ON HOME AND ROOTLESSNESS

Peacebang and Chalice Chick take on the concept of "home."  For many years, "home" to me was wherever I was.  Now it is wherever my husband and I are.  But the truth is that I don't really have a strong sense of "home."  This made me think about the consequences of not being home-oriented. I am not sure I have a yearning for "home."  I do, I think, have a yearning for an identity or connection to something larger or more historic than myself.

Part of that is that I was raised, in a way, to be completely rootless.  I have no hometown, no strong ethnic identity, and no large clan of relatives.  My parents planned their financial life carefully with the express goal of freeing me from having to care for them in their old age.  My family moved every 3 years or so, and we lived on four different continents.  We attended a non-creedal, non-dogmatic church that would (unlike, say, the Catholic church) make no claims on me if I chose to abandon it in adulthood.  I grew up expecting that I might wind up making my adult life virtually anywhere in the world.  It is really only through a series of semi-coincidences that I have wound up living only an hour's drive away from my parents.

My parents deliberately chose to raise me in such a way that I would feel free to go anywere in my adult life and do anything.  And I have been grateful for that.  If, before I was married, I suddenly got a great job offer in Bangladesh, I wouldn't have hesitated to take it. 

But I have terrible wanderlust.  I am plagued by urges to travel the world. Sometimes I wake up in the morning thinking, "Spain! Spain! Spain!" or "India! India! India!"  And I have a little trouble coming to terms with the fact that now I am very much rooted in a community probably for the rest of my life. Now, if my husband suddenly wanted to move to San Francisco, instead of being ecstatic, I would worry about throwing away all the years of toil and dues-paying I have invested in my career here where I am. The law (or at least the kind of law I practice) tends to be a very localized profession and I imagine it is hard to suddenly break into a new legal community as a mid-level attorney.  Yet, at the same time, despite my doubts, I would absolutely love to move to San Francisco.  Or Manhattan.  Or Miami.  Or better yet, London.

So part of me deeply regrets losing that free rootlessness of my younger years before I started making commitments.  But part of me has a deep yearning for that sense of identity that comes from strong identification with a particular geographic region or a particular ethnic group.  As you may have gleaned if you have read this blog before, I am very interested in family history and my ethnic roots despite the fact that my roots are quite diluted, with each one of my grandparents having a different national origin.  I have an almost irrational sense of connection with Judaism via my long-deceased Jewish grandmother.  I really (and this is probably going to make some of you want to puke) felt a great deal of pride in my boarding school, especially since my father went there also.  There was some sense of continuity and history there. (OK, OK, I know you are now picturing me in a velvet handband and pearls.  And yeah, I actually at one time owned both a velvet headband and a really gorgeous strand of pearls.  But I pawned the pearls one summer in law school when I was having trouble making the rent and didn't want to ask my parents for the money.  That is a deep, dark secret though.  Don't tell anyone.)

I am also very fond of labels.  For a long time, the only label I could think to attach to myself was "American."  (This could explain why I have a strong sense of patriotism.) But then I realized "feminist" and "Unitarian" and "lawyer" and "liberal" are also labels, and they apply to me.  They may lead people to form an absolutely incorrect impression of me, one based perhaps on stereotypes or misinformation, but nonetheless, these labels make me happy.  They make me happy because they are a way of reminding me that I am part of a long tradition that came before and that I am carrying on in my own life.

I suppose I have kind of fulfilled my parents' vision for me. I have built a life and a home entirely of my own choosing, unconstrained by any obligations imposed on me from birth.  I have also constructed an identity -- which in reality is in many respects the product of my parents' interests and values, with my own unique stamp as well.  But it has also been important to link it back with my family roots (what does my Italian heritage say about me? do I get my feminism from my grandmother?) and with the history of places and organizations with which I have been affiliated.    

 

 

Comments

[L.]

We humans love to be part of something larger than ourselves, don`t we?

With great difficulty, I admitted to myself that my "home" is an ugly urban neighborhood in central Tokyo.

My wanderlust is starting to hit me for the first time in a long time. I think it's due to job frustrations. Homelife precludes the kind of move I'd like to make. My wife (and the dog) would probably be up for a move in the US, but i'm thinking I'd rather go farther than that. My wife wouldn't be up for a move outside the US (and, I think, neither would the dog, but I could be wrong about that).

[j0lt]

Speaking from experience, it definitely is hard to give up hard-won contacts, etc. when changing venues as a mid-level attorney. That is one of the downsides about law - the difficulty of switching states, etc (even if you can waive in and not re-take the bar exam).

At some point in the next few years(when the kids are a bit older), we plan to take advantage of my spouse's academic careers and do a visiting semester abroad, assuming I can get leave from work. Can't wait.

[Belle]

I think it's true that a gypsy childhood breeds an inordinate need for self-applied labels. While conventionally-raised people often shy away from labels as "extreme" or "oversimplified", I-of the twenty different houses and ever-oscillating address-derive great pleasure from that sort of affiliation, including semi-desperate moves like signing up for a flamenco class because my deceased grandpa was Castilian. While I too crave life without boundaries, I think everyone still desires, if not a home, at least to be a link in history.

Sincerely,
A Free-Spirit, Evangelical Feminist Bombshell

For more accounts of gypsy childhoods read Jeanette Walls fascinating memoir "The Glass Castle" or my significantly-less-interesting-but-still- good blog "Bohemian Belljar."

[The Happy Feminist]

Ooh, very cool. Thanks Belle. (Sigh -- so much great reading to do, so little time!)

[Chalicechick]

If you go to India, bring tampons. Bring extra ones, too, and some grateful woman will forever thank you. The Indian version is really suboptimal and even the Delhi Hilton doesn't have American ones in the gift shop.

-The Voice of Experience.

[Arwen]

I grew up moving, moving, moving all the time. So when I came to my current city in '92, I moved in and ROOTED. Heck, I didn't leave my neighbourhood for a year. (Of course, I was also abysmally poor at the time...)
Then I had kids.
NOW I have wanderlust.
Gack. The irony.

[Sandy]

Your post partially inspired me to write about my roots and family homes today. So thanks.

[Brice]

Hey, you're not alone! You grew up as a "Third Culture Kid", and there are millions of us.

http://tckid.com

[rate my camel toe]

i agree with the last post you are not alone on this. this drives me crazy.