“The magnetic pull of home.”

I spent about 12 days back on the mainland with the wife and kids, doing among other things visiting family and friends. It was an odd trip in many ways. I could write about a number of different topics ranging from the joys of finding decent pizza, the disappointment surrounding friendships that appear to have ended due to our move, the ease with which other friendships continue to grow and prosper, the fun of being able to listen to Philly Sports talk in the car and discuss the teams with strangers in the supermarket. I could talk about how nice it was to wonder what the weather would be like, how uncomfortable it is to sleep on the floor, how grown up the kids were in their behavior and demeanor overall, how I’m not planning on flying with all three kids again anytime soon, or even how irritating it is to potty train twins.

But I’m not going to write about that today. I’m going to write about home.

Thomas Wolfe wrote a large novel called You Can’t Go Home Again, which I haven’t read. He also wrote a novel called Look Homeward, Angel, which I have read. (I once starred as W.O. Gant in a stage production to somewhat positive reviews…) Angel was essentially a biographical account of Wolfe’s own youth and struggles to leave home and find his way in the world. You Can’t go Home Again appears to be his take on returning home after being out in the world. Apparently, the protagonist, author George Webber, has had great success with a novel written about his hometown, and those in it. When he returns home, he is essentially driven away by the fury and outrage of his former friends and neighbors, who are not pleased with having been the subject of his work. He spends the rest of the novel searching for “home” in NYC, Paris, Berlin, before returning to the US with a new perspective his country and home.

I’m skimming it online now: which you can do to at: Google Books-novel link I’ll have to get around to reading it one of these days. It’s one of those books, like James Joyce’s Ulysses, that I’ve always felt like I should have read, but that won’t stop me from referencing it as though I had. I’ll just be honest about it now, as opposed to say how I might have faked it during AP English.

Anyway, what I found interesting in reflecting on this concept is that since we’ve been in Hawaii, now six months, whenever I’ve talked about “home” I’ve been talking about Jersey. Although my wife, kids, and all my stuff are in Hawaii, I’ve been holding onto Jersey as “home.”

So what is the definition of home then? A quick Google gave me this:
1- residence: the place where a person, family, or household lives
2- family group: a family or any other group that lives together
3- birthplace: the place where somebody was born or raised or feels that he or she belongs
4- native habitat: the place where an animal is most common or indigenous

I think that covers the word as most people would use it. The first two pretty much indicate what our situation is now-Hawaii is home in the literal sense. There’s something under that third one that resonates though. During my life, I‘ve resided at each of the following: Cranbury, NJ; Wooster, OH; Devon, PA; Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY; Morristown, NJ; Wildwood, NJ; Beverly, NJ; Moorestown, NJ; Honolulu, HI; and finally Ewa Beach, HI. Does that mean that each place listed felt like “home” to me? I would venture to say that some places, like Devon, PA for example, never felt like home. I was only there a year, and it was not a banner year for me. Cornwall had moments, but I always kinda knew that I would leave there eventually. Turned out to be three years of living, four years of work. I left there disappointed. We were only in Wildwood as residents for a summer, and were in that apartment in Honolulu only a month, so I don’t know that I’d count those.

We loved living in Moorestown, but after our visit, it seems that in general, Moorestown has moved on without us, and truth be told, with the economy doing what it’s doing, it would be an expensive place to live. All told, we’ve killed off 75% of the debt that we left Jersey with through the life changes we’ve made since moving.

We liked living in Morristown. I liked my job up North. But, the wife’s job opportunity was too good to pass up.

Loved Wooster. Would go back to Ohio tomorrow I think. Go to Cleveland once a year, and will be returning for Oktoberfest this Labor Day for the 11th year. That’s as much about my pals as it is about Ohio, but I enjoyed my time living there.

So, although I’ve lived in North Jersey, Central Jersey, and South Jersey, and until this week would have called it home, is that really what it is? It’s where I was raised, which hits the first part of definition #3. But what about the second part-is Jersey still the place that I feel I belong?

This was a strange trip. Between strained familial and friend dynamics, exacerbated I’m certain by the large distance between us all now, and other general travel drama, this was a more difficult trip than I have ever experienced- on many levels. While we have been here in Hawaii, changing everything about our lives, some people in our life changed. Some stayed the same. Some relationships have ended or soon will I fear. Some have grown stronger. But all have been affected, which I suppose is not surprising. But what about New Jersey?

I noticed a lot of different things about being back. I still like the state. I could live there again. But the things I like have more to do with the availability of my sports teams, Yuengling Lager, XM radio, and comfort things of that nature. Decent pizza, wings, and bagels were a bonus. I noticed that I was clearly the mellowest guy on the checkout line at Acme. Milk was cheaper as was my favorite deodorant. It was nice to be in the Eastern time zone again and actually talk to some friends at a normal hour. All of these things were swell, but I’m not sure they are what one builds a life around.

Maybe that’s what home means to me now. New Jersey might be where I’m from, and I think there are clearly aspects of my persona and my outlook that are definitively of that place. We still own a home (there’s that word again) in Wildwood, and as such, I think we will always have at least a root or two there, regardless of where we land in the future. Truth be told, when it was time to go, I was ready to go. Home. To Hawaii. That’s where we’ve built our life and where our stuff is. It’s funny how that happened, because as I’ve discussed in this space in earlier posts, my personal transition here has not been an overly smooth one. I’ve been resistant to being here at times, and I know told several people that if the chance came for us to move back to Jersey, if we could live the lifestyle we’ve adopted here, I’d do it tomorrow. I’m just not sure that’s true anymore. Don’t get me wrong-when it’s time to go, which will be determined by the wife’s job, I think I’ll be ready. I’m not interested in having our kids go to school here, so I think that puts a timeline on things, at least in my head. I’m as surprised as anyone that this place, with the xenophobia we’ve experienced, and the high milk prices and limited Philadelphia sports access (we do have a dish though…), has become home. Funny how that happened. I never thought it would, and to be honest, wasn’t sure I wanted it to for a while there.

But it’s where my wife and kids are. It’s where my stuff is. It’s where I reside, but more than that, it’s where my family and I have chosen to make our life at this time. So, bada-bing: it’s home. For now. We’ll be back on the mainland at some point, but while at one time I would have bet money on me pushing to live in Jersey again right away, I’m not sure that I want that anymore. It was where I was born and raised. I had a lot of good years there as a kid, and later as an adult. But if I’m honest, if I learned anything from my time there these past weeks, it’s that I’ve changed. While I’ll always be Jersey-born…I think I get what Thomas Wolfe was driving at when he wrote about his protagonist George Webber:

“But why had he always felt so strongly the magnetic pull of home, why had he thought so much about it and remembered it with such blazing accuracy, if it did not matter, and if this little town…was not the only home he had on earth? He did not know. All that he knew was that the years flow by like water, and that one day men come home again.”

I guess you can’t go home again, when it changes, as all things do. It’s that word “Again” that makes it not work for me. I suppose, you can go home for the first time? Over and over? Perhaps I’m overdoing the semantics, but I think home for me has become a more dynamic and fluid concept then it used to be. I guess when you look at it in this manner, one is never really going home, as much as they are bringing home with them. Over and over again. I guess I just surprised myself by being ready to come back here to Oahu. Guess there’s something to be said for learning new things about yourself.

This post got away from me a bit, and I think it would have been better if I’d written it right when we got home. But I didn’t, and now my brain is addled with three days of cold-turkey-no-diaper-except-at-night potty training. That’s another topic altogether.

But in the end, Jersey is where I’m from, but at least for now, it’s not home. Not anymore. Not after this trip. Not sure what is left there to spark that magnetic pull anymore, so to speak.