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Home Bound
Bethesda Literary Festival 2005, 3rd Prize
I am a Kentuckian. Born and bred. Pure as bluegrass, Jim Beam bourbon, horse racing on the first Saturday in May, and the moonbow over Cumberland Falls. I cannot separate my definition of myself from my definition of home. Kentucky is in my blood.
It's been almost six years, however, since I actually lived there. In those six years, I have lived in Houston, Texas; Freiburg, Germany; Athens, Greece; and Bethesda, Maryland. In each of those cities, I've had houses, friends, jobs, and all the things that make a life, but I have not had a home. I only have one home, and that is Kentucky. Yet, for some reason, that's not where I find myself...not yet at least.
Home is a contradiction for me. It is the place where all my dreams run, but it is a place where I am not sure all of my dreams can be made real. It is the place where I know that I can always find someone to remind me of who I am if I should ever forget, but it's also the place where I feel as if I am forever the person I was and not necessarily the person I am or want to be. Home is my roots, my history, and perhaps also my wings, my future.
I am bound to home by history, by family, and by the simple feeling of belonging that embraces me every time I am there. Perhaps my attachment stems from having spent my entire childhood in one city, on one street, in one house. I never moved. Neither did, for the most part, the people who meant the most to me. With both sets of grandparents in the same city, with aunts, uncles, and cousins who lived just down the street, Louisville was not just my home, but my world. Without ever leaving that city, I could easily access my entire history: the church where generations of my mom's family were married, the houses my ancestors settled in when they immigrated from Ireland and Switzerland, the race track where my grandpa rode horses until the war took away his dream of being a jockey. Growing up, I saw not only myself fitting into the neat framework of the life my family had in this city, but also the future family I envisioned for myself.
Yet when the time came to choose whether to stay or go, I chose to go. In order to find home, I had to leave home. In the process, I learned that home is, in some ways, a myth--a merging of memories and moments that can't and don't exist all at once. But I also learned that home, while mythical in nature, is also perhaps the greatest reality. In leaving home, I found only what I have always known. I am a Kentuckian, and my journey, no matter how long and winding, is always leading me home.
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