At long last, the entry on my complicated sense of "home." I apologize to potentially offended family and friends in advance.
It is probably the biggest open secret in the history of humanity that I have the most thoroughly screwed up sense of "home." I have lost count of how many family members and friends from southeast Texas I have offended, scared, saddened, or disappointed with my wholesale adoption of Chicago as my "hometown" since moving there in 2008. Some have been amused, more than anything; others have thought me, whether that say so or not, as a bit of a Benedict Arnold...just like any other Texas native who does not believe that the Lone Star State is greater than every other place in the world combined. Of course, this Texas native has no discernible Texas accent except when he's on the phone with his dad or grandmother; in fact, I discovered in Montevideo that my natural accent in English, when no other English speakers are around to influence it, is remarkably Northeastern.
The ways we define "home" and geographic identity are so bizarre. I was born and grew up in Texas. Does that make me a Texan? What about having a mother from Philadelphia, who never QUITE fit in in southeast Texas, and who (as we both have realized) succeeded in raising a "Yankee" who hates sweet tea, doesn't say "y'all," despises being called "sugar" or "honey" by people he doesn't know, and doesn't look passers-by on the sidewalk in the eye? For that matter, what about half of the Texas side of my family having its roots in central Indiana, with family in Oregon? Or the Texas part of things being rooted in another part of the state than where I grew up? And, on mom's side, how does her being a 2nd-generation American factor in, or that my great-grandfather was actually from Chicago (go figure) than Philly? What's home even mean?
None of these things ever entered my mind until I moved away for college. Before then, I felt comfortable referring to Lake Jackson as "home" (which is already a distortion; my home was in Jones Creek, but my school, friends, church, and blood relatives were all across the Brazos in Lake Jackson. Again, what makes a "hometown?"), but after moving to Seguin...things changed. Namely, my home disappeared as my parents divorced. I had no connection to the place, southern Brazoria County - I had connections to people, and when the connections that really were "home" for me ceased to exist, then...well, I found myself homeless, but with a roof over my head. So, like most college students, I created a fictive family for myself and turned TLU into a new home, of sorts. That worked well, until I went to Ghana.
Ghana never felt much like home at all; that's not to say it wasn't one of the most profound experiences of my life, but it was always too Other to feel too comfortable. But...the world moved while I was drinking cheap gin from plastic packets and having my assumptions about life and the universe ripped asunder. I got back to Seguin, and found that it wasn't how I'd left it, and so I drifted again.
And then there was October 11th, 2006. It seems strange to remember the date, but it was the day before Chicago's earliest snowfall on record, so it stuck (unlike the snow, which was only around briefly on the 12th). It was the day I first went to Chicago. I'd flown through O'Hare before, seen the skyline and the lake...but this was The Day. The day that, for the first time since I was 18 and still a kid (contrary to what I thought at the time), I felt...home. I can't explain it; more than anything, it was probably a sign of God's being present in my own darkest time. After all, before getting on the plane, I had watched the sun set and realized that, at the moment, I no longer knew if I even believed in God anymore. But God is real and was there, welcoming to the place where all my hopes, dreams, doubts, fears, and heartaches intersect in one snowy, loud, glorious mess - CHICAGO.
I can't explain why Chicago is home. It just is. It has been since the first time I sat down on the Blue Line from O'Hare, and a man getting on the L asked, in Spanish, if this was the train to the Loop...and I answered confidently, also in Spanish, that yes, it was. It has been since I first had a Chicago dog complete with a Vienna beef frank, poppyseed bun, mustard, onion, dill pickle spear, neon green relish, tomato slices, two sport peppers, celery salt, and ABSOLUTELY NO KETCHUP, and since the first time I sat down at Giordano's and learned what pizza is supposed to be. It has been since the first time I lost myself with abandon singing "Go Cubs Go" with 40,000 others believers that this is The Year. It has been since the first time I caught myself mouthing "This is Randolph and Wabash. Doors open on the right at Randolph and Wabash. This is an Orange Line train to Midway" along with the CTA announcement. It has been since I first recognized the world's most beautiful skyline anytime it appeared in a commercial, tv show, or movie. It has been since I realized, in Montevideo, that I didn't miss Texas...I just missed my family and friends. It has been since Cubs games on WGN and franks washed down with Old Style at Mustard's Last Stand got me through the longest summer of my life in Boulder, Colorado. It has been since people, from native Chicagoans to lost tourists, have just assumed I must be a native because of my accent and my appearance of knowing what I'm doing...
Because I do. I do know what I'm doing, whether it's navigating CTA routes across the city or walking around the Loop or talking smack with Sox fans or going down to the lake on a nice day. I'm just making myself right at home in the only place on earth where I've ever fit in...and that's home enough for me.
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