Place
07/03/22 02:12
My sister is visiting us and whenever she comes for a visit, we have a conversation about some of the people with whom we went to high school. Like me, she has lived most of her life away from the town where we grew up, but a few years ago she moved back to our home town. Like us, the pull of a grandchild is strong enough that she is likely to move away before too long, but for the past few years she has been in a position to keep me informed about people from my past with whom I haven’t kept up. Lately our conversations have had several reports of people who have died. It has been a long time since I lived in that town. I am used to reports of the people who were in our parents’ generation passing on, but lately the news has been of people our age. It is a simple reminder of our mortality.
The news has another quality as well. As I entered my teens, growing up in a small town, I began to think about leaving that town. Although I returned for the easy summer job of working for our father’s business during my college years, I have lived away from that town ever since. I’m not opposed to small town living. I’ve lived in other small towns since and I currently live in an unincorporated area with a small number of residents.
It is just that the trajectory of my life has been in other directions and I have invested my energies in forming relationships with folks in other places. There are a number of my high school classmates who, like me, were eager to leave our town and who made our lives in other places. There are other classmates, however, who never did leave our town. They might have gone away for college or for a job, but they remained in the area and they live in the town where we grew up. Their lives have been full of meaning with marriages, children, grandchildren, church and career, but they chose to explore those in the familiar place where we all grew up. The rest of us found meaning in other places.
I belong to a Facebook group dedicated to memories of our old home town and it is a place where I have not been active. Most of the posts are of things that happened after I left that town. Lately someone has been posting pictures of high school sports games, with a lot of basketball pictures. They have asked the help of others in identifying the players in the pictures. I know right away that I would be of no help. When I went to high school, there was no girls basketball team and male students were not allowed to wear their hair as long as those in the pictures. I’m pretty sure that the people posting the pictures don’t even remember a time when dress and hair codes were part of the rules of high school.
We still own a small bit of property in our old home town. It is part of our parents’ legacy, shared by my living brothers and sister. That place is set to go on the market in a month’s time. It is likely to see fairly easily. After that, for the first time in nearly 80 years, our family will not be owners of anything in that place. I can already walk into the hardware store or grocery store and no one will recognize me. It won’t take many years before no one in the old home town will remember our names. Time moves on. The people in our world are incredibly mobile.
Our children don’t have the same sense of place with which I grew up. They moved twice before they reached high school, living in three different communities in three different states. While I can say I grew up in Montana, our kids grew up in North Dakota, Idaho, and South Dakota. They were 2 and 4 when we moved from North Dakota, so they might not have many memories of that place, but they were 10 and 12 when we moved from Idaho. I’m not sure which place they think of as their home place. Our youngest will sometimes say that she’s from South Dakota, but I don’t know that her brother has the same kind of identification with the place where he went to high school.
Like my sister and me, however, they have plenty of stories to share when they get together. “Remember when?” is a question that shows up frequently in their conversations. They have a lot of shared memories.
The stories of our people are stories of both place and of movement. Some of the most ancient stories of our people begin with tales of people moving away from the place of their upbringing. The story of Abram and Sarai heading off to the place that God would show them, and of their wandering through different countries and different people is a story that we have been telling for thousands of years. At the same time, there are places that figure heavily in the stories of our people. Egypt is featured as a place of oppression and slavery in some of our stories, and as a place of salvation in another story. Our faith, however, is not linked to any singular place. Our religious history values story over place. At the time the concept of the same God being the God of every place was a radical thought. Most people believed that when you went to a new place you would find new gods. What marked our story is this radical monotheism that says there is one God and that is the God of every place. We can move and we will still be the people of God. It took generations for that idea to catch hold.
I still like to hear and tell the stories of the old home town, but I understand that those are not my story. I don’t belong to any single place. I chose a vocation that called me from place to place. It is, however, a very good life that I have had and I don’t feel the need to go back to the place of my upbringing. I’m happy in the place I have found myself and open to yet more new places in my future.
The news has another quality as well. As I entered my teens, growing up in a small town, I began to think about leaving that town. Although I returned for the easy summer job of working for our father’s business during my college years, I have lived away from that town ever since. I’m not opposed to small town living. I’ve lived in other small towns since and I currently live in an unincorporated area with a small number of residents.
It is just that the trajectory of my life has been in other directions and I have invested my energies in forming relationships with folks in other places. There are a number of my high school classmates who, like me, were eager to leave our town and who made our lives in other places. There are other classmates, however, who never did leave our town. They might have gone away for college or for a job, but they remained in the area and they live in the town where we grew up. Their lives have been full of meaning with marriages, children, grandchildren, church and career, but they chose to explore those in the familiar place where we all grew up. The rest of us found meaning in other places.
I belong to a Facebook group dedicated to memories of our old home town and it is a place where I have not been active. Most of the posts are of things that happened after I left that town. Lately someone has been posting pictures of high school sports games, with a lot of basketball pictures. They have asked the help of others in identifying the players in the pictures. I know right away that I would be of no help. When I went to high school, there was no girls basketball team and male students were not allowed to wear their hair as long as those in the pictures. I’m pretty sure that the people posting the pictures don’t even remember a time when dress and hair codes were part of the rules of high school.
We still own a small bit of property in our old home town. It is part of our parents’ legacy, shared by my living brothers and sister. That place is set to go on the market in a month’s time. It is likely to see fairly easily. After that, for the first time in nearly 80 years, our family will not be owners of anything in that place. I can already walk into the hardware store or grocery store and no one will recognize me. It won’t take many years before no one in the old home town will remember our names. Time moves on. The people in our world are incredibly mobile.
Our children don’t have the same sense of place with which I grew up. They moved twice before they reached high school, living in three different communities in three different states. While I can say I grew up in Montana, our kids grew up in North Dakota, Idaho, and South Dakota. They were 2 and 4 when we moved from North Dakota, so they might not have many memories of that place, but they were 10 and 12 when we moved from Idaho. I’m not sure which place they think of as their home place. Our youngest will sometimes say that she’s from South Dakota, but I don’t know that her brother has the same kind of identification with the place where he went to high school.
Like my sister and me, however, they have plenty of stories to share when they get together. “Remember when?” is a question that shows up frequently in their conversations. They have a lot of shared memories.
The stories of our people are stories of both place and of movement. Some of the most ancient stories of our people begin with tales of people moving away from the place of their upbringing. The story of Abram and Sarai heading off to the place that God would show them, and of their wandering through different countries and different people is a story that we have been telling for thousands of years. At the same time, there are places that figure heavily in the stories of our people. Egypt is featured as a place of oppression and slavery in some of our stories, and as a place of salvation in another story. Our faith, however, is not linked to any singular place. Our religious history values story over place. At the time the concept of the same God being the God of every place was a radical thought. Most people believed that when you went to a new place you would find new gods. What marked our story is this radical monotheism that says there is one God and that is the God of every place. We can move and we will still be the people of God. It took generations for that idea to catch hold.
I still like to hear and tell the stories of the old home town, but I understand that those are not my story. I don’t belong to any single place. I chose a vocation that called me from place to place. It is, however, a very good life that I have had and I don’t feel the need to go back to the place of my upbringing. I’m happy in the place I have found myself and open to yet more new places in my future.
