home is where the heart is

I am very much from Chicago (well, the Chicago metropolitan area). When I arrived at college, people actually couldn't understand my accent (particularly my short Os, like "box" or "top") and I purposely (re-)started calling pop pop in order to maintain my roots. I think of myself as Midwestern and there's a certain pride in the fact that I simply can't remember to refer to New York City as "the city" instead of my default of "downtown."

Even so, I'm at a time in my life when "home" has to be far more fluid than this connectedness to Chicago suggests. Home is an important concept to me -- I value community, roots, and the senses of belonging and comfort that accompany being home. It wouldn't be OK with me if I felt that Chicago was still so much my home that I hadn't really lived at home for the past 4+ years. I remember the first time I referred to college as home, or rather the first time I was forced to confront the fact that it was in an important sense my home. I was discussing some sort of travel logistics with my mom and she called college home; it was about something totally inane, but at the time, important and shocking.

Graduating threw my concept of my home into a tizzy. The first time after graduation that I visited my campus, I felt sad that I no longer lived in the place that I not only loved so much, but also had considered my home for the better part of four years. Where is home now?

I graduated on a Thursday, moved to DC on Friday, and on the Sunday morning two days later, flew to Denver for a work meeting. The first leg of my trip connected through Chicago, so I was on a flight from DC to Chicago when the woman sitting next to me naively asked me if I was from Chicago or DC. After brief mental turmoil, I decided to take advantage of my captive audience and explain that I grew up in Chicago, moved to DC 36 hours earlier, and had just lived for 4ish years in Boston. I didn't really have a home and so parading the details allowed me to avoid that important and overwhelming issue.

Almost six months later, DC is just now starting to feel like home, way quicker than Boston did. Recently, when I returned from a trip, I was grateful for the familiarity the city afforded me. Playing Trivial Pursuit with my family tonight, one of the questions asked about a post office at 14th and Irving and asked the responder to name the city, and I felt true warmth toward the city that I now know well enough to recognize street names. (Given my abominable sense of direction, that knowledge might place DC ahead of both Chicago and Boston in terms of my slight ability to navigate. God bless the grid.)

It's odd for me to grow attached to a place in which I only have definite plans to remain through June (although I hope to stay in DC for another year or two after that). At the same time, I recognize that this sort of transient lifestyle requires that concepts of home come more quickly and potentially, more strongly, than they have at other times in my life. I depend on the city for the sense of community and comfort that was previously accomplished by family, time invested, or the explicit inclusion of a college community. At this point, I indiscriminately refer to my Chicago suburb, my house in DC, and even sometimes my former college house, as home. For the time being, home is a more expansive concept, reflecting places in which I feel comfortable, grounded, and "in my element." I will continue to work to cultivate my sense of home in DC, but will try to develop it without turning it into my only possible home. I see no need to staple myself to a city at a time when I might need to move.

I wonder if that's possible.