Where are you from?
Where do you live?
Two completely different questions.
I'm never entirely sure how to respond when one asks where I'm from, and I doubt that most people are as conflicted as I am when faced with that question. What is the proper response when asked? Is it the name of the city where you were actually born? If that is different than where you were raised, do you respond with that instead? Is there an unspoken percentage of your life that must be spent somewhere in order to call it home? What are the rules that apply here? If people have lived in multiple places, do they just get to choose where they call "home"? Actually, that's an entirely different topic. Even though it's been eight years since I've lived in the city where I grew up, whenever I buy a plane ticket to visit, I still call it "going home". Interestingly, my darling husband and I had a conversation about this the other night. I was trying to explain to him that I am not the happiest I've ever been, out here in the cornfields of Iowa, and he suggested that I fly back to Virginia Beach for a visit.
"I can't just run away to Virginia Beach every time I get homesick," I said.
"Homesick? What do you mean homesick? You haven't lived there in years; how can you be homesick?" he asked.
The question caught me off-guard because I thought he knew. I've been homesick ever since I left...
When I took a mini road-trip to Kansas City a couple of weeks ago, I passed a car with a Virginia license plate. At first, I didn't even notice it because it is still so ingrained in me. Once I realized what I was looking at, I got all excited. Yes, I got excited over a Virginia license plate. It's not like I knew the people in the car, but it made me happy to just see a license plate from my beloved Virginia. It's pretty rare, out here in Iowa, to see anything Virginia-related, so when it happens, I tend to get overly excited.
So, back to the questions at hand...where are you from? Where do you live? The entire reason this thought entered my head today was because my sister, who was visiting from New York, told someone that she's not from around here and that she's from New York. It struck me as odd because we're both from Virginia Beach. Granted, she has lived elsewhere for an even longer amount of time than me, but I was still perplexed as to how she could betray Virginia Beach like that.
I suppose that's where making your own rules comes in. If you love the place, you're from there. If you don't love the place, the only time you bring it up is if someone asks, specifically, where you were born or where you were raised. Therein lies one difference between my sister and me. She couldn't wait to get out of Virginia. She did everything she could to get out, and I would do anything I could to get back.
Where am I from? Virginia.
Where do I live? Iowa.
After I solved that mystery for myself, I started thinking about our son. What will he say? The poor child. Born in Georgia, moved to Iowa at just 7 months old, and will likely live in another state before he's in elementary school. So where is he from? Georgia? Surely he can't say that because he only lived there for 7 months. He'll never even remember any of it. He's certainly not from Iowa. I suppose one of these years we'll actually settle down somewhere, and that is where he will be from. I hope it's somewhere wonderful, and most of all, I hope he loves it as much as I do.
Where do you live?
Two completely different questions.
I'm never entirely sure how to respond when one asks where I'm from, and I doubt that most people are as conflicted as I am when faced with that question. What is the proper response when asked? Is it the name of the city where you were actually born? If that is different than where you were raised, do you respond with that instead? Is there an unspoken percentage of your life that must be spent somewhere in order to call it home? What are the rules that apply here? If people have lived in multiple places, do they just get to choose where they call "home"? Actually, that's an entirely different topic. Even though it's been eight years since I've lived in the city where I grew up, whenever I buy a plane ticket to visit, I still call it "going home". Interestingly, my darling husband and I had a conversation about this the other night. I was trying to explain to him that I am not the happiest I've ever been, out here in the cornfields of Iowa, and he suggested that I fly back to Virginia Beach for a visit.
"I can't just run away to Virginia Beach every time I get homesick," I said.
"Homesick? What do you mean homesick? You haven't lived there in years; how can you be homesick?" he asked.
The question caught me off-guard because I thought he knew. I've been homesick ever since I left...
When I took a mini road-trip to Kansas City a couple of weeks ago, I passed a car with a Virginia license plate. At first, I didn't even notice it because it is still so ingrained in me. Once I realized what I was looking at, I got all excited. Yes, I got excited over a Virginia license plate. It's not like I knew the people in the car, but it made me happy to just see a license plate from my beloved Virginia. It's pretty rare, out here in Iowa, to see anything Virginia-related, so when it happens, I tend to get overly excited.
So, back to the questions at hand...where are you from? Where do you live? The entire reason this thought entered my head today was because my sister, who was visiting from New York, told someone that she's not from around here and that she's from New York. It struck me as odd because we're both from Virginia Beach. Granted, she has lived elsewhere for an even longer amount of time than me, but I was still perplexed as to how she could betray Virginia Beach like that.
I suppose that's where making your own rules comes in. If you love the place, you're from there. If you don't love the place, the only time you bring it up is if someone asks, specifically, where you were born or where you were raised. Therein lies one difference between my sister and me. She couldn't wait to get out of Virginia. She did everything she could to get out, and I would do anything I could to get back.
Where am I from? Virginia.
Where do I live? Iowa.
After I solved that mystery for myself, I started thinking about our son. What will he say? The poor child. Born in Georgia, moved to Iowa at just 7 months old, and will likely live in another state before he's in elementary school. So where is he from? Georgia? Surely he can't say that because he only lived there for 7 months. He'll never even remember any of it. He's certainly not from Iowa. I suppose one of these years we'll actually settle down somewhere, and that is where he will be from. I hope it's somewhere wonderful, and most of all, I hope he loves it as much as I do.