Post #926. January Newspaper Column. It's home for now.

Kelley: Can’t imagine living elsewhere now

By LINDA KELLEY
Rantoul Press columnist

This is my first column of 2012 and the beginning of my fifth year of writing for the Rantoul Press.

I noticed a “picture yourself in Rantoul” commercial on television one recent evening and smiled.

It was 16 years ago that we passed by the old slogan of “Make it Rantoul” on a billboard along Interstate 57 on the way to my parents’ house and cynically joked that it might be a sign from God since we were exploring different options towards a move to Central Illinois.

The joke was apparently on us, considering a job opportunity arose and we settled in this very place that I had honestly never heard of.

What this truly suburban-Chicago girl thought would be a temporary stop, a layover so to speak en route to a permanent destination, has somehow become our home, at least for now.

To quote one of my favorite childhood books, which I have a habit of doing because they obviously influenced my thought patterns, Ellen Tebbits’ best friend Austine Allen mentions repeatedly how much she misses her former state of California when she moves to the annoyingly-rainy Oregon. (“Ellen Tebbits” by Beverly Cleary)

Nothing in her new residence compares to her old hometown. Her friends patiently listen to her lament, time and time again, how much she misses her old home.

Finally, during a disagreement where so often the truth comes out, Ellen blurts out how tired she is of hearing Austine go on and on about California and that if California was so great, she should very simply move back there.

Those were hurtful words, in a fit of rage, and yet I imagine there have been moments in these past 16 years when my friends probably felt like blurting out Ellen’s response to me, because I’ve very much felt and spoke like Austine Allen, out of place, away from home.

I’ve never really felt like I belonged here, having no connection to the former Air Force base, no alumni devotion to any of the schools, having lived my history elsewhere.

And yet oddly enough, this has become home.

It’s where a chain of events occurred that diverted the course of my direction.

It’s the only hometown that our youngest daughter has known, where we moved my parents nearly seven years ago, where I returned to work and found an outlet for my writing.

While I still complain about the lack of real Chicago-style pizza and Italian beef sandwiches, and the individual butcher shops and bakeries that were so readily available in the city, I can’t imagine, at this time, living anywhere else.

Much of my connection to another place in time simply involves the memories associated with that place that can never be duplicated.

Life contains many different sets of memories within each stop along the way, and I imagine that someday, if we move from this area when our daughter has moved out and my parents have gone onto their heavenly home, I may feel the same wistful connection to something that no longer exists and will remain unattainable elsewhere.

There’s a quote at the end of one of my favorite movies, “Under the Tuscan Sun,” which is also a book by Frances Mayes, that says, “Any arbitrary turning along the way, and I would be elsewhere. I would be different.”

Somehow I believe that we each end up exactly where we’re supposed to be for a time of life and that home is where you make it and what makes you who you are.

Linda Kelley of Rantoul writes a monthly column for the Rantoul Press on life experiences and family and social issues. She also writes a blog, which can be accessed at http://my-over-the-fence.blogspot.com/