If You Lived In Your Heart

I was sitting in a Starbucks in Marlton, NJ. It was 2009 and I had just moved to New Jersey six months prior. It was my third move to a third state in three years. I and the seven other store managers in my district were kicking off a hiring fair: we were going to sit and interview potential employees for the remainder of the afternoon.

Right before we began, the manager of the store who was hosting the job fair recognized one of the customers in line at the cafe as her high school gym teacher. While I try not to make assumptions about age, based on prior amiable co-worker chit chat, I was guessing it had been at least a decade since this manager had graduated from high school. As she excused herself from the table, I marveled at the chances of running into someone so familiar. It made Marlton seem like a small town to me, even though as a bustling Philadelphia suburb on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River, I knew it was not small at all.

A few weeks later, I went to visit a friend of mine. He had moved a few times for his professional career. Something we talked about reminded me of the manager running into her high school gym teacher and I brought it up in conversation.

“Isn’t that weird? Running into one of your teachers from high school? It’s not like Marlton is a one stoplight town in the middle of nowhere,” I mused.

“I hate to break this to you,” my friend said to me, “but we are the weird ones.”

I paused, surprised at the turn in our conversation. For a moment I had to cycle through all the “weird” things my friend might insinuate we have in common. I eventually realized what he meant: my friend was suggesting most people stay near the town they grew up in. He was saying it is normal to run into people you went to high school with in your adult life.

I started thinking about the other managers I worked with at Starbucks: most of them were from the immediate area. I thought about the managers at Starbucks I had been working with a few months prior in Tucson: most of them grew up in Tucson. I thought about my ten-year high school reunion, which had happened (that I did not attend but read about on social media) one year before my move to New Jersey: most of those people were still in the Phoenix area.

After a long pause I responded, “I guess maybe that is true.” Somehow, acknowledging this made me feel a bit more odd and a bit lonelier too. Even though knowing Bruce Springsteen was from New Jersey had always given me some solace during my time living in the Garden State.

The more I moved, the more people and things I lost, the more I fixated on what it must feel like to be “home”, to be from somewhere, to be so familiar with buildings and people, generations of families. Like piloting a plane or winning an Olympic medal, it was something I could not imagine feeling, I could not fathom experiencing. Except unlike piloting a plane or winning an Olympic medal, it was a pedestrian experience, effortlessly attained by many.

Five years and several moves later, I came to Columbus, Ohio. Aside from Texas, which I have only visited and have not lived in, Ohio has the most “home town” (home state?) pride of anywhere I have ever been. I have met people who have tattoos in the shape of the state. You can find tchotchkes of every kind in the shape of the Buckeye State for sale everywhere around Ohio, from Walmart to Whole Foods. People are proud of Ohio in a way I have never known anyone to be proud of Arizona. Or California. Or New Jersey. I was initially worried this Ohio pride would alienate me, make me feel like even more of an outsider than I usually do. But instead, it had the opposite effect: I found it endearing, heart-warming. I wanted to wrap it around me like a blanket.

When I was in college, I bought a bumper sticker that said, “If you lived in your heart, you’d be home by now.” (As an aside, this same bumper sticker now reminds me of an amazing Prince anecdote.) At the time I bought the bumper sticker, I had only lived one other place besides the house I grew up in: my college dorm. I was 18 years old, and like many 18 year olds, I thought buying this bumper sticker demonstrated wisdom beyond my years. When my dad bought me my first guitar a year later, I stuck it on my guitar case. Every time I moved after that, I moved the guitar. And every time I moved the guitar, I read that bumper sticker. Like the guitar, I began to carry around the idea of what home should be in my heart. I felt it rattle in my chest each time I moved again.

Now, for the first time since I left Mesa at 17, I have a truly permanent residence: I bought my first house last year. The house, combined with marrying Basil, has made me feel like my heart and my guitar and I all live in the same space for the first time. We have plans to reside here for a while. Although I likely won’t run into any former teachers of any type anywhere in Columbus, we are establishing other hallmarks of living somewhere permanent: some people recognize us at our favorite restaurants and coffee shops. Our local library clerks ask us about how our dogs are doing. We are establishing yearly traditions of hiking the same trails, visiting the same brewery for the release of its December beer. And it is starting to feel a lot like home.