The Green, Green Treelawn of Home
Well, I'm going home tomorrow morning - this'll be the first time I've been in Cleveland since last July. People at work have been asking me, "Are you excited?" The answer is a pensive no, not really: I'm not a newbie at relocation, and I know how one can over-glamorize the old hometown. In reality, it can look pretty disappointing. I remember coming home for Christmas when I lived in Missoula, and after a few days, going back to the airport and getting really stressed because they'd overbooked and it looked like I'd have to wait another day to get back to Montana. I also remember the frustrated tears of entrapment that spurted to my little eyes upon witnessing Cleveland after three weeks abroad last spring. Truly, it looked like the Mistake on the Lake, and I was barreling toward it with (literally) jet speed.
I also remember a sweltering afternoon in early May 2000, being driven to the Convocation Center for my college graduation, at which time my ever-jolly father started in about an article he'd read about how most people die within 50 miles of where they grew up. About to be handed a degree that ensured few prospects and with little idea of how I wanted to fill up the next 70 years (except that I knew I wanted to get as far away as possible), I blurted out "God that's so f@#*ing depressing!" Which made my dad laugh, but made the unseasonable heat seem that much more oppressive to me.
Do most people have such a complicated relationship with Home? It seems to me that most of my friends who've never left say, "You're so lucky, you can just pick up and go whenever you want" or "You're always going out and doing interesting things, and I'm just hanging around here" or "I wish I could get the gumption to move away." But here's the key thing: they don't. And probably most people never move away from where they grew up.
Though I love Cleveland, my foremost goal in life seems to be to live everywhere I can. I think, God, I can't die until I've Done Something, and when I sit down and think about what that something is, it's living in other places and talking to library patrons with funny accents who can't quite understand the way I talk and eating pizza of a variety I look down upon because it's "different" and not being able to buy beer at the grocery store and pooh-pooh-ing pine trees that look like this because I know real pine trees look like this.
So anyway, I'm not expecting anything this time. I'm not expecting to have tender feelings toward Cleveland, I'm not expecting to be disappointed. I just want to watch cable TV with an Angelo's Pizza in front of me and an Edmund Fitz in my hand. I just want to wait it out and see how I feel when I circle north over the hopefully unfrozen Lake.
Plus, I'm sure nature will see fit to punish me for fleeing The Year We Broke the Record - I'm bringing a heavy coat.
I also remember a sweltering afternoon in early May 2000, being driven to the Convocation Center for my college graduation, at which time my ever-jolly father started in about an article he'd read about how most people die within 50 miles of where they grew up. About to be handed a degree that ensured few prospects and with little idea of how I wanted to fill up the next 70 years (except that I knew I wanted to get as far away as possible), I blurted out "God that's so f@#*ing depressing!" Which made my dad laugh, but made the unseasonable heat seem that much more oppressive to me.
Do most people have such a complicated relationship with Home? It seems to me that most of my friends who've never left say, "You're so lucky, you can just pick up and go whenever you want" or "You're always going out and doing interesting things, and I'm just hanging around here" or "I wish I could get the gumption to move away." But here's the key thing: they don't. And probably most people never move away from where they grew up.
Though I love Cleveland, my foremost goal in life seems to be to live everywhere I can. I think, God, I can't die until I've Done Something, and when I sit down and think about what that something is, it's living in other places and talking to library patrons with funny accents who can't quite understand the way I talk and eating pizza of a variety I look down upon because it's "different" and not being able to buy beer at the grocery store and pooh-pooh-ing pine trees that look like this because I know real pine trees look like this.
So anyway, I'm not expecting anything this time. I'm not expecting to have tender feelings toward Cleveland, I'm not expecting to be disappointed. I just want to watch cable TV with an Angelo's Pizza in front of me and an Edmund Fitz in my hand. I just want to wait it out and see how I feel when I circle north over the hopefully unfrozen Lake.
Plus, I'm sure nature will see fit to punish me for fleeing The Year We Broke the Record - I'm bringing a heavy coat.
posted by Christine Borne at 6:04 PM
4 Comments:
I am in total agreement that one should want to live in different places. I myself was born in Minneapolis, but have lived in California, New Hampshire, and now Florida. And I hope to get a few more states in (and maybe a country) before I die.
Here's to no fear of relocation!
It's funny, because I started in Connecticut, lived in Austin, Texas, for 8+ years, then northern California for 2 years. Austin was nice, but I never meant to stay so long; California was (predictably) beautiful, but I never really felt settled there. Now I live in Cleveland, and I'm having a ball settling in, trying to put down some roots (literally, trying my hand at gardening), and discovering all the cool stuff there is to do here! When I tell people here that I like Cleveland better than California, they look at me like I'm a lunatic, but for me, I guess my state of mind affects how I feel about where I live more than where I live affects my state of mind. Or something like that.
Home is where your best friend is, and so long as you have people who love you (like your best friend, dumbass), you're never homeless. Trouble is these days, with crazy weather patterns and potentially imminent pole shifts, who knows when Cleveland may, like the Pope, go swiftly if not unexpectedly expire. So, it's not so much a place, physically, but more precisely your loved ones. Just like they say a church isn't the bricks and mortar (and that's quite a lot for some of these compound churches in Florida), but the people who visit it.
I love the word "treelawn" because I never, ever hear it outside of Cleveland, or out of a non-native Clevelander's mouth.
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