Unfair question, having just returned from Madagascar... and I am going to a 30yr high school reunion this fall.YmoBeThere wrote:I was asked by a friend last night where I would live if I could only pick one place. I wasn't too specific about my answer to her, other than to say that North Carolina is the only place that feels like home. So, with that as the criteria would you say that St. Louis would be home or Atlanta? Or somewhere else?
In the US, I've lived in:
Northern New Jersey 18 years
Durham 5 years
St. Louis 13 years (although nearly 3 years were spent in Madagascar)
Atlanta 11 years
Kentucky 1 year
I need time to let the memories age from Atlanta. And we simply have had too little time in Kentucky. To me right now, it's a toss-up between St. Louis and Madagascar. I bet my wife is torn among North Carolina, St. Louis, and Atlanta. My daughter? Probably Atlanta.
What's weird to me is that in each place I have lived, I can recall vividly toeholds, footprints, and a variety of scents, sounds, and sites that get stored in my memory. When I revisit the place, that part of the brain goes back into active memory, and then memories come back in waves. In Madagascar, it's seeing the southern cross from my tent, or tasting a mango or papaya, or listening to the water rush by my campsite, or smelling the vegetation after a fresh treefall.