Home. Did you choose it, or did it choose you?
I was born in Washington, DC, in 1952, and moved to Hong Kong at three months where my dad was assigned to the US Embassy. Moved back to the US, northern Virginia, where my parents bought an old farmhouse in 1955 or so. Then we moved to Germany, Frankfurt and Munich, for five years, returning to our northern Virginia home in 1962. In 1966 we moved to Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Va. My dad retired in 1970, the year I graduated high school, buying a house in Tidewater, Va., on a bay that opened into the Chesapeake Bay.
I started college in Williamsburg, Va. and lived there on my own for a year and a half. Then went out to Tucson, AZ, and lived in a yoga ashram for three months with several dozen other practitioners. Hitchhiked east, back across the country, stopped in with my parents for maybe a week or so before heading to NYC, where I moved into a studio apartment with my brother, who got me a job. I was 19, working days and going to school nights.
Graduated college the summer of 1975 and that fall went to Japan for the first time, for a month. Got married to my first wife. Quit my job that December, and started looking for another. By this time I was living in Brooklyn. Found a job and worked it until that September, when I entered graduate school. A few months later, the beginning of 1976, I was in graduate student housing on the Upper West Side.
I was in love with Japan and studying its history. I was ten years in grad school, during which I spent over two years in Japan as a student. When I completed my final degree, in January 1986, I was keen to get back to Japan. In March of that year I was offered a job in Tokyo and took it.
Since then, I have lived mostly in Japan. Several places in Tokyo, and now, in retirement, south of Tokyo near the ocean.
Since around 2000, I have also had residences in the US, initially Hawaii, where I thought I would retire and where pre-retirement we spent long vacations. Still own a house there, although I think I will sell it over the next few years. Our preferred US residence is now a small 1000 sq. ft. place in Oregon. Spent about half of 2016-17 there. Had some medical issues so could not travel for a year after that, so remained at our Japan residence. Made it back to Oregon this spring for a month, and, health permitting, hope to return in early July for several months.
When I am at my Japan house, or in Oregon at my place there, it feels like home. Mostly, I think, because my wife is with me. In a very real sense, for me, home is where my wife is.
And I chose her.
sigh...
