Last week I discovered that I am from a "Hamlet". All this time I thought it was a town. I was googling my hometown (homehamlet?) of Latham, NY when I discovered this news. How could I have missed this important information? I had to look up what a hamlet was on Wikipedia. I called my parents to ask them if they knew. Of course they did. Now they also know what a complete ignoramus their smartest daughter is.
Ever since I moved to Germany I find myself thinking obsessively of my childhood and how it was so easy to grow up in suburban America. I can say this only in retrospect because in reality high school sucks for most people who were not either on the football team or cheering for it. Now I can see how great it really was. There was very little crime and a lot of immaculate elementary school playgrounds that the public was free to use. There were nice hills for sledding in the winter. We went trick or treating to houses of people that we knew for years. There were not metal detectors in my high school. There was no need for them. I grew up in a utopia that can only be found in middle class America.
It was there that I started my first day of Kindergarten and graduated from high school with mostly the same people. It was unusual to have a "new kid" come into school. When someone moved in they were the new family on the block for about a year. Now I live in what is referred to as a "transient community". If you moved here more than two months ago you are not new anymore. If you are living in a house rather than a hotel you are "settled." Most people I meet here have lived in more than one foreign country.This concept is figuratively and literally foreign to me.
It makes me wonder where my children will say where they are "from." They will most likely not have a hometown that they can look back on with fondness. They will not bring their children to visit their grandparents in the house they grew up in. They won't go through twelve years of school with the same classmates. Their lives will be full of new people and new places.
This beautiful fall morning in Germany I sent my oldest son off to school. When he arrives in his classroom he will have no idea what his teacher or the other students are saying. The crazy thing about this is that he is okay with that. He wants to be part if the German community. He loves the experience. My three year old is sitting across the table from me eating a slice of ham and a roll for breakfast because that is what people eat for breakfast in Germany. He likes the experience. My baby has no idea about what life in America is. She will probably love it here too. Why don't I? Why am I so opposed to change? Is it because I grew up without any real life experience? Am I so set in my ways at the age of 36 that I can't open myself to life in a different place?
The more I think about it the more I know I need to come to terms with the concept that home is not a particular place. You don't need to "from" somewhere to have strong roots. My children will be from the world. They will have life experiences that will hopefully make them more tolerant to difference than I am. I need to stop worrying about whether or not they have "roots" and teach them or let them teach me to embrace life wherever they are. The strongest plants are uprooted time after time and still bloom wherever they are. Home will be wherever we are together.
Beautifully said! :-)
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