Multiple Homes

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”

When I first came across this quote from Miriam Adeney, anthropologist and associate professor at Seattle Pacific University, I felt like she was describing my own life. When I think about this truth, I find myself in a familiar cycle: saddened by the reality of it, annoyed at myself for feeling sad because only those with a certain level of privilege are fortunate enough to identify with this quote, and then grateful that I have been able to carve out a home for myself in several different places.

I grew up in a tight-knit, relatively small, suburban town in Massachusetts. It seemed hard to find anyone who didn’t know me, my brother, or my parents. I made some great friends in elementary and middle school, and two decades later they are still the ones I turn to most frequently. I received (what I believe to be) an exceptional public school education, and I had a deep love and respect for those who taught and coached me. This was home, and part of me dreaded leaving it for college.

But I did, and it didn’t take long for St. Michael’s College to feel like a forever home. In Vermont my cross country team, the community service office staff, my dorm-mates, and the friendly professors all wrapped their arms around me, and inadvertently introduced me to this idea that multiple places could feel like home. I loved seeing my family and hometown friends during school breaks, but I also found myself wanting to be “back home” in Vermont. St. Mike’s was also the place that introduced me to Evan early my freshman year, so that intensified the feeling of home.

My dad often says that he has never seen me more upset than I was on the morning of our college graduation. I knew from leaving high school how final this transition was, and I wanted no part of it. I now had two places where I felt like I belonged, yet I could never truly return to either of them. This time though, I at least got to bring a part of “home” with me. Evan and I had decided to put off getting full-time jobs and “growing up” right away, so we decided to move to Uganda.

Through a dear friend at St. Mike’s, we were introduced to the director of an orphanage in Entebbe, Uganda. Robert Fleming had founded the Malayaka House in 2005, and he invited us to come live in the orphanage guest house for as long as we wanted. We were already spending the summer in Vermont, and we decided to save up money by working full-time while living with our parents for the fall and early winter. In January of 2012, we took off for our six month stay in Uganda.

Entebbe, Uganda, and the Malayaka House specifically, became yet another home for both of us (the picture above is our guest house, which is now home to our teenage girls). The transition from outsider to resident took a bit of time,  including some personal growth on our part, but once we came out the other side, we weren’t sure if we could ever leave. Spending every day and night with the 36 children and teenagers, plus six “aunties” who are employed as caretakers, allowed us to build deep connections with our new family there. And again, I reaped the benefits of small town living. Walking to do your errands, ordering food from the same street vendors each week, taking the children to the park… all of these activities strengthened the sense of community, and required far more personal interaction than if we were living in a more developed country. While it may have taken some time for us to develop new habits, the rhythm of life we eventually settled into was comfortable and joyful.

So of course we found ourselves at another transition. One day while we were still in Entebbe and I was off playing in a rugby match with some of our teenagers, Evan applied to Teach for America on a whim. It was a competitive program then, so he was surprised to be selected. Back then, TFA corps members were required to accept the first job teaching job offered to them. So this set in motion an impromptu move from Uganda to Evan’s new place of employment: rural northeastern Arkansas.

The TFA commitment is two years, and we were dead set on bailing after those two years were up. The Arkansas Delta was NOT going to be another place that got a piece of my heart. Seven years later and still living in Arkansas, I will try to summarize this chapter of our lives relatively succinctly:

We didn’t know anyone when we arrived but forged some of the greatest friendships of our lives with people who started as just co-workers; we taught, coached, and advised seven different cohorts of students across our middle school and high school; we watched and assisted our school’s founding class of students matriculate to college; we joined civic clubs, served on non-profit boards, and built a network of people we cared about; and ultimately we became embedded in this tiny community, very far from any place we had previously considered home. But most importantly, we became the guardians of four magnificent children, who were originally just our students. We watched them grow from elementary school to middle school to high school, with our oldest about to graduate. In other words, we turned another spot on a map into a home.

Why this is AWESOME most of the time:

• Diversity of people it allows us to connect with and befriend.
• Ability to feel comfortable in so many different places.
• Variety of perspectives we’ve gained.
• Constant presence of people who support us and love us.
• Opportunity to introduce friends and family to other meaningful parts of our lives.
• Ease with which we can temporarily “escape” to another time in our lives.
• The way it grounds us in who we are now and who we have been in the past.

Why this is TERRIBLE sometimes:

• We are ALWAYS missing people we are not with or haven’t seen in a while.
• Often, We are comparing our current situation to aspects of previous ones.
• We use significant time & money returning to these “homes” rather than visiting new ones.

We take the good with the bad and ultimately keep reminding ourselves that we should remain grateful for the opportunity to have built true homes in multiple places. Each one has opened us up to new experiences and to people who have become family.