You Can Go Home Again—Maybe
Perhaps Thomas Wolfe was right, but I’m skeptical. By my twenty-second birthday, between time as a military dependant and time as a missionary, I had spent almost six years living in Korea, so Korea felt like home. Korea held a landscape and a culture that was mine, even if only tenuously. Though I’ve lived in Provo since 1975, Korea still feels like where I’m “from.” In spite of that, I’ve been back only once since September 1969. In 2001 I spent about a week in Korea giving some lectures.
Two weeks ago, out of the blue I got an e-mail message from Mark Peterson, a professor of Korean at BYU. He was leading a group of educators for the Korea Society, taking them on an all-expense-paid, two-week trip through Korea and he had an opening. Would I like to go? Absolutely, but I had already made plans for the first couple of days of the trip and wasn’t sure I could make arrangements for my class. Mark allowed me to join the group late, and Jeff Johnson, a recent graduate of BYU’s Philosophy Department, agreed to sub for me, with some help from Chris Foster, one of our part-time professors. I was set to go, and after a day or two in San Francisco visiting our older daughter, Rebecca, I left for the tour.
The trip was great. We were on-the-go eight or ten hours every day, visiting factories, schools, and historic sites, with lectures from important Korean professors on topics from the political to the historical. And the Society put us up and fed us well beyond what we could have expected. I learned quite a bit, even though I know more than the average American. Yet I wasn’t a tourist.
My 2001 trip had shown me how much Korea had changed since 1969: clean streets, purified water, enclosed sewage, freeway systems, hip young people, thousands of multi-story apartment buildings, a capital city grown completely unrecognizable, changes in the language. Because of the 2001 trip, this time I was expecting to see a different Korea than the one in my memory, so I didn’t suffer the culture shock that I had last time. However, a feeling stood out: I felt like I was coming home.
I can’t say exactly what it means to feel like that. I could communicate, but I’ve forgotten a lot of Korean, so the feeling wasn’t one of fluency. I didn’t recognize many of the places we went. I didn’t go to any of the places where I’d lived or gone to school or done missionary work. So the feeling wasn’t one of familiarity.
I’ve lived in many places during my life time, both in the U.S. and out, and I’ve always felt that I could have continued to live comfortably in any of them. I think I could be at home anywhere. But that isn’t the same as what I felt. It wasn’t so much that I felt at home. Indeed, Korea has changed so much that I often did not feel at home. Rather, I felt that I belonged where I was, but not in the sense that I ought to have been there.
The possession implied by “belong” is the relevant sense in which I belonged in Korea: I am possessed by Korea; it has a hold on me. Most of the time that possession is only incidental to my life. For those twelve days, the possession was almost complete. I had returned to something that owns me, even though I am no longer quite at home there.
Tom Wolfe thought that going home again meant being at home, but he was wrong. It means returning to what possesses you, however strange that possession may have grown.
66q, 1.067s
I feel that way about of all places, Provo. It has somehow become my home. My oldest daughter, who graduated from BYU, thinks I am crazy. Perhaps I am. If I were to be in a Provo ward, I probably would go crazy. But somehow, Provo is home, and it calls to me. My actual birth home, northwest Indiana, holds no appeal for me at all. My heart belongs in Provo.
That said, though, my lips will still say, “Go Buckeyes” on fall Saturdays. “That team up north” will always be in Ann Arbor, never Salt Lake City. Of that I am confident, even should I eventually lose my mind and retire — go home — to Provo.
Nice post, Jim. I am glad you enjoyed your trip.
I’ve been thinking about this post since last night, Jim. It’s a wonderful opportunity to feel a part of the world through you. And I’m intrigued by your use of “possession.” You present yourself as a subject, as one owned by a place, yet not necessarily at home there. Does this mean that we should think about feeling at home and “belonging” in two different ways? Or is there just, occasionally, for some people, an additional sense of belonging that can in fact go along with a feeling of homelessness? There are certain locales where I feel a certain rootedness and community and belonging, and I hope to build more of that in my life, since I think it is an important part of the human experience. But what you describe is something more individualistic, something suggesting a more direct and umediated relationship. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that–a feeling of submission to the possessive claims made by a place over me.
Then again, hey, maybe that’s just Korea. As those of us who served there know, it’s an intense place.
Jim,
Is what you describe the experience that undergird the term alma mater?
Neat post.
In December my daughter arrived in Korea as a missionary and here is part of the first email she wrote:
“Today is my first real day in Korea and I feel like I have found my true home. I had the chance to have a very long conversation with a man on the same flight to Korea with me in the airport (and the 10 hour flight) We had a good time between his English and my Korean and I was able to teach him the first lesson and give him a copy of the Book of Mormon. I never realized how much I would care about another person until I talked to this gentleman! He lives in Seoul so I passed on his information to the missionaries there. I love the food here more than you can imagine! Also we stopped at a rest stop on the way to Taejon and the toilet seats were heated! There are neon crosses everywhere ok but I absolutly can’t describe how perfect I feel to be here.”
I just thought it was fascinating that she said she felt like she had found her true home in such an exotic place as Korea (and liked the food!). It was interesting to hear you voice some of the same sentiments.
Logan, Utah and San Diego, California are just going to have to slug it out over which one possesses me. (Note to Logan: San Diego’s a hell of a lot bigger than you.)
California possesses me. I used to watch the opening of the OC just to see images of the coast and hear the theme song beckon me: “California here we come; Right back where we started from.” Unfortunately, I haven’t returned in several years and circumstances are I don’t see myself returning anytime in the future. But, like you Jim, it is hard to explain why the connection survives–especially after over a decade of growing apart.
lovely post, as i’ve had similar thoughts on my mind lately. hawai’i is what possesses me, in every sense of the word. i began my marriage there, gave birth to my two oldest children there, and came into my current self there. i miss it more than i ever thought imaginable.
Model Trains possess me.
I have said for years that “American Fork (Utah–the place I grew up) is a good place to be FROM.” I could not get out of there fast enough. I did marry a guy from AF who could have spent the rest of his life happily there. But we left when we got married, and I have not looked back–except–Several years ago while “planning for our dotage” we seriously considered where we wanted to be buried. After a lot of discussion and thought we both agreed on AF. My husband has 13 direct ancestors (in addition to uncles, aunts and cousins) in that cemetary. When we are planted there our posterity will have 15 direct ancestors in one place. That is probably quite unusual. While it was clear to me that I could never “live” there, after a lot of thought I am pretty sure “I can be properly dead there.” In the meantime, every time time I return to SL Valley from Utah Valley, coming up over the Point of the Mountain I feel my body relax with a feeling of “home.” There are other places that are more inexplicable. I feel an odd sense of “home” as I come up over the ridge near Hurricane, Utah and drop down into Southern Utah’s “Dixie”. The same feeling engulfed me the one and only time I was in Nara, Japan and oddest of all, some places I have never been during this mortal journey, call out to me. But in all of these places there is still a feeling, at times, of being “a stranger in a strange land”. Perhaps what we all most long for is our Heavenly Home.
Marjorie’s desire to be buried in American Fork is in sharp contrast to the last wishes of Joe Hill, the labor radical convicted of murder and executed by firing squad in UT during 1915. Saying that he “wouldn’t be caught dead in Utah,” Hill specified that a small packet of his ashes be sent to each postmaster in the United States, a wish that caused real procedural problems. I heard the story from the Labor Archivist at Wayne State University’s Walter Reuther Labor Archives in Detroit. When his shop acquired the Joe Hill papers, apparently one of the packets came with them, and he was stuck with the practical problem of proper disposition at this late date. (I don’t know what the resolution was.) The archivist, by the way is a great grand-nephew of former Apostle Amasa Lyman (co-founder of San Bernardino), and by sheer coincidence was the man who in the late 1970s stumbled across Brigham Young’s diary for 1857 while cleaning out the cluttered home of a recluse in suburban Detroit. This is the only volume of BY’s diaries outside of church control, and it covers the period of MMM and the first half of the Utah War. Although legally the diary was his, he felt that the diary (unlike Joe Hill’s ashes) belonged in Utah rather than in Michigan and so saw to it that it was sent to UoU-Marriott Library, where it is today. The diary was edited by the late Everett L. Cooley and published in the early 1980s.
Some of us who spent childhood and youth moving from state to state and school to school (I’ve had my email address longer than I’ve had any paper-mail address, ever) will spend our adult lives trying to put down roots somewhere — anywhere — to fit in there. For us it isn’t a case of going home again — it’s getting home in the first place.
The interesting twist to this isn’t just where feels like home, but where we may want to be buried.
Although I never lived there, I have always wanted to be buried with my family in the Spanish Fork city cemetary. I’ve got six generations there, including my parents and my sister who died in childbirth. The closest thing my dad’s family ever had to family reunions has been the Spanish Fork cemetary on Memorial Day. Friends and exended family are all there at least part of the day, and the setting there in the springtime makes it a place to spend time and eternity.
Where do I want to live in the meantime? I served my mission in Korea, and spent time there tweny years later as an active duty military member. I have very fond memories, and have tried to get a job there several times. It may not be home, but it is a friendly and familiar place. But as I tell my wife, home is wherever she is (sounds corny, but it’s true).
I’ll bet South Korea felt a lot more like home to you because Cho-Seung Hui wasn’t there.
C’mon, DKL. Some hugely ironic elephants in the room speak quite well for themselves.
Every time I go home to Cleveland, it\’s a quasi-spiritual experience. The Islands, the western suburbs, Huntington Beach, the West Side Market, even the area down by the RnR Hall of Fame – it\’s a tremendously nostalgic experience and yet reminds me that I can\’t go home again. Jacobs Field serves up the memories of summer eves past — even though those memories were of Memorial Stadium, not the Jake.
I fiercely am a Texan now, but there is a part of me that always belongs to Cleveland.
My wife has decided that Salt Lake City can never be home again, ever. It will always be the place she came from, but she can never, ever consider it home again. (This has resulted in some bitter painful fights with her family over her defintion of \”home\”).
Provo to both of us feels like a bad memory. Every time I happen by, I feel less and less of a connection to it.
I was born in Detroit, but had no memory of it (apparently, my parents only chose to return once or twice). Last summer I helped a friend move, and got to see the place of my birth, and my parents\’ old home, for the first time — and I felt a connection I hadn\’t ever felt before.
Hanguk mansae!
I think I know exactly what Jim is talking about, although I suspect that the high-rise apartments would not feel unfamiliar to me at all. Also, I can happily inform you that open Korean sewage can still be found by missionaries serving in rural Kyoung San Do. (Or at least it could be found 11 or 12 years ago; sheesh! has it been that long?)
I think it would be very sad to have lived anywhere at all and not feel that the place was in some sense home.
“Or at least it could be found 11 or 12 years ago; sheesh! has it been that long?”
Am I five years older than you, Nate? I thought I was only a couple. I came home in 1990, going on 17 years ago.
Anyway, plenty of open sewage still to be found in the small towns of Kyoung Gi Province, circa 1988, as well.
Nate and Russell (16, 17): I didn’t see any this trip, not even in the genuine countryside. I spent four days in Kyongsangnam-do, much of it away from the cities, and saw no open sewage. I assume that some of the smaller villages may still have out houses, though I didn’t see any, but that’s not what I had in mind.
Where did you go in Kyoungsannam-do?
Thank you, Jim. Very recognizable for those who have lived somewhere, in a totally different culture. I have that with Central Africa. “I felt that I belonged where I was, but not in the sense that I ought to have been there.”
I wonder if we could transpose that to the religious experience of Mormon converts who, later in life, struggle with their adherence. They have adopted a different culture, felt immersed in it, and then times come that they wonder if it is their place, perhaps leave, but are never able to forget that they belonged to it, and long for it. Next comes the phase of coming home again…
Thanks for this, Jim. I wish I felt about Portugal the way you feel about Korea, but I don’t. In fact, I occasionally have nightmares in which I’m wandering uncertainly around one of my proselyting areas, dislocated. This is not to say that I didn’t love my mission, and love the country and people of Portugal. I did, but it never became home.
Interesting discussion. I guess I’m lucky–there are several places that feel like home to me. As a native of Southern California, I instinctively feel at home there, yet every time I am in San Francisco it calls to me in a deep and powerful way and I practically have to be dragged away kicking and screaming, as if I’m being torn from my destiny. The very first time I entered Salt Lake City, I drove around Temple Square, looked at the hills above the Capitol and immediately felt at home. I love the mountains of northern New Mexico and always feel like I am returning to a spiritual home there, despite having no family connections there of any kind. And then there’s my wife’s family’s farm in Oklahoma, and a tiny cabin on the Penobscot River in Maine where my mother’s family is from. I could be buried in any of these places, and be quite content.