were I to in fact move back west. (a possibility that looks remote, at best, sadly.) And what Lizzy’s experiences will be, if we remain in Manassas. ‘nuf said.

           


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