The Complicated Concept of Home

Over my lifetime I’ve lived in New York, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Chicago, and Atlanta. I was born in New York but I only lived there until I was nine. Chicago and Atlanta were short stints, the Bay Area was 10 years, and Phoenix has been the longest by far at 33 years and counting. Yet if someone asks me where I’m from, I inevitably say I’m from San Diego. This is curious to me since I only lived in San Diego for 10 years.

I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve been staying in San Diego for the past five weeks to escape the Phoenix heat and while I have been here it has felt like home. How can that be given I haven’t lived here in 42 years? This has caused me to ponder the concept of home and why some places feel like home while others don’t. For me, I think it is that I lived in San Diego during my adolescence, defined as roughly age nine to 18. Social scientists suggests this phase centers on “navigating puberty, refining brain efficiency, establishing a distinct personal identity, and shifting emotional reliance from parents to peers.” In other words, becoming who you are going to be.

Over the course of the past five weeks, this concept of home has manifested itself in me in subtle ways. Here are some examples:

• Seeing ice plant along the freeway

• Walking past a school yard that has Four Square markings on the playground

• Seeing a bench along a beach walk and envisioning my father sitting there with a cup of coffee and his appointment book

• Driving past the exact 7-Eleven where I spent countless hours after school playing Missile Command and Donkey Kong with a Big Gulp resting on top of the cabinet

• Attending a major league baseball game where I am not one of only a handful of fans rooting for the Padres

• Looking at a condo to potentially buy as a summer home and realizing that in high school I had a thing for a girl who lived in that very complex

• Driving past any number of restaurants that I frequented from El Pollo Loco to D.Z. Akins to the place that used to be Souplantation

• Walking on sidewalks with large slabs of concrete off kilter thanks to years of seismic activity

• The feel of my skin after being by the ocean for even just a few hours and the sensation of a fresh humid breeze in my nose

• Watching television and seeing commercials for longtime local San Diego businesses like Mossy Nissan and Jerome’s Furniture

The nostalgia I feel when I’m in San Diego is much stronger than anywhere else I visit where I’ve previously lived. I also feel a huge sense of pride that I’m from San Diego. I’ve lived in a lot of places, but San Diego is home.

I think perhaps part of this nostalgia comes on the heels of losing both my parents a few year’s ago. It makes sense really, since I lived with them in San Diego and my memories of this place are forever tied to them. Whenever I’m in San Diego I have little moments of nostalgia about them. It happened the other day when we were in Mission Valley and we drove by a neighborhood where my father and I often parked to save money and avoid traffic jams when attending a Chargers game at Jack Murphy Stadium. The stadium is no longer there, but in that moment I had a vivid recollection of my dad and I walking on the overpass over I-15 to get to The Murph for a game.

We happened to drive around in my old neighborhood in La Mesa this trip and the nostalgia was palpable. The place I purchased bait to fish in Lake Murray. The corner on which I stood to catch the bus to school. The breakfast spot on Baltimore Drive that despite huge odds is still there. Our Vons Supermarket. The dentist office where I got a permanent cap on my front tooth. The flower shop on the corner of Baltimore and Lake Murray Blvd. The ice skating rink just of the I-8 offramp that is now a mega church. The condo where Mike and Andy lived.

Nostalgia for home is not unique. Tons of songs have been written about it. Movies and television shows have centered on the old days. Books are written about ones childhood memories. I just think it’s odd that so much of my nostalgia centers around a place I only lived for 10 years.

I’ve been visiting San Diego regularly since leaving permanently in 1984 to go to college and then build a life in Arizona. Every time I am here, my mind races with memories, sometimes so repetitively that it has become an inside joke with my family. Each time we drive past Alvarado Hospital along I-8 I joke that my tonsils are probably in a jar in the basement. Every time we pass the Del Mar Fairgrounds my family is first to mention that one time I saw Berlin perform there on my birthday in the summer of 1983.

Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. It grows stronger as one gets older. I turned 60 this summer and it’s not at all surprising I’m thinking a lot about my youth. But I rarely think about my childhood on Long Island. Or my college years in San Jose. My memory always goes back to San Diego. Psychological research indicates that nostalgia is consistently strongest for late adolescence and early adulthood, as I mentioned previously, so probably I shouldn’t be surprised.

The other reason I think San Diego is so prominent in my mind lately is that I am approaching a time in my life where I’m starting to think about retirement. Even though I’ve lived in Phoenix for 33 years, and many people retire to Phoenix, I can’t imagine spending my golden years in the Valley. In fact, it’s not an option. We will be moving eventually — it’s just a matter of when and where.

The possibility of living in San Diego again is so palpable I can taste it (and smell it). Yes, San Diego is expensive. But you only get one go round on this blue marble and you can’t take it with you. Where there is a will there is a way.

So as I sit here at this coffee shop, outdoors on the patio where it is 72 degrees with an ocean breeze and the smell of the Pacific in my nose (it is going to be 30 plus degrees hotter in Phoenix when we get back on Saturday), I find myself thinking about what home means to me, and why San Diego will always be home.

They say you can’t go home again. I don’t disagree with the sentiment, in that you can’t have that exact life experience again. But I don’t see any reason why you can’t return to a place that feels like home and build more core memories.

Whether we move here one day or not, I will be back. In fact, we’ve enjoyed this five week trip so much we’ve decided to come back for a bit in August. Farewell for now America’s Finest City — see you in two weeks!