Home, Sweet Home

I'm not usually one to take a lot of advice from Pastor Rick Warren, he of the Saddleback megachurch and The Purpose Driven Life. But I heard him on a radio interview a couple of years ago, and he said something that's stuck with me since. He said that, when he first was ordained, he asked God, "You can send me anywhere you want, but please let me stay there." He followed that with the line, "We tend to over-estimate what we can do in a year, but under-estimate what we can do in 40."

I've lived in far too many places.  I grew up in a single house from the time I was born until I was 20 (not counting the college dorm).  In the 33 years since then, I've lived at 20 different street addresses in nine different cities.  For someone whose academic life has been focused on people's relationships with place, I haven't tended to my own very closely.  I've moved for grad school, moved to do my research, moved for a job and a job and a job and a job.

And now it's time to choose again.  I'll be marrying someone for whom home is also an intellectual focus, but she's done a far better job than I of making homes.  Partly it's because she's far more social than I am—her Native American name would be "Speaks with Doorknobs."  But she also has chosen to remain stable for longer periods than I.  Like me, she was born and raised at a single address (where Estelle has lived for over 60 years).  But unlike me, she has lived subsequently to that in fairly few places.  College was away, but both grad schools were back in NYC.  She lived for four years doing research and making place in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, but then returned to NYC for another 15 years.  And now, for about twelve years, she's lived in Middletown Springs, becoming an integral part of the community.  Going for a drive anywhere with her up there is an annotated narrative of families and relationships.  "That's where the Wilsons live.  That's the house where the new owner felled a tree directly onto his barn.  That's where Joanne and Dirk live; their daughter has run away two or three times, and I think there's some trouble with their son as well.  That house is owned by a professor of economics at Rice; they come up in June and stay for most of the summer."  (all names changed, of course...)

And something's happened to me as I've spent time there over the past six years.  I'm starting to become part of the place as well.  I know the landscape, know the smell of the soil, know maple season and mud season.  And recently, a friend e-mailed to compliment me on a story I'd written, and said, "We'll talk more the next time you're back home."

Home.

I make a good living in Boston, and I don't have a Middletown Springs skillset.  I can't repair barns or tractors.  I can't drill wells or install septic systems.  I can't operate a backhoe or a salt truck.  And in higher education, it's almost impossible to choose the college you get to work for—I received a rejection letter last week for a position I'd applied for in Northern California, which complemented me on my materials and thanked me for being part of a robust applicant pool of over 200 people.  So I can't put much stock in being able to land a position at Green Mountain College or Castleton State College, the only schools within 50 miles.

I've sacrificed home many times over the years for what I thought would be interesting and productive work.  Maybe it's time to make that decision in the opposite direction...

Note:  I was cleaning my desk yesterday, and I came across a fortune I'd saved from some forgettable Chinese takeout food.  It reads:

Playing safe is only playing