A common theme over at the Front Porch Republic is a respect for place: for home and community, for not only eating locally but being locally, staying in (or returning to) one's hometown rather than venturing off to "better" places. The article Root Hog or Die is where I chose to ask a question that has been bothering me about this approach to life, much as I like some of the ideas.
I’ve moved enough times in my life to know I hate it. (The only time I didn’t was when moving from an apartment to our first house, just a few blocks away.) I grieve that my present grandchildren live an 18-hour drive away, and some future grandchildren are likely to grow up where I can’t visit them without a passport. Our extended family makes a point of getting together at least twice a year—but that’s not the same as being able to drop by my nephew’s house for an impromptu cello concert, or to comfort my grandson when he is sick.
That said, I want to ask a question that has bothered me ever since I first encountered the stay-home ideas here at the FPR. Having done extensive genealogical research, I know that the best thing my maternal great-grandparents did for me was to get out of their West Virginia town. Among those who remained, the incidence of “father unknown” on the birth records is depressingly high.
Moreover, I noticed that each of my hated moving experiences provoked growth in my life and that of others. In my own (highly-rated) high school the brightest, most interesting students were almost always those who had come from elsewhere, not because of any deficiencies in the local population, but because the non-locals had a wider range of experience from which to draw. I like to think our different perspectives brought enrichment to our fellow-students as well.
I wish we could have it both ways. Home, as my friends and family will assure you, sometimes with exasperation, is my favorite place to be—wherever home happens to be at the moment. I wish my entire family were no more than an hour’s drive away instead of spread across the country and the globe. But living, at least for a while, in Japan, and Costa Rica, and Switzerland, and Italy, and yes, Pennsylvania, Florida, Washington, Massachusetts, and many other states, in small towns and suburbs, in cities and on farms, has brought such richness to our family that I wouldn’t have it otherwise.
How does the philosophy I see here at the FPR allow for such enrichment, such growth, such joys?
If there's a good response I'll include it here in the comments.
What is my home? Eastern upstate New York, where I grew up? Eastern Pennsylvania, where I also grew up? Western New York, where our children were born? Florida, our home for most of the last quarter-century? My two parents and four grandparents were born in New York, Washington, West Virginia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Florida—representing the middle and three of the four corners of this continental United States. How far back do I go to find my "family" home? Do I go back to England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Germany, France, or the Netherlands?
These ruminations were sparked in part by what I learned recently about the Swiss system of citizenship, which perhaps reflects, at least in principle, the rootedness extolled at the FPR. Swiss people are not citizens of Switzerland, per se, but of their family’s home town, which may be neither the place they were born nor a place they have ever lived. Children and wives take on the citizenship of the father/husband, which probably would make me a citizen of Quidnessett, Rhode Island, if not of somewhere in England. Mindboggling.
Ancestral lands or no, "home" to me would ideally have all family members (children parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings, in-laws) living close enough together for casual visits, mutual support, and tremendous Memorial Day picnics, while at the same time providing for all the enrichment of life that comes from extended immersion in other cultures, both the cultures of foreign lands and the alien cultures in our own country. (If you doubt we have alien cultures in our own country, you've never experienced the contrast between New England and the South, let alone Middle America and California.) So it's impossible: but what kinds of attitudes and actions could bring us closer to the ideal?I figure I'll always count myself a NH-ite; we'll see if I ever fit into Pittsburgh or Pennsylvania, other than for its cost of living.
As far as "richness" in a family, I guess I don't value diversity all that much, at least not as much as a community (as opposed to a "network" - terms used in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, at least at Carnegie Mellon to try to distinguish between closer, more interconnected, personal, relationships and a Rolodex of business contacts) where people actually know each other, where I guess "know" has to be defined, and I mean where someone knows what you would say before you say it, knows what things you likely prayed about that day. One friend hypothesized that unity (at least for a particular issue) is when one could trust another person enough to say, "He speaks for me on that issue". You can't have that unity without knowing people. And while my friend was referencing an online mailing list where that statement is occasionally made, I think it is best (most easily?) made in the context of local relationships.
Some churches refer to themselves as a "local church", to which I often think, how can a specific church not be local (not counting the various online "churches" that exist only on the internet), but what they are trying to get at is a high value on local community and interaction with each other.
Oh, I forgot to comment on a couple specifics:
1. West Virginia is the "state next door" for Pittsburgh, and so is the butt of all the jokes (which I hadn't realized this phenomenon growing up, I just thought Massachusetts was a lousy place to live), but it is humorous to see the "father unknown" mention show up from a genealogist, so the jokes must have some basis in fact...
2. I don't know about the statistics from my high school, but I suspect they are quite different from your high school, since the number of students who came from somewhere else is quite small, so probably couldn't provide any valid data statistically speaking. But, a possible corollary to the "students from elsewhere make for better students" is that "the better students went elsewhere", which I think is the case for most of the "good students" from my high school class. And of course, we (at least some of us) were the ones who were perfectly happy in Hillsboro, and thought the folks who were itching to get out of "this stinkin' town" were strange. And of course, most of those people who swore graduation day would be the last day they were in Hillsboro, are still there (though remarkably happier than I thought they'd be at not leaving).
And lastly, I find it very amusing when people refer to Pittsburgh as a small town where you can't do anything, in the same language and tone of voice that people scorn Hillsboro. I am not quite sure what people are looking for -- perhaps it is like the joke (that I can't find a reference for at the moment) where a guy is thinking about moving into a town asks a gas station attendant if it is a nice place to live, and he asks if he likes his old place. He doesn't like his old place, and gives a couple reasons. The attendant says that he'll find this place just as bad, if not worse. A second guy comes along and asks the same question, but he says that he liked his old place, just had to move for job reasons or whatever, and the attendant says that he's sure he'll get along just fine.
Sorry, Jon. By "the rules" you're either from Pekin, Illinois, or somewhere in what became Germany. :)
Unfortunately, the family dysfunctions I reported from the West Virginia branch are all too true. As my research contact for this part of the family said, "Illegitimate children have always been a problem to determine the parentage of; most mothers just gave such children their new husbands' names, real biological fathers' names seldom reported. I have countless children 'by unk relationship(s).'" It's not a problem limited to West Virginia, but that particular part of the country at that particular time was good to leave behind.
I know the FPR people will agree with you on the "better students went elsewhere" idea, but I'm not so sure. These students didn't move of their own volition, but were dragged along with families. Maybe you could say that they were the brighter students because their (brighter) parents "went elsewhere" from where they had been, but many if not most moved there for the same reason we did, that it was better to move than not to have a job. By "brightest" I also did not mean simply IQ—it was more an attitude, an openness to learning and new ideas, a realization that there are other customs out there, some better, some worse. As someone once put it, "He who knows only one culture knows no culture."
Time to wrap this up; I said I'd post them here if there were any interesting responses at the FPR. I'm not sure how interesting they are, but they at least tell me that I'll have to look elsewhere for the balance I'm seeking.
From the author: No, we can’t have it both ways. And it’s my part today to make the case for the poor stepsister who stays home and sweeps the hearth.
MMH, a commenter: Linda Wightman asks an interesting question: How does the philosophy I see here at the FPR allow for such enrichment, such growth, such joys [the enrichment, etc., that result from her many moves]? I, too, come from a peripatetic, international background and would probably have to agree that one cannot have it all. There is great advantage to exposure to other cultures, not least the permanent sense of being an outsider, which, while sometimes painful, offers the opportunity to see that one’s own culture and beliefs do not encompass reality, that every point of view is by definition limited, and so to be open to others unlike oneself–though I hasten to add that one needn’t share my background to see this. Because in my childhood my family had no geographical roots (my father had left the South as a young adult even before being sent overseas), my parents considered it essential that we have roots within the family. It was imperative that we eat meals together, worship together, and generally spend time together. For that I am most grateful. That may be the best that peripatetics can hope for.
The author: To MMH and Mrs. Wightman: Thank you for your comments. All I can say is your life is your life, and a wise person makes the best of it, and (so very fortunate as most of us are) is grateful for it. I will argue for the benefits of rootedness, which I believe are greater benefits than those of wandering, while every major media outlet will argue in favor of wandering; and so I will argue hard. Is there room on this site for openness to other states, countries and cultures? Of course. But that doesn’t mean I long to move somewhere else, or think I should long, to fulfill myself. Your own view, and your own experience, may well be somewhat different.
MMH: Katherine, yes, you’re certainly right: the thing to do is be grateful for what we’ve been given and make the most of it. On the whole I think the benefits of rootedness more profound than those of wandering, but rootedness can be in a culture and in a family; it isn’t necessarily always in a place. Am I extending the sense? Not too much, I think, because even geographical rootedness has to have familial and cultural rootedness to be of value. It’s the permanence and long association that are important.
I thought there was an earlier comment by the author that didn't make sense to me, and I was going to include it here for other people's thoughts...but I can't find it now. Perhaps she decided it didn't make sense to her, either, and took it off. The Wayback Machine doesn't have archives that recent for me to check.
In any case, she has interpreted my description of the richness of the places our family has lived as my own personal travels, but that's beside the point. I'll concede that maybe one cannot have it all, but will continue to seek for ways to have both a strong rootedness in family and community and at the same time an appreciation for other places and cultures that's at least partially from the inside.
More than once, Janet was told she needed to concentrate on one instrument rather than indulge in her desire to play them all. Had she been aiming at certain careers at the top of a narrow field, that might have been good advice. But for everything else, no.
Bilingual parents were once pressured by their pediatricians and other well-meaning folks to speak only one language in the presence of their children, on the theory that hearing two languages would delay speech. Now we know that learning multiple languages actually enhances brain growth and language ability.
What's the point? I still want it all. :)
