A perspective on "home"

It's amazing how much my views of my hometown and the surrounding countryside have changed since going to college. At the age of 18, 5 years ago, I was ready to get out of little old, suffocating Oxford. I thought I was trapped in a town that had nothing to offer me. My family and friends were there, but that was about it and I longed to go on to bigger and better things. I came to Pittsburgh, have loved every minute of it, but I now find myself growing increasingly fond of the life I used to have in Oxford. It struck me on the drive to and from Oxford this weekend...

Let me preface with a little info on Oxford: It's a college town (where Miami University resides) with about 16,000 residents and just as many college students when school is in session. The town used to be a mile square and it's now grown to an additional mile in each direction from that original square mile. But beyond those town limits, it's nothing but corn and soybean fields as far as the eye can see. I felt the need to bust out a little bit of country on my way in, appropriately blasting "Long Way Home" by the Dixie Chicks driving through the back roads from the interstate with the windows down. A good number of my friends lived on farms (comercial or not) growing up through Middle and High School, and I have a lot of fond memories of sleeping under the stars at night to the sound of chirping bullfrogs an roaring bonfire.

I went home to see the family for Father's Day and my Gram's birthday. I had a great time visiting with my parents, my gram, and my sister and brother-in-law. Those times seem to become more and more fleeting as my departure date for Qatar grows nearer. It also just happened to be the same weekend one of my high school friends was getting married. The wedding was at my friends farm, and it couldn't have been a better site for the ceremony. They used the shell of the old barn for the reception area, blasted a mixture of classic rock and the beatles for people to socialize to, and had potluck hors d'oeuvres for food. The sunset served as the backdrop for all of this, being able to see the colors in the sky all the way to the point where the sun dipped behing the horizon which we could easily see b/c of the vast flatness of the landscape. Stars appeared thereafter that you can only see in the countryside as far away from the city as this farm. Pittsburgh, unfortunately, gets no such skyscape. By dark, a group of men had assembled in the corn field, which by this time was riddled with fireflies glowing in the distance, to set of the rather impressive fireworks display they had put together for the evening-capper.

It all felt surreal. It was like I had come back to a time and place far removed from my current existence, situation, lifestyle, and even identity. I felt like a teenager again, not in an energetic or invincible way, but in an "i never left this place" kind of way. And I realized that to a certain extent, as much as I've tried to push Oxford and the life I had there as far away from my current identity as possible, there will always be a part of me that feels like I belong there.