...Home    
Home from space...and across the street

Growing up in the suburbs of Detroit would have been perfectly normal for me, but when my father joined the State Department and we moved overseas, "normal" took on a whole new dimension, and forever changed my life. My definition of home was transformed from a bucolic suburban setting to exotic locations half a world away.... yet even the stranger in a strange land feeling soon was replaced with the excitement of new discoveries, recognition and understanding that are part of the daily experience of young children.

As tabula rosa, children generally don't know enough to know better and tend to be more accepting of the unusual and extraordinary - at least that is the way we were raised. One can gain knowledge and understanding in many ways, but the visceral experience of living in other cultures provides a learning perspective that has no peer or substitute.

I have been fortunate to have lived in many places from the United States to Turkey to Nigeria to Ethiopia to Germany, and I think of "home" as a movable feast of wonderful memories and friends from past to present. Here are a few moments from my previous home in upstate NY.

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