Four years

[mrissa]

Four years ago today, C.J. pulled the U-Haul up the driveway and timprov parked the car in the garage. And I was home, home, home.

When I decided to graduate from high school a year early, people kept asking me if I regretted it. And sometimes I managed to keep my incredulity to polite levels at this question, but really: no. No regrets. Not a one. Not even once, not even for a nanosecond.

Moving home has been like that, too. I am so very glad to be here. So very, very glad.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

1. We hated living in California. This is our home.
2. markgritter had the option to telecommute.
3. YAY!

[careswen.livejournal.com]

Yes, but I mean, "...in the first place?" From what I understand, you did not grow up here or come here for school. How did you discover that this was home? Did the winds of fate carry you, as they carried mmerriam and me?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, you have been misinformed. First of all, I did come here for school (as did markgritter; timprov was already here and stayed here for school). And second, I spent big chunks of my growing up years here, because most of my family was here.

Third, my parents -- I can't believe I've never used this analogy with you! -- were expat Minnesotans in Nebraska kind of like the British expats in India: sure, they lived there for 25 years, but they raised me as a Minnesotan in Nebraska. There were things of which my mom would say, "They may do it that way here, but we don't do it that way." Or, "They may say that here, but we don't say it that way." I was definitely raised Scandosotan -- and if you look at greykev's and my upbringings, sure, they differ because our parents were very different people, but it goes beyond that.

[careswen.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. I probably should have been more specific about what I meant by "here" -- I was thinking "Twin Cities." I knew that your parents were expats and how much that influenced you. I knew that you went to school in Minnesota. I was curious when/how the Twin Cities became home.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think you'll find that a lot of people who went to school at one of the MN private liberal arts colleges an hour or two from the Cities ended up in the Cities. There aren't many opportunities in St. Peter, but the climate is similar in the Cities, the dominant local culture is similar, and there's always a kind of snowball effect: that if someone knows a few people in an area, there's more draw for them to move there, and then the people they know will know a few more people in the area, and so on.

Living in Minnesota for college felt natural and right. Moving to California was clearly not the same kind of fit, so we started thinking in terms of moving home.

[brooksmoses]

Oh!

I had never really thought of my parents as expat North Carolinians, but that analogy really does work well. It makes a lot of my sense of what place is home fit together neatly in ways it hadn't before.

Wow. Nifty.

(And there are ways in which a Roanoke accent is home, and ways in which a middle-North-Carolina accent is home, and these are different ways, and it all makes sense now.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Glad to be useful!