This I Believe

“Roots and Roads”

This, I believe: I believe in planting roots, and I believe in roaming.

My father was in the Air Force for 25 years, so we moved often, my mom, dad, little sister and I. I loved it: going to new places every one, two or three years; meeting and making new friends; learning new words; tasting new foods; starting fresh. I roamed from the then-Panama Canal Zone, where I was born, to Alabama to Germany and France and then on to other places even after my father retired from the military.

I have lived in a succession of houses, about 45 or so, lovingly cleaned and decorated first by my mother; later, of course, I did those things. Sometimes it was hard to leave a particularly nice house, like the really cool farmhouse with 100 acres in Rockville, Maryland with two whole kitchens, barns, cows, and horses. But when my husband Russ and I drove there many years later with our little boy, it had been demolished. The 100 acres – once home to cows, horses, birds and rabbits – held dozens of precisely built and nearly identical vinyl sided houses. The place I once wished had been the place for my roots was gone. Or the really beautiful chateau in Bas Samois on the River Seine. We lived there for only a year or so, but oh what fun we all had. It had three floors, the top one being a ballroom with a huge (to my four-year-old eyes) fountain and goldfish pond in the middle of the room. It had two gardens, a big musky greenhouse, a big kitchen on the first floor (and another small one for the family on the second floor). My cousin DaniFle, Tom (my 18-year-old-son) and I visited it about seven years ago. What had once been a gracious and beautiful home had been chopped up into five small apartments; the gardens had disappeared and so had the greenhouse. But the River Seine was still there, flowing as gently as it had in my childhood. Though once again my effort to find my roots, my home, had failed, I roamed again, searching.

When people ask me, “Where are you from?”, I answer, “Most everywhere.” And they ask about my roots. I tell them they were in my dad, mom and sister when I was a little girl. Now those roots are in Russ, our son Tom, his wife Sara Beth, and their son (our grandson) Connor. My roots are in all those friends I have who live in England, France, Germany, Japan, California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Mexico, Arizona, Missouri and Illinois. My roots are also in the roads that I roamed and continue to roam, no longer looking for my home. I now call a small town in Illinois my home and have lived in the same house for almost 15 years. I am a teacher, in the same job for nearly 20 years. So I have my roots. I still roam, though, but I always breathe a happy sigh as I drive home down our quiet, tree-lined streets to the house I now call home. I believe in roots and in roads.