Memories of Different Places and Longings for a Place to Call Home

My first memory is of playing with my four sisters and my brother in a leaf-covered playground somewhere.

I must have been about 2 years old at the time. The place could have been West Point, N.Y. It could have been Woodbridge, Va., or San Francisco or somewhere between. The point is I don’t know where it was.

I have a lot of memories like that.

Murky memories of places that I’ll never see again, and faces of friends that I have long lost touch with.

My dad was in the Army so we moved every two or three years. I spent my life picking up and moving on.

I remember how shocked he was during a football game in which I played when the announcer introduced me over the P.A. system as Scott “Hit” Hadly from Hot Springs, S.D.

We had never lived in Hot Springs. We had only driven through Hot Springs once and I happened to like the water slide.

My dad realized we had a problem. The problem was I never really had a place that I could call my home.

Now my family is scattered over four states and two countries. When my grandmother, who lived in Los Gatos, died in May, the family’s connection to California was severed and my parents decided once again to move. They packed up this month and are headed to Montana.

My wife Susan had a very different experience growing up.

She was raised in Ojai.

After college in Santa Barbara and a few years away from the area, she came back to work in Ventura.

When Susan began working at Patagonia last year, she ran into former classmates going all the way back to kindergarten. She met old high school friends, and friends of her parents and brothers. She works with people she delivered papers to when she was a little girl.

Her first memories are of playing at her family’s old home on Meadow Brook Road. We drove by there once and she pointed it out.

Her parents have since moved a few blocks away.

When we visit with them, or go to Libbey Bowl or drive past Nordhoff High School, she is filled with memories of those places.

Those memories seem more real than mine, because they are of people and places she can go back to and show me.

Just a few weeks ago, while looking at some old books, we ran into the father of one of her old high school friends. His eyes filled with some old remembrance of Susan and his daughter at play together as kids.

Apart from family members, I have never run into anyone who knew me when I was young--perhaps that is a good thing.

My wife doesn’t really get my fascination with the fact that she has this rock-solid hometown, filled with her youthful memories and people who know her.

She can go to the actual street where she learned how to ride a bike, or cruise by the pool where she learned to swim, or find the spot where she first kissed a boy. I find the notion of a place that you can go back to terribly comforting.

I guess, though, that these days there are more and more people like me, people who have tenuous connections to their communities.

They move from town to town. They lack that “homeplace” that my wife has. Perhaps it’s just that I’m nostalgic for something that I never had. Maybe staying in one place is stifling for people. Of course, I don’t know what it’s like to be that grounded.

But for me it seems you can draw strength and comfort from having a place to call home.

I’m sure that’s why so many kids in Ventura County want to stay here when they have grown up.

And I know that ever since I first saw this place I’ve never felt more at home, connected to it with my wife and her family.

And I’m hopeful it will be our home for a very long time.