Split and Spin

I've got this complicated thing about the concept of home.

I've probably mentioned it before. I've lived in more than 25 houses, apartments, flats, cars, youth hostels, and boats. First 23 years in California. Tried out Florida and college in Colorado. A 3-year tour of Latin America. Then big ol' Texas for half a decade. 

No wonder I have so many postcards. But what about home?

For the past four years, I've lived in South Carolina - the most unlikely place of all. I mean, really. I thought I'd set up residence someplace like Patagonia or Mozambique before I'd catch myself with a mortgage in the Bible Belt.

Is home where you went to high school, or where your parents live? What if your parents moved away from your alma mater soon after graduation? Is their home now your home? Even if you don't live there?

Is home where you got married, or where you bought your first house together? What if you got all settled, started calling that place home more earnestly than you'd called a place since grade school, and then wound up divorced? And then your ex made it clear that the town - hell, the whole state of Texas - wasn't big enough for both of you? And that he wasn't the one gonna budge? 

What if you fell in love at 41, with someone six states away, on the other side of the continent from where you were born? And since you had to get out of Texas anyway, you uprooted and transplanted in South Carolina, buying a house and everything. Is this place home now? 

Whenever I contemplate it, I feel like a cross between Linda Blair and Sybil, my conflicting identities making my head wildly spin. There's no priest standing by to exorcise the ambivalence demon, so the only choice I have is to buy another piece of heavy furniture or plant a tree in the yard.

And it helps, but it doesn't quite strike home. 

Just when I start feeling rooted to the southeast, I fly out to Colorado during summer vacation. I stay with my parents, who were born and grew up there, moved to California long enough to raise me, then returned "home" where they've lived ever since. The guest room where I sleep has the same yellow furniture they bought for my California bedroom circa 1974.  Almost all of my relatives live in the state, cousins and uncles and aunts, people I've known my whole life. They don't know about my Linda Blairhead and split personality, about the pictures I take in the mountains I can't name, or the 40 postcards I buy in all the gift shops I visit. I act the same way I would in Paris, France, but my relatives never fail to ask, "So when are ya moving back?" As if I'm from there. As if Colorado is really my home.

When it's time to board the plane back to - where is it I live now? - the head starts revolving and my throat chokes. I don't want to fly away from this sort-of-home, from my extended kin and the friends I made in college and my mom and dad. But I'm also desperate to see my beloved back in South Carolina, and my dog, and the house I bought and even kind of like sometimes. Not to mention the only job I ever wanted to keep - the 36th one in my notoriously haphazard career. 

If home is where the heart is, what do you do when your heart is split in two? 

Picture Postcard Ouray

Although I grew up in California, I spent part of every childhood summer in Ouray, Colorado, nestled in the San Juan Mountains. Most of my mom's relatives either lived there year-round or stayed part of their summers, too. So I ran around with first and second and third cousins, daring to wade into the rapid Uncompahgre River, teetering over the swinging bridge, climbing to Box Cañon, swimming in the hot springs pool, setting off firecrackers, and getting the occasional spanking for it. 

On Fourth of July, thousands of tourists filled the tiny town's streets. My Aunt Karen never failed to grumble and call them "turkeys." Uncle Jack and Uncle Bus fought in the crowd-pleasing water fight - an event where teams blast streams of water from high-pressure fire hoses to try and beat their opponents into submission. Uncle Jack and Uncle Bus won year after year.  

What's more, my family has history there. My mom's people came over from Italy in the early 1900s to work in Ouray's productive mines. Decades later, my Grandpa Fay and Uncle Jack were the last of the gold miners in our family. The mines in the surrounding mountains are now closed, the outbuildings historic landmarks. Even the house where my mom grew up - a turn-of-the-century two-story her family called the baracca (Italian for "hovel" or "shanty") - looks like Doc Holliday might walk out of it any minute. 

What with all that history, extended family, and my intimate knowledge of its gravel back streets, I got away with considering myself a Ouray local. 

Nowadays, I spend a week with my parents nearly every summer. They live about 40 minutes from Ouray, in the forgiving valley that gets about one-fourth as much snow in winter. When I visit, we spend at least a day in Ouray, hiking a 5-mile trail around its perimeter and eating lunch somewhere on Main. It's impossible not to run into a relative or two, or one of my mom's high school classmates. 

Though this makes me feel at home there, let's be honest - I'm not. My camera is perpetually around my neck. I'm shooting photo after photo after photo. I go in the Columbine Gift Shop. I buy postcards and silver baubles. I look at vacation rentals and dream.

If there's a more picturesque town in the country, I haven't seen it. Surrounded on three sides by 13,000-foot snowcapped peaks, a person could stand at the intersection of 6th and Main and make a living taking pictures for postcard companies. (Well. As long as she lived somewhere else. To own a house in Ouray you're not grandfathered into, you pretty much need to make an Oprah Winfrey type living. But I digress.)

Gobble Gobble.

On my recent trip, I scooped up dozens of postcards after the annual perimeter hike. I also made a point of visiting the tiny little Post Office (to buy postcard stamps I didn't even need). I stood in a line three people deep. All three were picking up parcels too big for their P.O. boxes, and the postmistress knew each of them by name. When I reached the counter and she said, "What can I do for you, ma'am," I realized just how hard I was working to fit in.

It hit me like a slap. I've become one of Aunt Karen's much-loathed "turkeys." But you know what?  It's worth it, for a day in Ouray.