No Place Like Home

I spent my late teens and my twenties disconnecting myself with my hometown, and my high school in particular.  I believed that those who chose to remain in that place and to attend functions there suffered a stigma so great that their social lives could never recover from it.  While I do believe that leaving the “nest” allows for much more personal growth than staying can, I experienced a completely different feeling this past weekend.  On Friday night, I attended a high school basketball game (because my brother coaches and because we played our rival) in the school district’s brand new school.  This year, the entire district moved into one large building that houses K-12 and stands directly in front of the building in which I attended high school.  Throughout the duration of the game, one thought pervaded my mind:  “This does not feel right.”  This gym had no echoes of my former self, this gym housed no memories of some of the best years of my life, this gym had no connection to me—and I did not like that.

On Sunday, I ventured back to the school’s campus for a benefit dinner: a young girl in the community has cancer, and so the town organized a dinner and Chinese auction.  This time, though, I found myself back in the old building (I guess they did not want spaghetti sauce in the new school).  The Chinese auction took place in my old study hall auditorium, I received my dinner in my old cafeteria, I ate my dinner in my old gym, and I showed my niece and nephews my old lockers.  In those spaces, I could feel my former self.  I could connect to that sense of place in a way that I so intently missed on Friday night.  While people at the dinner chatted, I gazed around my old gymnasium:  the place where I initiated many EXPERTLY-LED cheers in the crowds, where I once blared my trombone in the pep band, and where I watched my parents shake their heads at me in amused dismay.  As I watched the enormous amount of people coming together for a cause that actually matters, that actually stems beyond themselves, I finally realized my great fortune in growing up in a community that provides me with such an important sense of place, and also continues to do so for my family and many of my friends.  So while “running away” can have its own purpose, nothing feels better than coming home.

Also, enjoy this quote from one of my favorite films, The Wizard of Oz.

“But it wasn’t a dream. It was a place. And you and you and you… and you were there. But you couldn’t have been could you? No. Aunt Em, this was a real truly live place and I remember some of it wasn’t very nice, but most of it was beautiful; but just the same. All I kept saying to everybody was I want to go home and they sent me home! Doesn’t anybody believe me? But anyway, Toto, we’re home! Home. And this is my room and you’re all here and I’m not gonna leave here ever. Ever again. Because I love you all. And, oh Auntie Em! There’s no place like home!”