where do you call home?
So I am feeling very Carrie Bradshaw-ish on this lazy Sunday afternoon. I can't pen a column for a New York tab, so I will just write away here on Greekchat.
Its been nine months since I graduated from college in Southern Illinois and made to move to Chicago. It's amazing how quickly time has gone and how soon I will have to decide whether to stay here in Chicago or return to my family and friends and try to begin a career in St. Louis. So I have been thinking about where to call home.
Is home where your family is from and where your friends are? Or is is a place where you feel some connection to? Is it bound to one geographical location? Or can you be at home at many places at once.
In my 23 years of life as a military kid, I have followed my fathers career across continents, through the Lone Star State and around the Midwest. If you asked me where home was when I was in grade school, it would be easy. Home was Kentucky; that was where we went every Christmas and Turkey day, both of my parents families were there and its home of great basketball tradition written on the hundreds of blue sweatshirts in our closets, no matter that our closets were in a rented ranch in San Antonio. So, my fam would take the car, pack it up and drive the 18 some odd hours from Texas.
As I entered my teens, we moved to Illinois, where my parents are still. If you asked me at the end of high school, where home was I would have to say Belleville, an Illinois burb of St. Louis. It was where I went to high school, where my family had bought out first house, where our football team played, where we went to church. Belleville was still home when I left for college, but it was home in a sense that I could go back for laundry, food, money and pampering parents bestow on their kids when they leave the nest, albeit temporarily.
My sorority in college was my home away from home, despite the fact we only had a physical house for a year. It was a foundation that, although I knew would last only four years, it was strong. The greek variety show, late-night trips to Wal-Marty, formals ... I could go on and on. And for anyone who is greek, I hope you understand what I mean. There are too many memories to shell into a paragraph. And my college town has so many memories as it too was my temporary home - I love so many aspects and memories of my four years in Carbondale. The bars, the outdoors, campus lake, the parties, certain professors, Saluki sports ...
Now, nine months after college. I have a choice - Do I make Chicago home? There are things I have come to love about Chicago, if its possible to fall in love with a city. I love the lakefront, running along the beach and playing volleyball and laying out. I love the skyline as you drive down Lakeshore Drive. I love all the intricate neighborhoods and how I have found my way around this city on my own without a map - well most of the time. I love how I have been independant and on my own, and although it has been rough at times, I have survived. I love how my career has taken off. I work for the third largest newspaper in the state, and they have asked me to stay on when my year-long job is up.
But a phone call with a good friend in St. Louis when she tells me about the crazy night my friends had the night before and how they are planning to go to a Cardinals game and how her classes are going and that they are going to a 5-year high school reuntion, makes me want to go back. The fact still that I have not opened up to anyone in Chicago as I am open with my friends in St. Louis saddens me. If I am upset or sad over something, there is no one here I turn to call. I miss my parents, not so much that I miss being with them, but I see them aging and feel like I want to be closer to them and spend more time with them because I am just now realizing time is so precious.
So if you were to ask me where home now, I would launch into this long rant. Maybe I have been at home all along, and as long as I keep in mind who I am and what my priorities are, home won't be defined by distances, but it is hard to sort that all out.
Any thoughts?
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