Back

I'm back. I'm tired and kind of sick of traveling and still trying to adjust to alone-time. (It takes a couple of days. As much as I love living by myself, spending time around people I care about makes me a little lonely when I return).

Once again, traveling (and spending time in stores shopping with my mom, etc.) makes me wonder at people. Coming up on the train, it was kind of late, and I and one other woman were the last ones in to dinner, the diner car was empty at that point other than a few train employees taking their meal.

I have to say at that part I was just relieved: relieved the train finally got there, relieved I was on, relieved that there was still time for me to get a meal. But my dinner companion just wasn't happy: everyone on the train was rude. The meals weren't very good. It used to be better. Her car was too warm. Et cetera, et cetera.

I didn't really say anything. Because what do you say in that situation? At one point I think I managed, "Still, it beats flying?" (Which for me, it does - even with the delays, even with the long time spent on the train. The nearest airport to me is a nightmare to get to, and I'd have to change puddlejumpers mid-trip to fly directly to the town where my parents live, and then there's the whole "put your right foot in, put your right foot out, take off your shoes and turn all about" bit that flying has become today.)

The next day, the train was still late, and my lunch companions were out and out rude to the (overworked) car attendant - one of them claimed that he had purposely avoided us because we were a table of all women. (Maybe, but I didn't see evidence of more than "it's all hitting the fan at once and I'm being pulled in fifteen different directions"). I don't think being rude to someone in a situation like that helps at all. (Generally, being rude doesn't help at all in any situation, is what I've observed).

I also think I'm about ready to see more stores ban cell phone use outright. We went to several small stores - a gourmet shop and a bookstore - in the town where my parents live and both my mother and I were nearly knocked down by the "racers" - people with their Bluetooth firmly implanted in their ear, chattering away, with only the goal of the pound of coffee or the new Ken Follett in mind, and totally ignoring other people. It concerns me that a sizable minority of people seem not to SEE their fellow human beings - it's like there's a little bubble around them.

(I was also distressed to see the reports of minor fights and pushing and shoving before the stores opened on Friday. That kind of behavior is almost enough to make me eschew the more secular, gift-giving-aspects of Christmas, if that's how people behave about it. It's just STUFF, people. It's not worth shoving some stranger over. So your kid doesn't get a Wii for Christmas - or your hubby doesn't get a cheap big-screen tv. One of the lessons that can be learned is patient waiting or living with the little disappointments of life.)

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Dave asked what place I considered to be home. Honestly, at this point, I think of where I live now as home - that's where I spend the vast majority of my life, it's where I work, it's where I've put down roots (as much as a single childless person puts down roots).

The town where my parents live now - while I said it was "familiar" - is not the town I grew up in; my father retired early some 20 years ago and took a new job in Illinois, so we moved away from Ohio where I grew up. I've actually not been back to the town where I grew up since then. (Interestingly enough - I talked with a man on the train at breakfast - a businessman originally from New Zealand but now based in Cleveland - and he knew the little town I lived in. He said the historic downtown was still much the same, but that there had been tremendous sprawl and that there were a lot of mini-mansions build up on the edges of town. Which actually sounds typical of some of the folks that lived there. I grew up there but outside of the church I belonged to, and to a lesser extent the private high school I attended, I never felt 100% at home in that town. It was very much a conspicuous-consumption town and my parents, while probably not any worse off than many of the families, did not believe in buying designer jeans or taking expensive ski or Bermuda vacations - so my brother and I were somewhat looked down upon as "poor kids" even though we weren't literally poor. I don't think I'd fit in there even now; I don't golf or carry a Bermuda bag (those were the big, big thing when I was about 14) or care much about clothing labels or particularly want to do the 'gracious living' thing if it means wearing uncomfortable clothes and not being able to leave the stack of books you're currently reading out on the end table or having to entertain a bunch of people from work who really actually kind of grate on your nerves).

So anyway. I feel welcome in the town where my parents live but it really doesn't feel that much like home, at least not in the way it did when I was living there during grad school. (It's also changing a lot - lots more building, the little downtown area is being torn down and replaced with pretentious new buildings that will probably sell things at pretentious prices, a lot of the old favorite restaurants have closed, the old favorite apple orchard closed down and was sold for a housing development).

I know, I know - stuff changes. But it's less disconcerting to see the changes in progress, as you live in the place. It's kind of unsettling to come back after a six months' absence and go "Can we go to Benny's Bakery and get some donuts?" and have my mom say, "Oh, I guess I forgot to tell you - Benny's was bought out by a Starbucks franchise" or something like that.

And people seem ruder on average up there. I don't know if it's a big city vs. small town thing (my parent's city is probably 100,000 people or more at this point; my town is about 14,000) or if it's a North vs. South thing, or if it's a socioeconomic thing (lots more Yuppies and old-money types in my parents' city). Or maybe it's a political thing, I don't know. (Political correctness is kind of rampant in the town where my folks live, and sometimes I think when that's carried to an extreme, people kind of forget to see other people as individuals with individuals likes and dislikes and worries and hopes, and see them as part of some label-able group)

This morning in church, several people remarked to me, "Welcome home!"

And you know? I think they're right. As much as I love my parents, as much as I love getting up there for visits, as much as I love there being a yarn shop and multiple bookstores and several quilt stores and some really good restaurants within a 10 minute drive of where they live, the place where I'm at right now is my real home.

It's where I've made friends on my own merits (without the friends coming "attached" as it were, as friends of my parents). It's where I earn my bread. It's where I have responsibilities and am seen as a good citizen. It's where people know me for me, primarily, and not me-as-the-daughter-of-my-parents. (My parents lived in the town for about 5 years before I moved back there for grad school, so a lot of the people I knew from church or from the university there knew my mom and dad first - and that carries a little baggage. It is kind of freeing to realize that the people who know me here know me not because of my mom and dad, but because of me.)