I grew up in Rochester, NY, where my Dad was born and raised. But the year I started college, my family moved to the middle of nowhere on top of a hill above the farm where my mom grew up. Going back to Rochester doesn’t feel like going home anymore, despite the 18 years that it was. So when we went for a visit this weekend, I took in the things that had changed but didn’t feel like I had missed out on something because it had gone and changed without me.
On the way through our old suburb my mom said that my Dad feels like that place on the hill, above the farm and the lakes, in the middle of nowhere, where the wind blows constantly, is his happy place. He feels a sense of peace every time he is there. As we drove, my mom said that this was hers, these suburbs outside of Rochester where the houses nestled together like dominos that give way to the empty farm fields the farther out you go.
It’s funny the places that life takes you. And what those places do to you.
For my part, I am with my Dad. The Finger Lakes give me a tug that I don’t feel in Rochester. But I think about the other places I’ve been. I think about setting my feet on the ground in Ireland one hot July and feeling that “home” feeling. I remember looking out at the Atlantic Ocean in North Carolina and feeling like this was the first place I had been able to really breath. I remember cobbled walks, dirt roads, smooth sidewalks, city parks, brick roads, all the places my feet have walked and those places talk to me too.
I think the point is that you don’t really know where you’re going to end up. The whole world is calling to you, you could go anywhere. And anywhere may turn out to be home.
Back “home” in Binghamton, we went hiking again. Up an old, abandoned ski slope and around a pond where fly fishers were practicing.
