The Heart is Where?

An old saying holds that “home is where the heart is.” But sometimes the larger question is, “where is your heart?”

I started thinking about this last weekend as I was contemplating my early June trip to visit family and friends in Colorado. For most of my adult life, “home” has meant Colorado. Whether it was Fort Collins during my college days, metro Denver for many years thereafter, or my mountain home in Bailey for the three years before I came to Ukraine, Colorado was the place I always returned to, the place that beckoned my soul, the place I happily called home.

But recently, I’ve not been so sure.

The “Home” that Wasn’t

I grew up in eastern Massachusetts, and although it was the only home I knew in my first 18 years, I never felt like I completely belonged there. I left as soon as possible for navy adventures in places like Guam, California and six years in Japan. And while none of those places could take on the mantle of “home,” I still didn’t really feel a home connection to the place of my birth. In my early years, I could call Massachusetts “home” for lack of a better alternative, but it never had any genuine meaning for me.

After I established myself in Colorado, I would – I could – never again link Massachusetts and home in the same sentence. When my parents referred to my visiting them as “coming home,” I would always refer to the place I grew up as “there,” "your place" or “coming for a visit.” It was always important to me to make it clear that their “home” was not mine. I spent two years back there in the mid-1990s when my father was sick (my mother had already passed away), but I always thought of that as a temporary situation, sort of like living in exile. After my father passed away, and as soon as I was able, I hightailed it back to the mountains.

The Home that Was

I fell in love with Colorado while finishing my degree at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. That small city hadn’t yet become the overcrowded, traffic-ridden mess that it is today, and living there felt perfect. I had a motorcycle and a bicycle, and “Fort Fun” was perfect for either mode of two-wheeling. I could hop on my Silver Wing and zoom off into the mountains on the spur of the moment. It was the ultimate feeling of freedom and being close to nature.

Fort Collins itself was beautiful enough that one didn’t even need to be in the mountains. Bicycling along the Poudre River – or just about anywhere else in town – was a joyful, near-nature experience. During my almost three years there, I was a runner; from spring to fall (and sometimes even in the cold of winter) I ran several times per week, never less than four miles and often as much as eight. I had a 28-inch waist, and I was in the best shape of my life.

In Fort Collins I had marvelous friends and more wonderful experiences than I can count. We were always doing something fun, from summer dinner parties and barbecues to dancing at local clubs or going off into the hills. It was truly one of the best times of my life. But of course, our college days usually feel like that.

Moving to Denver after graduation and getting into the regular working grind did take a bit of the luster off everything, but even living in that city was far better than city life just about anywhere else. Denver was a newer city, younger and more vibrant than anything on the East Coast, and at that time it wasn’t so crowded. Coloradans seemed to have a good sense of values, something that meant a lot to me. And perhaps best of all, the wild nature of the Rocky Mountains was always just a short drive away.

And to take advantage of that wild nature, I became a four-wheeler, first with a tough little Ford Bronco II and later with a couple of great Nissan trucks. I splurged on a new mountain bike and put a lot of miles on it over the years, both on the many metro-area bike paths and off-road in the mountains. Although I didn’t run as much anymore, I became a regular at several health clubs, and for a while I played a lot of organized softball.

At the health clubs I developed a great circle of friends with whom I had a lot of wonderful times and made many memories. Some of those friendships have been the longest-lasting in my life, persevering to this day even though I’ve been largely absent for the past eight years.

Perhaps best of all was my three years living in a mountain retreat home in Bailey, a little hamlet nestled in the foothills southwest of Denver. I’ve written a lot about that place, so I won’t go into great detail about it except to reiterate that it was the most peaceful place I’ve called home in my entire life. I had nature all around me all the time. It was almost perfect.

And even before I had that house, I always had the mountains nearby for camping, hiking and just experiencing nature in all its beauty. Colorado had always been good for my soul.

“Home” Away from Home?

For the past eight years, I have lived full-time as an expatriate in eastern Ukraine. With a completely different culture and language, and a climate more like Massachusetts than Colorado, it’s hard to say that Kharkiv is really “home.” Yet somehow it has managed to keep me here far longer than I ever would have thought.

Perhaps what keeps me here is just that I’ve grown accustomed to my life here, the work I do, the people I know. I mentioned in my post, Ten Years of Ukraine, that during my first visit I had the feeling that I could live here. Needing a change, I went with that feeling, and I am still living it. But I still can’t truly equate Kharkiv to “home.” Something is missing.

Maybe this is the curse of being an expat: you never have a real sense of being “home.” Not feeling grounded, at home, in their native countries is a big part of what sends expats off to seek fulfillment elsewhere. Sure, there is that romantic notion of going off for great adventures, but I’d wager that what sends most expats off to other lands is a feeling of detachment from what they had always been told was home.

And this brings me back to my original question: Is Colorado really home for me anymore?

Homewrecking

During my visits to Colorado in recent years, I’ve seen changes that sadden me. But in truth, it’s been happening longer than just the past five or so years. Metro Denver has turned into an unsightly sprawl of suburban homes and retail businesses, busy roads and masses of people. Always more and more people. The main roads into the mountains, which were crowded enough 10 or even 20 years ago, seem to be absolutely choked now, especially on weekends.

Increasingly, these people fill up the cities, and a number of them move into wilder areas, creating little communities where there used to be wildlife – wildlife that still feels that these areas are their homes. When a mountain lion, faced with shrinking habitat, wanders into some new crackerjack-box housing community in the foothills and makes off with someone’s precious little chihuahua, poodle or pomeranian, they immediately call for the authorities to track down and kill the cat. Bears who scrounge garbage barrels where there used to be wild glades of berry bushes are labeled nuisances and either relocated or killed. The people talk about “living close to nature,” but when nature does what comes naturally, they want to extinguish it. Hypocrites!

Admittedly, I also was a migrant to Colorado from another part of the country, so my rant against all these later migrants might seem a bit hypocritical at first glance. I understand that. But I loved Colorado from the beginning, and I never wanted to change Colorado to "suit" me. When I lived in the mountains and had elk, deer, foxes, and even lions and bears around, I was ecstatic. I was careful with my trash to avoid conflicts with the native residents, especially bears, and I viewed myself as a guest on their land.

During my first years in Colorado, drivers seemed to be pretty polite and considerate. But as an increasing number of people migrated from other places (especially Californians), not only have the snow and mountain driving skills of the population diminished, but road courtesy has been replaced with four-wheeled idiocy and an “it’s my road, get out of my way” attitude.

Over the decades, Colorado – and particularly metro Denver – has veered to the political left. It’s amazing how many people from other states, especially California, became dissatisfied with the mess liberal government policies made of their states and decided to escape to Colorado. And then once in Colorado, they supported the same kind of fiscal and social actions that had eventually rendered their previous homes unlivable.

Nowhere has this more apparent than with the way illegal immigration has been handled. In the late ‘80s and through the ‘90s, we had to put up with the increasing phone message, “Press one for English, presione dos para Español.” And it got worse as self-checkout lines at supermarkets began doing the same. Legal immigrants didn’t need that; it was done for the benefit of people who had broken the law and crowded into the country illegally. Businesses and even the government (at all levels) were (and are) enabling lawbreakers. Denver and other cities became “sanctuary cities,” governments that defy federal law and allow illegal aliens to be protected from prosecution for their law-breaking.

And why not? The federal government doesn’t care about the immigration laws anyway. The United States is supposed to be a nation of laws, but more and more, government – from federal to local – seems to believe that laws only apply against their political adversaries. It sounds like Ukraine.

And, yeah, Colorado was the first state to legalize recreational use of marijuana, which a lot of more conservative people think is a step toward drug hell. But I am more ambivalent about it than anything else. To be honest, being more of a libertarian, it makes sense to me to legalize and tax it.

But that aside, maybe this leftward move is the way the majority of people living in Colorado want it now. Perhaps the movement of people from other places has permanently changed the Colorado I have loved. It could be that I just don't fit in there anymore.

Often, I think that when the time comes for me to return to the U.S. (and I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately), Colorado might not be the place for me anymore. Maybe some little mountain town would still be OK. But I have my doubts. It’s occurred to me lately that perhaps Wyoming, Montana, Idaho or Utah would better suit me now. I don’t know a soul in those places, but maybe that doesn’t matter.

Where is the Heart?

We equate the heart to our feelings of love, generally meaning love for the special people in our lives. When we say that “home is where the heart is,” does it mean a place that we love? Is it about loving gorgeous mountain vistas, pastoral countrysides or the awesome power of an ocean coast? Or is it about our closest people, the ones we love most, being in that place?

If it is about the people, then what does my complete disdain for Massachusetts in my early years say about my relationship with my family? I guess that answer is pretty clear.

Colorado, perhaps, was both about love for the place and the people closest to me. At the beginning of my Colorado life I got divorced, and although there were a few short relationships along the way, there was never anyone who took my heart and kept it, and gave me hers in return. Once I thought there was, but I was wrong.

Friends filled the gap partially, but even the truest of friends can’t be all that you need. Long, dark nights alone still leave a void – a void that makes the heart want to search for something more. And a wanderer is born, an expat.

Family for me now is my two daughters, whom I do love with all my soul, and the beautiful families they are raising. But divorce in their young years, followed by living in different places, created a bit of a chasm. And now their lives are all about their own families, which is as it should be. One lives in Colorado but may well leave for another place in the near future. The other lives in Europe. So in the family respect, the Colorado cupboard is more or less bare.

Colorado still holds a significant spot in my mind and soul, but I am not sure that my heart is really there anymore.

And the same is true for Ukraine. I have friends, very good friends. But they are just friends, and there is still that void. That empty place should move me to pick up and expatriate to some other place. And I have thought about that: Ireland, Argentina… who knows? But maybe I’ve just become tired of searching. Maybe I’ve given up. 

It makes no difference; all I know is that when I look objectively at my life here, I can’t honestly say that my heart is here. Every time I allow myself to believe that perhaps my heart has found a home here, I get jolted back to the reality that it hasn’t.

It seems that my heart is not anchored to any particular place or person. Maybe I've become too accustomed to the void. Maybe my heart has died.

Knowing it by Heart

In a few days, I will be back I Colorado, the place in the world that I know the best. For a little more than two weeks, I’ll spend time with both my daughters and their families, as well as those long-tenured friends who have never given up on me even though I’ve been little more than a Facebook presence in their lives for the past eight or nine years.

I’ll enjoy the drive back and forth between the Denver and Colorado Springs metro areas, and I hope I’ll get up into the mountains a time or two. With any luck, I might even get to do a bit of camping and recapture those priceless memories of opening up to spirit in the Rocky Mountains.

And in the process, I’ll really pay attention to how I feel there. Is Colorado still the place for me? Or has it been just a Season in my life (I suppose places can be “Reasons, Seasons or Lifetimes," just as people can be)? Maybe I will find that, despite all the changes, Colorado is still the place where I belong. Or perhaps I will realize that I need to find a new “home” – if there is still time.

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