HOME TOWN -- SOME THOUGHTS --- IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK

Now that you have been introduced to the places where I have lived and seen my opinion about them, which one do you think is my home town?  Well, there are some of you who may already know the answer to that.  That is not because you know where I was born, but because I perhaps have told what I have chosen to embrace as my home town.  I am of the opinion that unlike language, domicile is something that you have the opportunity to choose.  Domicile, in my view, is like marriage. You get to make the vow after serious due diligence.  It doesn't matter where you are born.  It is more important where your heart first took flight and made you a better person.  For a long time I was sure that South Hadley, Massachusetts was that place on earth that had done that for me.  I have to tell you that between South Hadley and the place I NOW know is my Home Town, there is a long, long distance.  The distance is not just mileage, it is a state of mind.  It is a heart anchor and a taste in the mouth that has to be treasured and captured never to go away.  I never, never got this from the city in which I was born.  MJT Dion always told me that I should not say bad things about Holyoke.  She always said that there were a lot of good people who lived there.  I never denied that.  After all, my grandfather lived there with my grandmother, and they were among the Very Best People alive and in my life.  But the city itself?  BOOO, HISSS, WHistle... I was so glad to be able to say that I was from South Hadley.

Since I moved away from there at the ripe old age of 14, I have to admit that I did get to enjoy the "puppy love" moments that other places gave me along the way.  Along that way I started to dream about Rome, Italy.  It consumed a lot of my heart time.  I never thought I would ever get there.  When I got the news that I had been assigned there, I was ecstatic.  Even now, the memory of that moment moves me.  Just thinking about it and the four years that followed, makes me feel light-headed.  It is a home town that I have at another level.  It is a spiritual level and occupies a special corner of my heart along with Jerusalem.  So Rome is not my physical home town, it is spiritual, hand in hand with Jerusalem.

That honor goes to the city in which I have lived for the longest consecutive amount of time in my life and of course, therefore the longest cumulative time in my life.  

San Diego, California has lit my heart on fire.  It has also enveloped me in its warm and charming embrace.  It is more than a city for me, it is family.  Not so much in the people sense, but in the "nest" sense.  For some odd reason I have never generated any desire to grow into a fledgling and leave.  I have lived in other places, away from San Diego, but I always say that IT is where I live.  That makes people to whom I say it shake their heads.  Especially since I tell many people in Moreno Valley that I live in San Diego [100 miles away].  It is true.  And the Voice from the Kitchen is the same way.  So now you know.  I find myself a little bit like the immigrants who constantly brag about the country that they left.  After a while, someone is bound to ask, "You like it so much, go back."  I don't have to tell you the reaction to that, "You crazy?"  So there you have it.  I have a physical/love interest home town and spiritual ones, shown here below.

COLISEUM, ROME, CHRISTMAS

MOUNT OF OLIVES, JERUSALEM