No Place Like Home
Dec. 3rd, 2003 08:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancerjodiThis article was in the November 2003 issue of Self Magazine (that I finally read the other night). I'm a sentimental sap so the title caught my eye, and then I found out that the author was from MA. I used to go to Cabots for Ice Cream and my Mom used to buy all of our shoes at The Barn too! I grew up in Waltham right over the West Newton line (pretty close to Newtonville where the author grew up).
As I kid I didn't think much about Waltham, it was just kind of where I lived. For a while it was actually a sore spot, since I went to school in Watertown and most of my friends were from there. When I started at Waltham High School I felt a lot like an outsider since I hadn't grown up in elementary and junior high school with a majority of the kids. It wasn't until I moved to Boston for college (all excited to "get out" and make my own new and exciting life, like this author) that I gained an appreciation for what we had in the city. I know I'll get back there at some point, I just have to hang on.
"No place like home
Nothing brings your past back to haunt you like returning to live in a town where you grew up. Laura Zigman reflects.
They say you can't go home again, but that's exactly what I did two years ago. I moved into a house 2 miles from the house I grew up in outside of Boston - a mile and a half from Cabot's, the ice cream parlor where I waitressed when I was 14; half a mile from the Chinese restaurant I once loved and in front of which I experienced my first total eclipse of the sun. I'm not sure exactly why things turned out this way, but I suppose, like most twists in life, coincidence, fate and unconscious desire pall played a part. My husband, my young son and I were planning a move to Massachusetts and our real estate agent called; a terrific Victorian was coming on the market.
One problem: It was in Newton. My hometown.
I had never been happy growing up there, had never dealt comfortable in my own skin. Despite its great schools and its reputation as an intellectually liberal suburb, despite its proximity to Cambridge and Boston, and despite the one or two close friends I had made there, I had always associated Newton with profound unhappiness. Sometime during elementary school, when the shame of being bad in gym marked me as an outcast, the seeds of loneliness and depression were sown. By early adolescence (when I smoked, wrote bad poetry and wore only black), they had taken root and flourished. As soon as I was old enough to choose where I lived I moved - first to Harvard Square, then to New York City, then to Washington D.C. Until now, except for trips home for the holidays, Newton remained a part of my personal history I wished I could forget.
Thirty years ago, someone moving back to her hometown would be neither unusual nor terribly interesting. People returned to where they'd come from all the time - that is, assuming they'd left in the first place. But it's different now. When I tell people I've moved home, they are incredulous. Before we finished our conversation I know they are rabid with speculation and suspicion: What would make someone return home after 16 years?
There are two reasons people move back to their hometowns: success or failure. You are either comfortable enough with your life to return to the place where you began, or you go back because you have nowhere else to go. Feeling content at last - I had (finally) met a great guy; had (finally) had a baby; had (finally) gotten my writing career firmly established - I could go home with my head held high. I had finally fallen into the category of success. Still, having left Newton as an outsider, self-perceived or otherwise, I had trouble believing that I would return as something other than what I'd been then: a depressed nerd.
Raising your child in the place where you grew up is like living in a parallel universe. You watch your past life flash before you. People, places, strange coincidences and childhood memories converge, putting you in an almost constant state of nostalgic recollection and personal reflection.
Have I changed?
Yes. Since the birth of my son, I'm almost never sad; I don't feel ugly anymore. (One person told me recently that I looked far better than I did when I was younger, having finally 'grown into my face').
Have I not changed?
Yes. I still break out in a cold sweat whenever I go near my old high school; I can't get an ice cream cone from Cabot's without remembering how sticky my upper arm got after an eight-hour shift of scooping, I can't forget what it felt like, day after day, to dream a teenager's dream of escape: how much I longed to inhabit a better emotional world, how desperate I was to reinvent myself.
Has my life turned out the way I wanted it to?
No. It turned out far better than I'd ever imagined it would.
I think about the answers to those questions almost every day. We take our son swimming nearby at Crystal Lake, where I learned to swim, and to the public pool behind my old junior high school, where I learned to drink (vodka and Mountain Dew from a Skippy peanut butter jar) and smoke (Old Golds). We guy him shoes at the Bart, where my parents bought me shoes, and we go food shopping at the same Star Market. My husband teaches English at the high school I attended. Whenever the strands of my past and present overlap, I feel a mixture of shock and delight. How unusual and oddly comforting is it to have a second chance to get it right.
At first, when I would run into people I knew from the past, Id brazenly walk up to them and reintroduce myself, secretly hoping get to replace their previous memory of me with a new and improved version, and secretly trying to prove to myself I had indeed changed; I wasn't the deeply insecure person I used to be. The horribly awkward moments that usually followed - they didn't remember ; they hadn't followed my vault from loserdom to happiness; they didn't really care - made my husband cringe every time he saw me approaching another acquaintance from childhood. 'Please don't' he'd plead, to no avail, because I was usually halfway across the restaurant/playground/parking lot by then. These humiliating episodes raised an important question I couldn't ignore: Whose sense of history was I more intent on revising, theirs or mine. Probably my own I'm embarrassed to admit.
and then, just as I began to feel hopelessly self-obsessed, there are experiences that show me that the intersection of childhood and adulthood can be so unpredictably life affirming, so moving that it lifts me right out of my own self-consciousness. I don’t' even think about who I am (or who I was) in these moments. Shortly after moving to Newton, I had to find a new pediatrician. I picked practically at random. When I made an appointment for my son's 18-month checkup, I received a three-page family history questionnaire to fill out. I dutifully wrote down that I'd had an older sister, Sheryl, who had died of a rare bone disease when she was 7 and I was 3. Looking over the forms, the doctor suddenly grew quiet. As my son pranced around the examining room in his diaper, the doctor wondered aloud whether Sheryl had been at the nearby Fernald School, the state facility for the long-term care of the disabled.
Surprised I nodded. He blinked, 'What I'm about to say is rather incredible' he said. 'I believe I treated you sister'.
Indeed he had. As a young pediatrician, he had come across Sheryl's file and had taken a particular interest in her case. He remembered her clearly; he was certain he even had pictures of her. when he asked me if I thought this news would upset my parents, I told him I was sure their reaction would be exactly the opposite. And it was. They were deeply moved to have this connection to my sister, to the past. And I was touched to have the same doctor looking after my son, 37 years later.
In early July, we drove to the Massachusetts beach were I'd spent many summers as a child. Though the Paragon amusement park and its wood roller coaster were long gone, there, on the beach, at the end of the street where we used to rent a house, were three members of the big Armenian family I'd grown up playing with. They were standing at the water's edge in the sun, talking about who was coming inn for lunch and what they wee going to eat. My husband cringed and pleaded, but I went up to them anyway. To his astonishment and my relief, they recognized me.
Sometimes you have to go home again to see how much you've changed - and stayed the same"
(pg 35-38)
As I kid I didn't think much about Waltham, it was just kind of where I lived. For a while it was actually a sore spot, since I went to school in Watertown and most of my friends were from there. When I started at Waltham High School I felt a lot like an outsider since I hadn't grown up in elementary and junior high school with a majority of the kids. It wasn't until I moved to Boston for college (all excited to "get out" and make my own new and exciting life, like this author) that I gained an appreciation for what we had in the city. I know I'll get back there at some point, I just have to hang on.
"No place like home
Nothing brings your past back to haunt you like returning to live in a town where you grew up. Laura Zigman reflects.
They say you can't go home again, but that's exactly what I did two years ago. I moved into a house 2 miles from the house I grew up in outside of Boston - a mile and a half from Cabot's, the ice cream parlor where I waitressed when I was 14; half a mile from the Chinese restaurant I once loved and in front of which I experienced my first total eclipse of the sun. I'm not sure exactly why things turned out this way, but I suppose, like most twists in life, coincidence, fate and unconscious desire pall played a part. My husband, my young son and I were planning a move to Massachusetts and our real estate agent called; a terrific Victorian was coming on the market.
One problem: It was in Newton. My hometown.
I had never been happy growing up there, had never dealt comfortable in my own skin. Despite its great schools and its reputation as an intellectually liberal suburb, despite its proximity to Cambridge and Boston, and despite the one or two close friends I had made there, I had always associated Newton with profound unhappiness. Sometime during elementary school, when the shame of being bad in gym marked me as an outcast, the seeds of loneliness and depression were sown. By early adolescence (when I smoked, wrote bad poetry and wore only black), they had taken root and flourished. As soon as I was old enough to choose where I lived I moved - first to Harvard Square, then to New York City, then to Washington D.C. Until now, except for trips home for the holidays, Newton remained a part of my personal history I wished I could forget.
Thirty years ago, someone moving back to her hometown would be neither unusual nor terribly interesting. People returned to where they'd come from all the time - that is, assuming they'd left in the first place. But it's different now. When I tell people I've moved home, they are incredulous. Before we finished our conversation I know they are rabid with speculation and suspicion: What would make someone return home after 16 years?
There are two reasons people move back to their hometowns: success or failure. You are either comfortable enough with your life to return to the place where you began, or you go back because you have nowhere else to go. Feeling content at last - I had (finally) met a great guy; had (finally) had a baby; had (finally) gotten my writing career firmly established - I could go home with my head held high. I had finally fallen into the category of success. Still, having left Newton as an outsider, self-perceived or otherwise, I had trouble believing that I would return as something other than what I'd been then: a depressed nerd.
Raising your child in the place where you grew up is like living in a parallel universe. You watch your past life flash before you. People, places, strange coincidences and childhood memories converge, putting you in an almost constant state of nostalgic recollection and personal reflection.
Have I changed?
Yes. Since the birth of my son, I'm almost never sad; I don't feel ugly anymore. (One person told me recently that I looked far better than I did when I was younger, having finally 'grown into my face').
Have I not changed?
Yes. I still break out in a cold sweat whenever I go near my old high school; I can't get an ice cream cone from Cabot's without remembering how sticky my upper arm got after an eight-hour shift of scooping, I can't forget what it felt like, day after day, to dream a teenager's dream of escape: how much I longed to inhabit a better emotional world, how desperate I was to reinvent myself.
Has my life turned out the way I wanted it to?
No. It turned out far better than I'd ever imagined it would.
I think about the answers to those questions almost every day. We take our son swimming nearby at Crystal Lake, where I learned to swim, and to the public pool behind my old junior high school, where I learned to drink (vodka and Mountain Dew from a Skippy peanut butter jar) and smoke (Old Golds). We guy him shoes at the Bart, where my parents bought me shoes, and we go food shopping at the same Star Market. My husband teaches English at the high school I attended. Whenever the strands of my past and present overlap, I feel a mixture of shock and delight. How unusual and oddly comforting is it to have a second chance to get it right.
At first, when I would run into people I knew from the past, Id brazenly walk up to them and reintroduce myself, secretly hoping get to replace their previous memory of me with a new and improved version, and secretly trying to prove to myself I had indeed changed; I wasn't the deeply insecure person I used to be. The horribly awkward moments that usually followed - they didn't remember ; they hadn't followed my vault from loserdom to happiness; they didn't really care - made my husband cringe every time he saw me approaching another acquaintance from childhood. 'Please don't' he'd plead, to no avail, because I was usually halfway across the restaurant/playground/parking lot by then. These humiliating episodes raised an important question I couldn't ignore: Whose sense of history was I more intent on revising, theirs or mine. Probably my own I'm embarrassed to admit.
and then, just as I began to feel hopelessly self-obsessed, there are experiences that show me that the intersection of childhood and adulthood can be so unpredictably life affirming, so moving that it lifts me right out of my own self-consciousness. I don’t' even think about who I am (or who I was) in these moments. Shortly after moving to Newton, I had to find a new pediatrician. I picked practically at random. When I made an appointment for my son's 18-month checkup, I received a three-page family history questionnaire to fill out. I dutifully wrote down that I'd had an older sister, Sheryl, who had died of a rare bone disease when she was 7 and I was 3. Looking over the forms, the doctor suddenly grew quiet. As my son pranced around the examining room in his diaper, the doctor wondered aloud whether Sheryl had been at the nearby Fernald School, the state facility for the long-term care of the disabled.
Surprised I nodded. He blinked, 'What I'm about to say is rather incredible' he said. 'I believe I treated you sister'.
Indeed he had. As a young pediatrician, he had come across Sheryl's file and had taken a particular interest in her case. He remembered her clearly; he was certain he even had pictures of her. when he asked me if I thought this news would upset my parents, I told him I was sure their reaction would be exactly the opposite. And it was. They were deeply moved to have this connection to my sister, to the past. And I was touched to have the same doctor looking after my son, 37 years later.
In early July, we drove to the Massachusetts beach were I'd spent many summers as a child. Though the Paragon amusement park and its wood roller coaster were long gone, there, on the beach, at the end of the street where we used to rent a house, were three members of the big Armenian family I'd grown up playing with. They were standing at the water's edge in the sun, talking about who was coming inn for lunch and what they wee going to eat. My husband cringed and pleaded, but I went up to them anyway. To his astonishment and my relief, they recognized me.
Sometimes you have to go home again to see how much you've changed - and stayed the same"
(pg 35-38)
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Date: 2003-12-03 07:08 pm (UTC)I have lots of good Newton memories. I'd love to live there but it's so damned unaffordable housing-wise now.