The Mammoth Cave ranger began our tour by asking everyone, "Where are you from?"
"Germany," answered a couple with bright red, spiked hair.
"The Philippines," responded a cute young family.
"Idaho!" I called out confidently, despite my awareness that Idaho as home is now more fictional construct than reality.
It's an interesting tension that exists moving from town to town, state to state, possessions in transit to a temporary location while in a vehicle externally marked with signs of rootedness. On the open road, my Idaho plates and "Boise Braves" and "Buy Local: Think Boise First" stickers tether me to something physical and real. My Subaru Wagon, covered in North End-ian identifiers, associates me clearly - to those "in the know" - with a particular demographic. I hadn't realized, before being yanked out of it, how much that communal identity has given me personal meaning.
Not surprisingly, I'm getting ready for my drive today while listening to Boise State radio streaming from my laptop. I may possess brave gutsiness but I'm not a free spirit. I value security, belonging, identity, rootedness. I will have those things again in the future but this in between - "liminal space" as they say in anthropology - wilderness time is a bit of an emotional free fall.
There's a reason why conversations and connections often begin with the query: "Where are you from?" It's hard to relate to someone who has no context. I still have a context as a Jew, a mom and daughter, a friend, a lover of learning and ideas and "This American Life" and pink and purple and "The New Yorker" and Stephen Colbert and "Gossip Girl." The missing pieces - lack of connection to place and job - will cause me to stretch my own self-definition of who I am and what I'm about.
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