I am sitting in one of my favorite haunts in Prague, sipping a cold lager in one of the few true Czech places left in the Mala Strana. And reading this and thinking on it is hitting me hard.
My roots back home aren’t as deep as Brisket’s. At least one branch that dates back to pre-1836 and the rest between statehood and shortly after the Civil War. Almost all of them the typical Scots Irish, people who get bored with something as soon as it’s built and who aren’t happy without something or someone to fight with. And they wandered all over Texas, too. Trying but never mastering anything from farming to wildcatting to running a grocery all over the state from Wise to Ector counties. Before moving south, learning Spanish, and trying to do something along the Rio Grande (getting it ready for the stolid Swedes and Germans who had the tenacity to actually turn the delta into a garden). But aways Texas. Which offered plenty of space to wander and find things to struggle against.
Until it didn’t. And I left and haven’t come back. And my daughters are a marvel, living in 5 and 4 countries in under 12 years. Never blinking at anything foreign, gracious, brave, broad minded. If pressed, home would be the Valley, where their grandparents are and where they spend every summer. But while they think of it as home, it’s clear— home doesn’t think of them the same way. They are not from there and never can be. And when their grandparents are gone, what will it be? Likely just memories of sand and mesquite and bird calls and the big sky.
There’s a cost to the gift of never feeling out of place anywhere— you also never really feel at home. And I wonder at whether they’ll want to keep the gift once the full cost is known.