The question of my hometown is not a straightforward one. I was born, and spent the first several years of life, in South Florida. Big city suburbs grown out of almost forgotten 1950s towns. My parents divorced, and mother moved my sister and me back to my grandparents’ house in North Florida. A doublewide deep in the scrub with a sugar sand yard and miles of skinny pine trees in every direction. We spent three or four years there before my mother remarried and we moved elsewhere in North Florida, where we lived in a fixer-upper while a new house was being built on nine acres in some more woods. There were no neighbors to speak of. My friends were a bb gun and the oak trees I would climb in the hopes of finding a way out, back to my friends in the city. The only thing I could see from the top was more trees.
As a kid who moved a lot when he was younger, I understand the feeling of shallow roots, and especially looking down on people who never leave their hometowns. I never wanted to live with my parents or in my hometown all my life, much as I loved them. I think the bustle and grind culture that encourages people to go far away for happiness doesn't always give happiness in the end. Instead you feel like a stranger in every state and every town. No place is ever truly "home"; it's just another place to be.
How long can you live that life before it's over? At what age will you wake up and realize all those towns you lived in your life were, for some small stretch, home?
Beautiful
As a kid who moved a lot when he was younger, I understand the feeling of shallow roots, and especially looking down on people who never leave their hometowns. I never wanted to live with my parents or in my hometown all my life, much as I loved them. I think the bustle and grind culture that encourages people to go far away for happiness doesn't always give happiness in the end. Instead you feel like a stranger in every state and every town. No place is ever truly "home"; it's just another place to be.
How long can you live that life before it's over? At what age will you wake up and realize all those towns you lived in your life were, for some small stretch, home?