My hometown, a place that I reflect back on now as I venture out into the rest of the world, was once my whole world.
Every morning I wake up in Ann Arbor, Michigan to the sideward gaze of a grizzly bear walking over the bolded words of “CALIFORNIA REPUBLIC.” At the most basic level, the wrinkled California flag that hangs on the wall at the foot of my bed represents where I spent my childhood and teenage years. When asked where I am from, I reply “Los Angeles.” In reality, I rarely ever left a small beach town outside of the city called Hermosa Beach. So, yes, unfortunately my hometown does in many ways fit the southern California stereotype of sunny, beach bum living.
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Yogyakarta is a city on the island of Java, one of over 17,000 of the archipelago that is Indonesia. I lived in Yogya for a month the fall after my freshman year of college, learning about Indonesian culture and spending time with a family that kindly offered me a room in their home. Our first night together, we gathered in the living room and partook in what can be described as an exhausting game of charades intermittent with broken attempts at each other’s languages. My homestay brother, Raka, was eager to learn about Los Angeles. I told him that if he ever came to L.A., he could stay at my house. Despite my shattered Bahasa, I must have gotten my point across because my homestay mother, Ibu Lala, chimed in, “No. No money.” It wasn’t accusatory, but it was definite.
At my 8th grade graduation, I was given a copy of Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You Will Go. I grew up knowing that I would have opportunities to leave my hometown, travel the world, and settle down in different cities along the way. It was never a question.
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For Raka, it seemed only a dream. He continued the conversation that first night with endless questions about what it's like to live in Los Angeles. His eyes floated upwards as he attempted to envision a place on the opposite side of the universe from his world. The word kapan-kapan fluttered from his lips... someday.
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After Yogya I stayed with a family in Langa, a village situated in the mountains on an island east of Java called Flores. In Langa, it is rare for anyone to leave. They live in homes that have been passed down for generations and pray to their ancestors that used to reside on the same land. They bury their loved ones in their front yards and subsist largely from their gardens that they have maintained in the surrounding forest for centuries. Most people do not recognize Langa as their hometown; it is simply their home. Their home is so intertwined with their identity, culture and family - it is impossible to separate it all in space and time. It is impossible to separate it from their self.
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When I woke up at 3 a.m. to embark on a hike up Mt. Inerie, the active volcano that serves as the permanent backdrop to the small village, my ibu was standing in the common room to see me off. She held both of my hands in hers and squeezed tightly, looked me in the eye, and spoke the word pulang. Pulang – the Indonesian word that specifically means “return home.” Langa is not my hometown, nor is Yogya, but I can confidently say that for a period of time, albeit short, they were my homes.
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Trace the gaze of the shadow puppet a few feet to the right, and you’ll find four large block letters that read “HOME.” The "M" stands apart as the signifying yellow block M for the University of Michigan. Apart from Hermosa Beach, I’ve spent more time in Ann Arbor than in any other city in the world – fourteen months and counting. The first time I stepped onto the University of Michigan campus, the only thing I could process was a lot of people exiting and entering big buildings connected by an endless maze of walking paths that could lead me in any direction. Not to mention how disorienting not being able to use the Pacific Ocean to figure out where West, East, North, and South was. I walked through campus the first week with my face in my phone, plugging in campus buildings to Google maps to find my way around, forever thankful for the walking directions option.
But as time went on, "the big building with the columns” became “the place where my English class is,” “that tea shop” became “my favorite study spot,” and now “that blue house with the pteranodon on the roof” holds the room where my California flag hangs on the wall. As I travel between all of these places, I confidently step off the paths in directions I’m sure of and wave to friends as I pass them along the way. When does a place of residence become a home? I’m guessing sometime after space becomes place and the people that fill that place become more than just nameless faces.
Last summer, I went up to the state park Sleeping Bear Dunes, which lies on the coast of Lake Michigan, with a friend from Grand Rapids. My friend was quick to correct me when I made a comment that I could see the oncoming rain falling over the ocean. Clearly, natural geography of Michigan is not as ingrained in my mind as that of California. I guess that’s to be expected when California has dominated 206 more months of my life than Michigan has.
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Before moving to Michigan, I never really thought of Hermosa Beach as my “hometown". It was simply my home. That changed when I left and started to establish other places as home. Maybe the culmination of my location-based identity lies in the ways that my hometown has affected me in ways that no other place I encounter could.
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So, why is the California state flag hanging on my bedroom wall?
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Nostalgia. When I see the flag I think of the ten-minute walk from my doorstep to the edge of the crashing Pacific. I think of the sand crabs I used to dig for at the convergence of the wet and dry sand and the tickling sensation of their claws against my palms. I’m reminded of what now seems like a simpler time, regardless of where that time was spent. While I had no say in where I spent these formative childhood years, I was fortunate to have spent them in a place that fostered happy, comforting memories. My hometown, a place that I reflect back on now as I venture into the rest of the world, was once my whole world.
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Perspective. Growing up in Hermosa Beach gave me a baseline perspective for which I perceive reality. Each step I take into new surroundings alters that reality with the same fluidity and unpredictability that I rewrite sentences with my keyboard. The content changes, but the underlying white document remains the same. It didn't take long to figure out that my understanding of how the world works that was assembled within the scenic boundaries of lapping waves and flapping seagulls is not universal. While I can appreciate the uniqueness of this point-of-view, the flag now serves more of a reminder of its limited scope.
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Time. It's hard to let go. Eighteen years is a long time for a twenty-year old.
The flag is not of particularly great quality. My sister bought it for pretty cheaply on Amazon, and carried it with her from one apartment to the next during her four years in Charlottesville, Virginia. I stole it after she graduated from college and decided to upgrade to some classier decorations. Though it is a cool flag – the colors are bold and grizzly bears are exciting animals – it’s not something I would choose to display based on aesthetics alone. In fact, the red, green, and brown aggressively clash against my pale purple wall.
Let's back up. It's not like a 24-hour spotlight shines on the flag as it hangs on a blank canvas of a bedroom. It wouldn’t be fair to assess the significance of this memento without thinking about the other objects that occupy the space around it. Follow the trajectory of the grizzly bear's path around the corners of the room, and you'll eventually meet a hand-made leather puppet from Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Claim. I can look at the flag and find comfort that although I am merely merely one in a world of billions, there is a spot on the map that I can point to and say, “yep, right there, that’s mine.” Even the phrase, to be from somewhere, gives me a sense of origin or home base, so to speak.
I grew up thinking that I would have the opportunities to leave my hometown, travel the world, and settle down in different cities along the way. It was never a question.
Lingo. I still find it hilarious when I’m called out for using “stoked” to express excitement. I guess that one is a big “Cali” marker And it's also probably fair to say that nearly no one reading this could use "sku" in a proper sentence. The specific vocabulary that I picked up while growing up in southern California is something that I choose whether or not to utilize in every interaction. It is not a sub-conscious component of my identity. In this way, the flag boasts my membership in an exclusive club privy to a secret code.
But am I really that special? Arguably no. In Indonesia alone, the 17,000 islands include hundreds of thousand miles of coastline on which millions of people grew up, like me. The University of Michigan hosts a student population of nearly 40,000. Hermosa Beach is a bit smaller – a one-and-a-half square mile plot of land where just short of 20,000 people reside. 20,000 out of 7 billion is pretty good, so I’m going to hold onto it.
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"Where are you from" is usually the first question we ask anyone when first meeting them. But why? What does where a person is from really tell us about that person standing in front of us? Maybe it can define a person in arbitrary ways outside of that person’s control. A more apt question though might be "Where do you call home?" This question elicits a response that gives the individual the agency to decide both what home means to them and where in their life they apply that definition. It contributes to the holistic identity of someone – potentially considering all the places that have been significant enough in that person’s life for them to be able to call it home.
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When I respond that I am from a place where the temperature never falls below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the next question a Michigander most often poses is "Why did you come here?" Although that persistent question will never cease to annoy me, it’s actually not a bad one. By now, I’ve mastered a short, one sentence response about wanting to experience something different. I have the same craving for exploration as Raka, and by chance and luck the means to pursue it. While that’s true, I think that it also had something to do with wanting to expand the list of places that I am able to call home.
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Hermosa Beach may not be my only home anymore, but it was my first. I did not choose the place that I now refer to as my hometown, but as I passively grew up within its borders, it shaped my identity in ways both that I can choose to express when I want to and in ways that I’m sure I have yet to realize. I have the privilege to fall back on the comforts of a place familiar to me and also to expose myself to new spaces with the potential to foster experiences that inform my identity. I have the power to choose my homes - or at least whether I want to consider the places that I live in my life as home, to form a connection to a place that gives me a sense of belonging and security. I have to say, I'm pretty stoked about that.
