I moved into a new apartment last week, and have two wonderful new roommates, Paul and Amie. Through them, I am meeting new people all the time. Most of them are 18 or 19 and have finished their freshman year of college. Paul had drunken friends over the other night, and his friend Casey asked me how I was dealing with his craziness. Once she found out I was from Connecticut, she asked me if it was hard being so far from home and if I missed my parents. It was such a strange question at the time, but considering that she is away from home for the first year, it must have been very normal for her. I don't think I have been asked that in at least two years, and I never realized until her question how little I really miss "home". In fact, I have sadly come to realization that Willington isn't really even home anymore. I get along with my parents and my brother more than I did in high school, but somehow the magic of my house being my home is gone.
I went to Finland in August 2003, and during the entire year I was gone, Willington was definitely home, and the only home I had ever known. While I did learn to feel at home with my host family in Nokia, 61 Eldredge Road was, in my mind, still where I lived. All my friends were still there in high school, and it was the first time I had been away for any real length of time. When I got back in July 2004, my bedroom felt like home. I had returned after a long time away, but it was just as much my home as it was before Finland. It was exactly as I had remembered, and it was almost like I had never left. But I was there for less than 2 months and then I came to Minneapolis for college.
Maybe it should have been at that point that Willington stopped feeling like home, but I wasn't. Owen and I were still together, I went home for Thanksgiving and then again for Christmas, and I still felt that the time in Minneapolis was time away from home. I spent the summer of 2005 in Connecticut, although a month and a half of vacation was actually spent with Karl, touring Europe. I spent the fall semester in Minneapolis, had an extended winter break again in Willington, and then went off for my semester in Graz. Since leaving for Finland on August 13, 2003, I have spent about 4 months total in Connecticut- 91% of my life since then has been spent not at home. And yet, I still identify very strongly with Connecticut- I tell people that's where I'm from, I'm proud to be from the East Coast, I brag about my superiour accent, and I automatically feel close to people from the East Coast or Connecticut even if I know nothing else about them.
I think my time in Austria made me really realize that I no longer live in Willington. Up to that point, I really felt like I llived in Connecticut and just spent many months away at school. When I was in Finland I really was away from home, and that identification carried on. I'm going back to Willington in a few days, and I no longer feel that I am going home. I am going to visit my parents and my family, but it is not home. My new Minneapolis apartment in the basement of a pharmacy is more home to me. All of my most valued things are here with me, and I'm packing like I'm going on vacation and not going home.
Zach Braff's character talks about this exact occurrence in the movie Garden State, but I hadn't realize it happened to me until right now. In fact, when I first saw the movie, I remember agreeing with Sam that I still felt at home:
"Andrew Largeman: You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew Largeman: You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place."
It happened one day, some time between leaving for Austria and returning. Willington was home, and then suddenly, or maybe gradually, it wasn't. I don't miss my bed or my things in my room like I did when I was in Finland. I don't compare things here to how they are at home the way I used to. I am certain that Willington and my house will be always exactly as I remember them, and up until this point, I have never been disappointed. I change and home doesn't, and I think that keeps me sane. Or maybe we both change a little bit each time we're apart. Either way, 61 Eldredge Road will always be exactly the way it is right now, in my mind. And if that ever changes, no matter how long it's been since I've felt home there, there will be a lot of tears.
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