The Home Concept

Up until recently I never really thought about the dual meaning of home and the simple meaning of the word house. "Who needs a home when you've got a house?", I thought. But then when I went away to college I met people who had a house AND a home. I also met people who wanted to know where I was from. I would simply say, "Costa Rica", because that's where my house was and that was my home, it was where I had a bedroom full of stuff that belonged to me. When I moved to Costa Rica, I was from Miami and when I moved to Miami I was from Panama, but no one really cared because in Miami there is this strange dichotomy where you're either Cuban or something else. So in Miami, I was Cuban and without a past. And before Panama I lived in Mexico ,but that's entering the elementry school years and no one cares where you're from, plus no one would believe I was from Mexico in a million years. Kids just wanted to know if you were good at playing red rover or if you had any cool stickers to trade.

So when I went away to Spain for college, being from Costa Rica and not having been born there wasn't a big deal. No one asked questions really because everyone one else was from somewhere else. My family lived there, I had a house there, that was good enough. It wasn't until my family moved to Colombia while I was still in Spain and all of a sudden my system had a fault in it. I was no longer from Costa Rica and I wasn't from Colombia because I hadn't been there and I surely wouldn't have a room waiting there for me. So Spain became my home, I had an apartment there, I went to school there and all of my friends were there. Spain was home.

When it came time to leave and reluctantly start my life in Boston things got scary. I was moving back to America. Real America where English was the official language (as opposed to Miami, which is not quite Latin America because its in America but its not America because its just like Latin America). A place I hadn't lived in since I was 9, wildly obsessed with Barbies and desperatly wanting to discover where Cabbage Patch Kids were born. Then again, when I was 9 I lived on a military base in Florida and everyone knows that most large military bases are pretty much self-sufficient. They have schools, shopping areas, supermarkets, sometimes hospitals and in the case of one in Panama sometimes an airport. So if we want to be technical here, when I was in pre pre-school in Orlando I didn't live on a military base for like a year or 2. In Boston, people wanted to know where I was from so I usually had to think really hard to come up with a response and by the time people had already tired of waiting or think I was an idiot, so I'd just say I don't know. Because I don't.

What marks the end of "growing up"? I physically stopped growing in 7th or 8th grade, but since 8th grade I've also grown alot as a person. Is growing up just physical or mentally and spiritually?

If you "grew up" in X place but moved away and never went back will you always be from there? Can you ever be from somewhere else?