A Place to Call Home

The house where we were living when my parents separated in 1971

I haven’t had a place that I felt I could call home for most of my life.  Once my parents separated when I was 12, my concept of home was irrevocably altered.  A year after their separation, my parents sold the house in which we had been living in Carmi – the small farm town in Southern Illinois where we had moved four years earlier – and my mother, my sister and I moved into another house where we would live the next four years.  

Two and a half years after the separation, my dad moved to Ohio, and a couple of years later, I graduated from high school.  My “home town” ceased to be home at that point.  The house where we had been living for the past four years was sold, and my mother and sister would live in a succession of rented houses after that.

After graduating from college, I moved to Ohio to work for my dad.  Zanesville was never home, though there were aspects of southeastern Ohio that I liked, which drew me back there several times.  Several years later, I joined the Mormon Church, went on a mission, then married and moved to Vancouver.

Vancouver was never home.  Most of the ten years I lived there, I felt like a foreigner, which is exactly what I was.  It was a place I lived, nothing more.  (Of course, we had a “home” in our own family home, but that was a different sense of home to which I am not referring in this post.)

We thought maybe “home” might be in Ohio, so we briefly tried that, but “home” wasn’t there.  We moved to Utah, and during the first four years here, I came to detest this place.  Perhaps someday I write about why I felt this way.  

We left after four years, trying Ohio again, but it “didn’t work out,” and we returned to Utah, having forever cleansed myself of any desire to live back east and any vestiges of feeling that Ohio was “home.”  Utah would be our choice of where to live and raise our family, but I never felt it was “home.”  I felt it always belonged to “them” – members of the Mormon Church who were born and raised here, members of an exclusive club to which Jean and I would never belong.  In some ways, it was no different than living in Vancouver:  in both places, I felt like a foreigner, like I was “first generation.”

When we were out for our 28-mile bike ride on Tuesday, I commented to Mark that, for the first time in 40 years, I felt like I lived in a place – a city - I could call home.  He asked me why I felt this way.  I replied that I felt there were several reasons.  

First and probably foremost, for the first time in my life, I can feel at home “chez soi” as the French would say – at home within oneself – because I am at peace with who I am:  a gay man.  

Secondly, I am no longer a part of the Mormon world and don’t need to look to either the Mormon Church or other Mormons for validation and acceptance.  I also no longer look at Salt Lake through a Mormon lens.  

Thirdly, I have become part of Mark’s circle of friends who, almost without exception, are not from Utah and are not Mormon.  They come from Wisconsin, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, and other places.  They came to Utah not because of religion but because of what Utah offers – its mountains, its deserts, its beauty, its opportunities for outdoor recreation.  Mark, for example, primarily chose to come to Utah because of skiing and cycling opportunities.

Fourth, I’m out of Bountiful.  Bountiful is a wonderful community in many ways, but I find it stifling to go back there, sometimes more than others.  Sometimes, it’s positively asphyxiating and I have to fight the feeling of just wanting to get out of there.

Annie

Last night was such a time.  I went up to have one-on-one time with Annie and took her to dinner at Applebee’s (where the children’s meals are far better than fast-food and equivalent or less in price).

Afterwards, I went to Nathan’s choir concert at his junior high school.  

Nathan is at far left

I always disliked going to those things when I lived in Bountiful, solely because of the atmosphere of all those self-righteous parents gathered in one room, thick with “keeping up with the Jones” – which in Utah has a very thick layer of self-righteousness slathered over the normal economic tones associated with this phrase.  Keeping up with the number of children.  Keeping up with the size of house.  Keeping up with children’s accomplishments.  Keeping up with church positions.  Judging.  Judging.  Judging.

All of this was graphically portrayed last night as I exited the building and saw parked in along a fire lane a long row of SUVs (which are jokingly referred to here as “Mormon Assault Vehicles”), crowned by a black Escalade.  

Aaron asked, "Why are you taking a picture of a car?"

Nothing says pretentiousness more to me than a back Escalade.  And the thing that makes it particularly exasperating is that most of these people don’t even realize how pretentious and self-righteous they are being – it’s just part of the atmosphere in which they grew up and which they have lived all their lives.  It’s just the way things are.  It’s their normal.  The majority of them have never lived anywhere else, have never been challenged, have never known or thought anything else.  It used to absolutely drive me up a tree.

I am largely free of all that now; I only experience it when I go up there to get the kids or go to one of their activities.

And because I am free of that, and have largely separated myself from the Mormon world and because I have finally accepted who I am and am learning to love myself as a result, and because of meeting and falling in love with Mark – because of all of this, I can look at the world through new eyes.

The result is that I have realized that I really like Salt Lake City.  For the first time since moving here almost 16 years ago, I feel like I can call it “home.”  And for the first time in over 40 years, I feel like I live in a place that I regard as home.

It’s a nice feeling.