Today I had a slice of home delivered to me all the way across the country in the form of the "Siuslaw News" - the local newspaper from my hometown. The thoughts, feelings, and memories it evoked were varied and odd after essentially not living in Oregon for five years. In those few, yet all too many, years, I moved addresses five times, worked at five different part-time jobs, lived in Los Angeles for four years, went through three different obsessions, met lifelong friends I never knew existed when I left, got a university degree, and am about to start working at a major media company in a "step one" of my career and post-college adult life.
Now going home to Oregon is an odd experience. I know that back home I've been branded somewhat as a fairly liberal cosmopolitan, not used to small town, Oregon living anymore. I still know quite a few people in town, and they know me, but it's still altered from the Florence, Oregon of my memories. Elementary school kids I used to watch at VBS or middle school kids that were the younger siblings of people I went to school with are all now high schoolers or in university (which still blows my mind that some of those kids are old enough to be in university). Old teachers I had are either retired, moved, or promoted to positions like principals and superintendents, and family friends have moved on with their lives in unexpected ways. Meanwhile, businesses in town are either out of business, becoming obsolete, or significantly remodelled/changed. It's like a slightly-off version of the hometown in my mind, but still alive and well.
This is especially well-timed after my recent contemplations all about rural versus urban America, and my nostalgia/homesickness for my hometown. It's fascinating to now be far enough out after moving away where I can be excited in owning Oregon as my home state once more. When I first left, I was determined to become a Californian, a city slicker who wasn't from a tiny town no one knew that was a grown-up. But now I've been living in cities for about a fifth of my life - definitely for all of my adult life - and now I miss certain aspects of my hometown and have a better perspective on how its shaped and moulded my entire life. My seemingly ingrained awareness and sensitivity to the environment and recycling, my inability to live inland after being so close to the ocean, my deep understanding of small town politics, my difficulty in making friends (there was never a need where everyone knew who you were and your friends had been your friends since pre-school) - so many things in my life have fundamentally been shaped by this tiny little coastal town, and I could never be more grateful.
I won't go into all my thoughts about rural versus urban America in this particular post, but having a little piece of home delivered all the way to New York City definitely made my day. Especially when I remember my time in the spotlight the few occasions I made the top-fold front page of the local.
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