Where are you from?

Since former senator Scott Brown lost his re-election bid in 2012, I had lost track of his career; so I was quite surprised to read press accounts of his announcement, earlier this week, that he has formed an “exploratory committee” to evaluate another possible senate run – in New Hampshire. 

My own opinion of Senator Brown’s record or his politics notwithstanding, and actually quite irrelevant in this context, my initial gut reaction was negative.  New Hampshire?  He moved there?  When did that happen?  Assuming he has indeed taken up residency and unpacked his boxes, what qualifies him to seek to represent the good people of the Granite State?

As it turns out, my initial reaction was shared by many.  The term “carpetbagger” has been popping up regularly in social media circles that I frequent.  Mr. Brown has clearly been trying to defuse such perceptions by claiming that he has “deep roots” in New Hampshire.  He has owned a summer home in the wealthy beach community of Rye for many years, and beyond that, his maternal ancestors had lived in New Hampshire for centuries.  Who knew? 

Intrigued, I came across an analysis of Mr. Brown’s claim, “I’m ninth generation from New Hampshire” in this article at politifact.com.  The article goes beyond simple confirmation of the facts of Mr. Brown’s lineage, briefly exploring what it means to be “from” New Hampshire, and by extension, “from” New England.  Cultural factors come into play.

This got me thinking… and pretty much forgetting about Scott Brown.  As for him, I still find his current political ambitions to be somewhat disingenuous, though certainly no more so than the Clintons’ calculated move to Chappaqua, enabling Hillary to almost instantly become the junior senator from New York; or all manner of Kennedy cousins holding elected offices while sprawled across Rhode Island, New York, and who knows where else they’re not actually “from.” 

Far more interesting to me is the question of what criteria apply in determining the legitimacy of a person’s claim to be “from” a given place.  We are all from someplace, right?  Or are we?

People I know who were raised as “Army brats” tell me that for them, “home” is wherever their loved ones happen to be.  They are, I suppose, ‘citizens of the world.’  While I can appreciate and even admire that perspective, it is foreign to me. Having never experienced it, I can’t really imagine what it’s like to feel that way.  I’ve always had a powerful sense of place - an emotional attachment to a relatively small handful of specific places that have significance to me.  If there is a spectrum of rooted-ness, I am at the opposite end from my home-anywhere friends.

If I strike up a casual conversation with a stranger who asks me where I’m from, in most circumstances I’ll simply answer “Massachusetts.”  It’s an unrehearsed, uncritical, and for most purposes, accurate response.  I’ve lived in Massachusetts since coming here to attend college, decades ago.  It is my home.  My children have never lived anywhere else.  But I wasn’t born or raised here, and if I allow myself to over-analyze the question, things get complicated.

Facebook, in its infinite, zeitgeist-shaping wisdom, provides its users with profile data fields in which to enter their “current city” and “home town” information.  I have never entered values for either, because place names are validated against a database (presumably to prevent people from misspelling the names of their own towns?)  This prevents entry of multiple “current cities” or “home towns.”  I imagine this must wreak havoc with the integrity of profiles for my globe-trotting friends, but even I am stymied by it, because if I were able to answer truthfully, I’d have to declare allegiance to two of each.

So, what would this mean if I were to decide to run for office?  Would my options be limited by the fact that my “New England roots” run back only a few decades?  In an odd twist of fate, the boat that brought my first Gould ancestors to these shores landed in Hull, Massachusetts, in 1664.  Does that count for nothing?  I’m sure Scott Brown could find a way to milk it.

On the flip side, If I were to uproot my family and move back into the New Jersey home where I spent most of my childhood – the house in which my mother still lives – would that make me an outsider, a carpetbagger, or might I get a pass from the populace there by playing up my “deep New Jersey roots” which do in fact reach back hundreds of years, despite the fact that I only spent a dozen or so actually living there?

And what of our summer home, Wellfleet, on Cape Cod?  My wife and I have been second-home owners there since 1999 – a longer span of time than I spent living in my “home town” of Hawthorne, NJ.  If we decide one day to move there full time, Wellfleet will be my Rye, albeit within state boundaries.  But I know full well that in the pecking order of Cape Cod street cred, we will never be considered more than “washashores” – the caste that is above tourists but below natives.  It’s that New England cultural thing again.

In the end, Scott Brown and I share a peculiar problem.  We are misfits, in a sense.  We are not globe-trotting world citizens; we have deep roots and allegiances to a relative few particular places.  Yet we aren’t quite all-in anywhere.  The problem, I think, lies in allowing others to define the answer to the question “where are you from?”

One can attempt to apply an objective formula – e.g., your “home town” is the municipality in which you spent the longest period of time as a legal resident while under age 18, or some such nonsense.  But it would be just that – nonsense.  The real answers, I believe, come from a more spiritual place.  We aren’t limited to having just one “home town” or being “from” a single place if, in fact, we feel connected to multiple places.  It’s tempting to tie these connections to other people, but in reality, people move on, and places remain. Some remain in our hearts, bound to memories that will die only with us.

I will close with a shout-out to all the places that I am “from”:  The villages of Warwick and Greenwood Lake, NY; North Haledon and Hawthorne, NJ; the Jersey Shore, especially Wildwood Crest; New York City; Boston, especially the neighborhoods of Back Bay and Hyde Park; Canton, Truro, and of course, Boxford and Wellfleet, MA.  Thanks for the memories.

So where are you from?  I’d love to see your list of special places in the “comments” below.