Thoughts on state pride, being displaced, and homesickness

We know a thing or two about state pride, and also how it feels to be living somewhere other than "home" and the homesickness that goes along with that. To say nothing of being thousands of miles away from loved ones.

You see, my husband and I met in my home state, California, and lived here for a while. While in the Air Force he had been sent to Edwards Air Force Base after being injured overseas, and once he was released from the hospital he decided to move to Los Angeles. So that's where we met, in Hollywood.

We moved in together soon after we met. It was great. We had loads of fun. I got to share with him many of the things about my home state that I loved and cherished.

But then he decided he wanted to move back to his home state, Florida, to spend some time with his parents and brothers, since he hadn't seen them for a long time while he was on active duty. So off we went.

I had never lived anywhere but California, so this was a big, exciting adventure--moving 3,000 miles away, seeing the OTHER coast, traveling cross country, going through a lot of new states, etc.

We had a great time in Florida, too. We lived on its west coast, in the Tampa/Clearwater area. We got married off the coast on a little, uninhabited island called Honeymoon Island.

While the Florida beaches were certainly beautiful, I felt like something was missing...and it was: mountains. Florida was FLAT! And the palm trees were...different. And the air was...different: HUMID! I never knew such humidity existed. In southern California, everybody complains about the humidity when it's like...oh, TEN PERCENT.

And then there were the bugs! Oh my goodness. A friend had warned me about palmetto bugs (also known as cockroaches), but until I actually saw one I had no idea how huge those things were. They scared the crap out of me.

Anyway, we did a lot of fun things in Florida, including visiting Cape Canaveral and traveling to its east coast. We also frequently went to MacDill AFB where my husband had medical evaluations regarding his service-related injury. It was easily decided that he could never return to active duty due to the nature of his injury, which left him permanently, partially disabled. So they kept evaluating the injury to decide what classification of disability to assign him; it finally ended up at 40%, compensable.

We decided to move back to California, so we once again set off for a cross-country drive. But things didn't work out the way we planned! For one thing, our very old VW van burned to the ground in Killeen, Texas. We had stopped there to visit friends who were stationed at Ft Hood, and one day on our way back to their house--on a ranch, at the end of a long, dirt road--a rock hit the gas tank and the van caught fire. We all got out safely--including our dog, our cat, and the friends who were traveling with us--but the van was a total loss. Of course, we only had liability insurance, so we were screwed. We were young, broke, and stuck in the middle of Texas.

We ended up making our way to Albuquerque where some friends from California and Florida were currently living. We rented a house and lived in Albuquerque for a while; it was beautiful, with the Sandia mountains nearby. But I'm not cut out for cold weather, so winter was tough.

And then, we did the unimaginable...we moved to Dallas. It's a long boring story how that came about, but suffice to say that the reasons seemed compelling at the time, and our plans only included staying for a few months.

But life threw us a curve we wanted, but hadn't expected just yet: I was pregnant. It quickly became obvious that moving was out of the question, so we resigned ourselves to staying in Dallas for the foreseeable future.

Months turned into years and years turned into decades. My husband had great jobs and I went to college while our daughter was in elementary and junior high school. We ultimately bought a beautiful house in a far North Dallas suburb. After college I had an amazing job--not at all related to my field of study, which was pre-med, but fulfilling and fun--as I transitioned the furniture store chain I worked for off of their IBM System/3 mainframe and onto a multi-location, multiuser UNIX system. I did all the programming and system administration. I had an absolute blast. That was my favorite job ever. I was on call 24 hours a day--and had a dedicated modem line in my house (back before most people knew what modems were) with a terminal connected to the server in my office. I LOVED every second of it.

But that was about the ONLY thing I loved--or even liked--about living in Texas. Sorry, but I am not cut out to live in the south. I found Texas to be backwards, way too conservative for my liking, and oppressive in a number of ways--both socially and in terms of its miserable weather. I constantly thought about how much I missed my home, California, and wanted to move back. But there were always circumstances that kept that from happening, such as the amazing jobs I had.

After the furniture store job I was offered the position of programmer and supervisor (over all employees except the owner of the company) at a data processing company. I took it. It paid a lot of money, and the fringe benefits were incredible: I got to bring my "little boy" (my 182 pound Great Dane) to work with me. What wasn't to like?!

So time marched on, our daughter went off to college, graduated, then moved to England for a year.

I continued longing for home. I got satellite TV and watched the local channels from Los Angeles. I paid for NBA League Pass so I could watch every Lakers game. I had personalized license plates and bumper stickers that said I was a California native. I didn't do it consciously, but I continually drew comparisons between Texas and California--and Texas was always the loser. I visited my family in CA, of course, and always became very sad when it was time to go back to TX. In short...I was unhappy where I was living, and I missed my home state.

Fast forward to now. Back in my beloved Southern California, it's almost as if I never left. The San Gabriel mountains that I grew up looking at every day are right there. The beautiful beaches of the Pacific ocean are a short drive away. Palm Springs and its surrounding desert areas are still there and just as beautiful and inviting as ever--although a bit more developed; the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway that takes you 8500 feet up Mt San Jacinto is just as fascinating and awe-inspiring as it ever was. Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Hollywood, and the zillions of other things to do and see are still here. The weather--the wonderful, temperate-all-year-round weather is still here, and the chokingly bad smog of my youth is long gone.

What I learned over the years is that some people LIKE living in states other than where they're from, but some people--like me--just never adjust. The entire time I lived in Texas I felt like a fish out of water. I NEVER thought of it as "home," nor did I want to.

To account for the variety of feelings people have about the states they're living in, we came up with a number of designs with state themes.

For people who are proud to be natives of their home states--whether they're currently living there or not--we have our lines of "state natives" and "state grown" merchandise.

For those not living in their home states but who like the state they're in, we have our line of "I wasn't born here, but I got here as fast as I could!" merchandise.

Finally, for people living in different states than their loved ones, there's our line of "Someone in [your state] loves me" merchandise.

So, whether you're a native happily living in your home state, or a displaced native, or happy to be in your adopted state, or have loved ones living in a different state, you can express your feelings with these designs.