So many stops along the road of a lifetime

In the last year or so, I have found myself thinking about the fact that in less than three years, as long as I am still living in Georgia, I will have liven in four different states for at least 10 years each.

It's sort of uncommon. Most people I know have liven in one or two, and a few have made it to three -- one each for childhood, adulthood and retirement.

But not many people have four.

Home in 1962, Huber Heights, Ohio

I found myself thinking it was kind of cool, that I had not just visited places but had stayed in three and soon four of them for at least 10 years. By contrast, in the middle of my life, the period in which I was establishing my career, I lived in seven different states in a little more than eight years.

My friend Mickey is almost the opposite, although not really by design. He has lived in the Los Angeles area for nearly 42 years, all in a handful of apartments within 20 miles or so of each other.

It isn't as if he has never been anywhere, although the next time he travels outside North America will be the first time. Some people never go anywhere, and others go everywhere. My wonderful grandson Lexington Kastner had circumnavigated the globe by air before he was a year old.


My two lovely granddaughters, 9-year-old Madison and 3-year-old Albanie, were born in Beijing and Jamaica. My two children and my wife were born in Toulouse, France.

But my problem is that I don't really feel like I'm from anywhere. I used to think I was from Virginia, where I lived for most of my teens and twenties, where I went to high school and college and where my first marriage lived and died.

All in all, I lived in Virginia for more than half my life up to the point where I left. Some wonderful things happened and so did some terrible ones. Two of my four siblings still live there, and my dad died there at age 82. It's almost home, but I'm not really from there.

When I was young, we used to have to memorize poetry for school. Part of the first poem I ever memorized was "Breathes there the man" by Sir Walter Scott, a poem pretty basically about patriotism. When I was an adolescent, I had two frames on my bedroom wall. One of them was part of Scott's verse and the other was the troop ship that brought my dad back from World War II in 1945.

My dad loved America, and his service in World War II earned him the right to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. I've never done anything that earned me the right to be buried anywhere.

Next May it will be 11 years since his interment there, and it probably won't be too many more years before my mother joins him there. She is 91 and certainly isn't eager to die, but 10-plus years without the love of her life has been a long time.

Arlington National Cemetery

I haven't been back to see my dad's grave, although I have a pass that enables me to enter the cemetery any time, night or day. I'll certainly try to visit a few times once both my parents are there.

Each of them lived in numerous places, but my mother spent the first 18 years of her life in a small town in Ohio and my dad lived from birth till he went off to war in New York City.

Maybe more important, each of them had family living in their hometowns until they were in their sixties.

Our home in Virginia, where we moved in 1963, is the one I returned to from all over the country after I left for my career,  is still in my family, although no one is living in it anymore. My mother is staying with my sister in Boston, and the two siblings still in the D.C. area are keeping track of the house.

My family home in Virginia.

All through high school, the front left window upstairs was the window onto the world from my bedroom. There wasn't really much of a view, but I was glad my room faced west, so I didn't have to deal with the sun in the morning.

It has been nearly eight years since I have been inside that house, and I imagine the next time I am it will be with my siblings going through our parents' things.

The homes that mean the most to me are probably the first and last ones I remember. My grandparents' home in Crestline, Ohio, isn't one I lived in for any length of time, but the weeks I spent there most of the summers of my youth were some of the happiest times I remember.

I played a lot of baseball those summers, and even though I never in my life played on an actual team in an actual league, I saw plenty of action in actual games.

The other houses that stand out for me are what will probably be the last two. I never lived in a better neighborhood than the 16 years I spent in La Canada, California. Nicole and I raised Pauline and Virgile there, and the only reason we moved was that we had too much equity to ignore and too much mortgage left to live well in retirement.

My final home, Griffin, Georgia

Our current home -- which I certainly hope will be our last -- is the newest, most modern and the most amenity-equipped I have ever known.

All sorts of cool stuff -- recessed lighting, a house-wide sound system and more space than two people really need. Best of all, we paid cash for it and have no mortgage at all.

The only thing that's a shame is that our home -- and indeed, Georgia itself -- have no emotional connection for our children. When they come to visit us, they're visiting a house, a town and a state where they never lived.

So where am I from?

Well, I lived more than 20 years in California, and that's where I was born. That's where I had most of my happiest times, my career peak and my first 18 years with Nicole, the love of my life.

Ohio

I lived in Virginia for 17 years, went to high school and college there and lived out my first marriage, aka the Amityville Horror.

In the end, I think it comes down to Ohio. Ages 3-13, elementary school and junior high, two new houses and the birth of my three youngest siblings.

I may be romanticizing -- heck, of course I am -- but nearly all the bad experiences of my life happened later. I remember talking with my cousin Martha at my dad's funeral in 2008, and I asked her one of those goofy questions I seem to ask so often.

She's nine months younger than I am.

"Has your life turned out the way you thought it would?"

She thought about it for a minute.

"Well, I never thought I would leave Ohio."

Yeah. I only lived there 10 years out of more than 68, but if you ask me, that's where I'm from.