Is 'Home' Where The Heart Is?

Last week, I closed my account at a credit union in Albuquerque. Now, generally this isn't the sort of 'news' that is worth talking about. One does their banking, moving funds around as necessary and as rates are advantageous. I had had my account with this credit union for 44 years, since I first went to college in New Mexico in 1969. The credit union and I had had a 'good relationship'. I liked their service, I appreciated the slogans about how "members own the credit union", about being a 'family' building a future together, that sort of thing. Now, it's not as though I actually believed that I was in a 'family', but the sentiment nonetheless was motivating.

I finally closed the account, though, when the credit union started deleting funds from my savings account because (they claimed) they thought it was a 'dead account', since I hadn't done any business with it in over a year. When I complained about the deletion of the funds, the credit union largely ignored my request to reverse the charges, and I was left with the choice of having to redeposit the deleted funds and 'keep the account alive' or just close it. And close it I did. Much to my surprise -- given all the 'family' and 'member ownership' slogans -- I didn't even receive a letter from the bank about how they had appreciated my membership for 44 years and were sorry to see me go. They simply sent a check for the balance. As my tax attorney brother noted, when I told him about their actions, "a business relationship is different from a personal relationship" and since I didn't have much in the way of funds in the bank, they just didn't care one way or the other. I guess I encountered the world of modern banking. The 'old time small bank' that cared about their depositors just isn't there anymore, at least not at that institution.

This particular event, though, marked a 'watershed' for me, in that it was 'emblematic' of a much larger issue. I had largely kept the account to have a place to cash checks when I was in Albuquerque, and frankly, as a bit of nostalgia. But as the old cliche goes "nostalgia isn't what it used to be". In this case, the nostalgia touched a sort of haunting issue in my life: that of defining for myself what "home" is.

Having lived in Albuquerque for 29 years as an adult (plus about 3 accumulated years, at various times, as a child, when my father deposited the family there -- because my mother was from Albuquerque -- until he established his next military duty station), it had become 'home' for me. As a child who grew up in a military family, I had never had a definitive place that I called 'home'. Unlike children who grow up in the same location, there was no one place, in the whole of the world, that felt 'like home' to me, that 'contained fond memories of continuity'. So when I moved back to Albuquerque in 1969, to attend college (my parents had 'residency' in New Mexico, so it was simply less expensive for the in-state tuition), I never quite got around to leaving again for a very long time. (One of the jokes in Albuquerque is that half the population there was driving through town when their car broke down and they could never afford to leave. I was quite poor for most of the years I lived in New Mexico -- the economy in the state is somewhat on a 'boom and bust' cycle -- so easily moving anywhere else was simply economically difficult to achieve.)

Now, New Mexico is sort of a bedrock location in that my mother's extensive Hispanic clan lives there. I have literally hundreds of Hispanic relatives there (many of whom I only see at marriages and funerals, but know I'm related nonetheless). My father never 'kept up' with his own family, so although I'm 'Anglo' (as 'white' people are called in the Southwest) in appearance, I was taught to take particular pride in my Hispanic 'roots' by my maternal grandmother. And pride I did assume: when the Chicano movement was active in the 1970's, I thought of myself as a more Hispanic than Anglo (or German/English, which is the ethnicity of the paternal side of the family) and became actively involved in the Hispanic rights movement.

In New Mexico, I also became quite involved in politics and could 'use' my ethnicity to an advantage. Unlike many Southwestern states, New Mexican Hispanics control the 'balance' of political power, at least in state government, and are a well-established 'group' in the state overall. So, my 'connections', both from the campaigns I worked on, as well as New Mexican relatives who had themselves attained political power, helped in securing employment as a state movement worker. But over the years, political work began to feel 'less than satisfying' and the employment I secured from my political work was simply not very stimulating or challenging. Overall, my 29 years in New Mexico began to feel quite frustrating to me (in spite of some very good and warm friendships) and I began to 'look elsewhere' around the country for better work opportunities and 'a larger playground'. As I often joked after I left the state in 1998, "it took me 15 years to accept New Mexico as my home and another 14 years to leave the place". Now, when I do return to New Mexico for visits, I enjoy seeing my many friends and some of my relatives, but after about a week I've 'had my fill' and want to "go home" to St. Louis, where I've now lived for the past 15 years.

At this point, I often laugh about being enmeshed in my own version of "A Tale of Two Cities". I spent 29 years of my adult life (and 32 years overall of my entire life) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the last 15 years in St. Louis, Missouri. There's much to love about both places. I miss the sunsets in Albuquerque (silhouetted against the West Mesa), the tall mountains, the dry air, cottonwood trees along the Rio Grande bosque, the quiet life somewhat isolated from the rest of the nation, my many warm friendships, Hispanic people, New Mexico cuisine. In St. Louis, I love that they have four distinct seasons, many rain showers, a close and loving relationship with my Unitarian Universalist congregation, multiple universities in the local area, a lively music, dance, and arts 'scene' (which I partake of in 'deuces' as an usher at many of the venues), again many good friendships, an intimate relationship for 5 1/2 years now with my loving female partner, more financial resources for projects, and just a 'larger playground' to do all kinds of activities that are simply unavailable in the smaller, more isolated environment of Albuquerque.

But -- here's that 'emblematic issue' -- I'm still 'haunted' by that 'sense of home' subject. My female partner noted last week, as I was beginning to compose this blog (I tend to write my blogs in my head for several days before addressing the thoughts in a written form), my family-of-origin was never 'home' to me. My so-called 'caregivers' (my parents) created, unfortunately, an emotionally unhealthy home environment by perpetrating, singly and jointly, sexual molestation, rape, and extreme terror upon their children, with the youngest child (me) getting the worse end of the behavior (since I was the 'low person on the totem pole'). So, it was sort of a double whammy: I had no 'sense of home' due to being raised in a military family that moved a lot, around the United States and around the world, and I had no feeling of 'security' or even 'stable loving' in my own family home. When I try to remember events in my childhood, I am often left with sort of a 'haze', as though there isn't much I want to remember about that period of my life. When people ask about my childhood, other than the pain, I don't have much recollection. I often feel like I'm in one of those science fiction movies where the character has 'implanted memories' of their past, events that actually never occurred, but make them feel 'fully human'. It's not as though I don't have any positive memories, rather that the positive memories are few and far between, jumbled up with all the memories of abuse.

Now, having a 'solid sense of home' isn't particular solely for abuse survivors like myself. Political refugees, immigrants, diplomatic families, children who are raised in corporate families, homeless families, etc. have similar issues. I'm not trying to say that I'm so utterly different. Many of the neighbors in the area where I live in St. Louis are immigrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the stories they tell about their experiences are equally horrific, for very different reasons. When I first moved here, I was talking to a couple of the neighbors who had a mangled hands, which they said were the result of industrial accidents after they immigrated to St. Louis. When I winced and noted my sadness at their disabilities (they are in better shape now after multiple surgeries), the fellow noted that unlike many of his friends in Srebrenica who had been slaughtered by the Serbian Army, he was still alive. And his niece noted a similar story: she said while she had experienced physical pain from the industrial accident, she was 'safe and alive', unlike many of the women she knew in Bosnia who had been "raped as a instrument of war terror" by the Serbian Army.

But at least, in the sense I'm discussing 'home', while they have made a new home for themselves in St. Louis (and plan to be here henceforth, as 'new' Americans), they have a distinct knowledge of where their original home was. They may not want to return there (maybe to visit, but not to live), but they know what 'home' means to them, in a 'solid and stable' way.

That is why I titled this essay "Is 'Home' Where The Heart Is?", placing it as an evocative question, rather than a definite answer (as it is often stated). And in a way, maybe this discussion is allowing me to answer that question. I surely now feel 'at home' in St. Louis, given my connection to my church congregation, my intimate partnership with my female friend, the many people I've met via her and my church who have become good friends, the 'usher' family that I've loosely constructed over the past 12 years, and the fact that I own a house here. And Albuquerque is 'home' also, though it is no longer my 'current home'.

It's funny about how personal relationships continue [or not] when one moves to a new locale. I keep up with many of my friends in New Mexico either via email or, more loosely, via Facebook [though I rarely post much on it myself, other than notices of my blogs]. It's difficult, when one does not see people 'face-to-face' on a regular basis, to keep the cultivation of relationships fresh and vibrant. That's true with people I know in St. Louis, but it is even more true with people I knew in Albuquerque. They are still friends and I still fondly remember our times together (while I may indeed have rather hazy memories of my childhood, I have reasonably clear memories of my adult life). The friend I've known the longest in my life I met in Albuquerque during the one semester I attended high school there (of the 3 high schools I attended, the other two being in Tokyo, Japan and Wichita, Kansas). I rarely talk to him anymore and then only via email. The friends I know 'well' I met in the mid-1970s, in my 20's, and it is they who define 'home-ness' for me in Albuquerque.

Hence, I guess maybe 'home' IS where the heart is. It's just that my heart is in St. Louis… and Albuquerque. I've also developed a good loving relationship with my next eldest brother since shortly before I moved to Missouri, and when I visit Albuquerque, it's his home [and that of my sister-in-law, whom I also respect greatly] that I stay at. He is the kind of 'warm, secure family' that I always wanted as a child, yet could not have.

It's not that I've somehow 'solved' this haunting 'sense of home' by writing this essay, but it has allowed me to talk about that 'life lesson' that has bothered me for much of my life. I sense I'll never be entirely at ease with the subject, that I'll always have a lingering question about 'home'. But, for now, if home isn't where the heart is, I'm not at all sure where it is. It has to be somewhere, but I realize that for me it's a 'sense' that I have to manifest 'whole cloth' [just like I had to manifest 'love' whole cloth as an adult, not having had much of a healthy sense of that emotion as a child, due to all the profound abuse]. For me, 'home' really isn't a physical location at all, it's more a place of comfort in the heart and soul. It's not that Albuquerque, or St. Louis, or my brother's home, or my church, or my relationship with my intimate partner is 'home' as much as 'home' is that place in my soul that feels 'comfortable, secure, safe, and desirous'.