This Must Be the Place

Where do you belong?

I like to focus on the subject of place. Perhaps it's part of my upbringing. New Englanders, I think, are a bit grounded in it, some might say suffocated, steeped in the broody atmosphere of history, hemmed in by trees and mountains, breathing in long days of winter air ... suffering for our spring.

California Childhood Dreaming 

And yet, I'm a bit of a transplanted New Englander. Born seven miles west of Boston, I moved when I was only three years old to Southern California, and lived there for four long years before relocating back to Acton, Massachusetts, to start a new life ... and elementary school.

And so, when I recall some of my earliest memories, they aren't filled with images of snow and brickyard mill towns, but rather the shock of the trap door spider that leapt at my face the first afternoon I crawled into our backyard in Poway, California. I also have vivid memories of stinging red ants, hot afternoons, and adobe housing in a scrub-grassed, terraced desert.

I was born in New England, and I've put more than my share of mileage about the six states (having lived in four of them), and there's the undeniable raucous part of me that emerges with glee on the moments I have traveled through the mountains of Thailand and caught the scent of a pine tree, or walked the markets of Calcutta and seen the alternate home red and dark blue of a Red Sox jersey ... but I'd be lying if I told you I hadn't heard the faint echoes of the discordant imp of the California desert-child flitting about, dancing a jig on my sense of place.

Red Sox Nation makes Calcutta

Where do you belong?

More than ten years in Thailand, a little over five years in Washington, D.C. ... and don't even get me started on what region of Thailand I feel the most allegiance to, having lived in five provinces, from Nakhon Si Thammarat to Chiang Rai. OK, if push comes to shove, it's Nakhon Si, where I spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer, but I've developed a serious memory imprint, and connection to, the mountains and miniature pineapples of Chiang Rai, and the peculiar Burmese-feeling “Shan” world in Mae Hong Son, for I spent more than three years in the north of Thailand. Perhaps I am a Northern-Southern Thai-American?

For many people, “place” equates with “home,” but there are many roads we can travel even with this.

Consider Nelson Mandela ...

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

I agree with Mr. Mandela (may he rest in peace) and for sure, the “coming back” to a place like the United States after living overseas is traditionally more tricky than ever heading off on the grand adventure (just ask all Peace Corps volunteers about their return journey), and yet, I wonder if seeing things unchanged is essentially a lie. Everywhere changes in your absence, even if some things remain the same. Nothing remains static, but it was amazing to come back to Boston years after I had left it to find Natalie Jacobson staring out at me from a TV (she was the main news anchor for Channel 5 for some 35 years before she retired in 2007).

Or here's this thought expressed by the great Maya Angelou:

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

I feel that vibe certainly when I come “home” to my wife, but I wonder about all the people that have the itch to go elsewhere as they were growing up because they feel like they've been so misunderstood from the beginning. What is that push for success elsewhere, to break routine, to find yourself, to go where the grass is greener, to get away from the town you grew up in for the bright lights and the big city? I have been stared at in Thailand, time and time again, but I've also been accepted by my neighbors in whatever province I've found myself. It feels safe, and I can do what I please ...

I feel like I'm deeply embedded in all of these places I've been, of course some more than others, and yet I want to be most planted in whatever soil I'm in at the moment, a present-orientation that's very real to my character. I miss the places I've been, but I don't sit about and long for them when I am away. I remain constantly hyper-aware of the moment and of my location, and the people I am with, knowing that I will probably not be there forever, and wanting to absorb the vital sensations of place about me ...

the scent of wood smoke on a cold fall afternoon along a country lane in Vermont ...

the glint of the golden spires of a Bangkok temple reaching for the heavens next to the lapping waters of the Chao Phraya River ...

Green Tea Leaf Goodness

the itchy sting of red ant bites in a California desert ...

the satisfying tang of green tea leaf salad amid a Burmese lunch crowd on a street of Yangon ...

and now, squarely in focus ... today ... the crunch of boots on snow, the hush of a storm, and delightful intake of warm woolen breath as I breathe through my scarf as I wander through this ... my all-too-temporary winter of flux.

Where do you belong?