I was born in Connecticut almost three dozen years ago to a baptist minister and a professional “minister’s wife.” We lived there until I was almost two and then left for New Hampshire where my father had been transferred. My earliest memories are of that house in New Hampshire, and we stayed there until I was in kindergarten. Halfway through my first year of school we moved again, this time to New Jersey, although not for long.
I finished kindergarten in New Jersey, but somewhere along the way they redrew the district lines and suddenly our house was on the other side. I was going to have to switch schools if we didn’t move, so we did. Unfortunately it was around this time that my father was let go from his church over a variety of issues, and we ended up having to live with some family friends for a time, before settling into yet another house in New Jersey. Having switched schools once again, I was in the middle of 2nd grade when my father got the call that he had been selected as a pastor at a church in rural Vermont.
I finished 2nd grade in Vermont and was in the middle of 3rd when my parents separated and I ended up in South Burlington, the city I say that I grew up in, and 4th grade was the first grade that I started and ended in the same school. We lived in that house for over three years, which was forever to me at the time, and moved across town after 6th grade only because my mother was getting re-married. We stayed at the new house for about a year but moved again when my mother and stepfather bought a house.
That lasted only a short time, because they split up as well, so my mother and siblings and I moved yet again, leasing a place from a professor on sabbatical which we knew would only be for a year. Another move put us across town where we stayed for a while, but my mother was unable to work due to a severe head injury and, though we rented out rooms to college students to try to make ends meet, we lost that place too and ended up having to spend a December in separate houses, each of us staying with friends until we could find a place to live together again.
We did find a place, and this one lasted until I went to college at least, so I didn’t move again in high school, but if you are keeping track, by the time I was 15 years old I had lived 14 different places. My wife, on the other hand, was born here in town, moved into their family house when she was a baby, and never moved again until she left for college. So we have slightly different ideas about what “home” and “stability” mean.
I’m sure that my experiences have skewed my perspective, but when we moved into our current house my daughter had just turned five and this is the fourth place she has lived. To my wife that is an extremely unstable situation. To me, it is normal. Except that I recognize the need for stability. I craved it growing up. I remember telling my mother the night before my first day at a new school that I was not going to make any friends, because what was the point? We were just going to move again anyway. I don’t want my children to grow up and feel that they have no roots. I want them to be free and flexible and able to deal with situations as they come up, but I never want them to feel that making connections isn’t worth the effort.
Part of my collector’s tendencies, that I have worked hard to overcome, are rooted in the feeling that, though the rooms and towns and houses would change, my stuff was home. Whatever room I filled with my toys and books and posters and bed, became home. This was problematic, because every time a toy broke it was as if my house had just burned down. I don’t want my kids to feel that way.
Now, lest you think my wife is somehow incapable of flexibility, you ought to know that she is directly descended from gypsies, and she is quite able to roll with the punches, but it’s just not the way that she grew up. We both worry about providing a firm foundation for our children, and I think we are doing it, through participation at church, involvement with our neighbors, and our attempts to instill a sense of place as we sink our hooks into this community that we have chosen for ourselves. But no matter how hard I try to stay rooted, there will always be a part of me that thinks, “This could all be gone tomorrow.” Is it possible to have roots and wings both? Certainly that is the ideal, but can you really do it? Can I give my children a solid, stable life, while still helping them to soar over it all? I have no idea, but it’s the goal. And as to whether or not I will succeed, well, I suppose you can ask my kids in thirty years.