People keep asking me how my family is doing in Haiti and want to help. Positive: ppl are kind. Negative: ppl have no idea where I'm from.
[Her parents are from the South Pacific and she describes her ethnicity as Desi. So, nowhere near Haiti. But since she grew up in different places in the US and now lives in the Pacific Northwest, even she says if you want to know where she's from, prepare to sit down.]
I know the feeling, a bit. My family is from Kentucky but I grew up in five different states and about nine different locations, with two kindergartens, two elementary schools, three junior highs, and two high schools (is it any wonder I didn't acquire any social skills until I was an adult?) The life of a military brat is complicated sometimes. I once told someone I was from Louisiana (because I spent the longest there, and we were talking about Cajun food, and I was trying to impress her, and it just slipped out that way), despite being born in Kentucky and being a ninth-generation Kentuckian, and a friend has never let me forget it. But at least I was born in a town where my family lived and came back in time to graduate from high school there, so I can say that Danville, Kentucky is my hometown. Still, I wasn't raised there, so it gets a little weird if you go further than that. And of course, I've lived over half my life now in Lexington, so it really is home.
How about you? Do you have a place you identify with more than a hometown, really?
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