My homebody hero

I used to pity or look down on people who lived in one place their whole lives. The tedium! The claustrophobia! The sameness of all your friends! Those people don’t know what they’re missing. 

But maybe I was the one missing something. I'm realizing that staying somewhere can have less to do with laziness or fear than with faithfulness. There’s something beautiful about saying to a town and the people in it, “Forget the others - I commit to you. Not because you’re superior to all your counterparts, not because you offer me the most adventure or comfort or opportunity, but simply because I love you.” 

I’m a little bit in awe and a little bit jealous of my grandma, Irene Hoeltje, for how she’s said this with her life for 95 years and counting. Born and raised in Peoria, Illinois, to my knowledge she’s never left for longer than a week or two. And for the past nearly 20 years, she’s been in a retirement community built on the land of her grandfather and father’s farm, where she lived for years as a child. In fact, her apartment stands exactly where the farmhouse once did.

Paintings of the farmhouse and barn are prominently displayed in her living room

Faithfulness describes my grandma in more ways than one. She's technically my step-grandma, having married my mom's dad in 1983 after they were both were widowed. The two couples had been friends for decades and had attended the same Lutheran church that whole time. Although she already had three adult children and a bunch of grandchildren, she welcomed my grandpa's family as her own. Since the day I was born she's been as warm and loving a grandmother to me as anyone could hope for. She played with me, quilted for me, read all my Cambodia newsletters, and goodness knows how many hundreds of times she's prayed for me. When my grandpa had a severe stroke months after they moved in here, she devotedly loved and cared for him for two years until his death, just as she'd poured herself out for her first husband in his illness. 

That doesn't mean she never traveled. In the photo next to the barn painting, you can see her with my grandpa on a trip to Italy. My siblings and I loved their annual visits to our house in Vermont. But mostly, she stuck pretty close to home. On my trip to Peoria last month - the first in far too long - I bemoaned the fact that I was flying in and out of Chicago, three hours away, with no time to sight-see. I asked her what her favorite Chicago activities had been. Her response was, in effect, "Who wants to go way up there?" Answer: my grandpa, for the baseball games. (He would've loved seeing the Cubs win the World Series, which started days after I left.) But he was otherwise a lot like her. Another lifelong Peoria resident, he retired from the same paper company where he'd gotten his first job at age 16 to help support his struggling family. They both chose depth over breadth: loving and investing in the people around them for the long haul. 

Grandma's whole family seems to have learned from her. A cousin lives in the same retirement community, one street over. Her three children, and most of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, live within 15 minutes of her. (There are exceptions: one grandson moved to the Ukraine for a while and married a woman from there, and a few are now in other states.) Many of them gather every Sunday at her apartment for lunch. When Grandpa died in 1999, Irene's granddaughter Alyssa was newlywed and moving into her first purchased home - the house where Grandpa had raised my mom. Irene's daughter Linda visits her daily to help with meals and other tasks, and Irene's sons come by frequently too. Linda and her husband Joe are equally devoted to Joe's large extended family in Peoria, and between family, colleagues, and church, they seem to be friends with the whole town. Although we all really love each other, I've never lived in the same town as any of my extended family - or the same state as most of them, for that matter - and I find that kind of close-knit family impressive.

Aunt Linda, Grandma, and me in October

Grandma remains faithful to my family, even though her own descendants surround her and she can't travel to see us anymore. During our time together, she had limited mobility, low energy, and a fair amount of joint pain. But instead of complaining, she peppered me with questions about my parents, siblings, and nephews. "I miss them," she kept saying. "I hope they can visit soon." 

I asked her about the most important things she'd learned over the years. "Be grateful. Be humble. Love people. Be faithful." She's learned those, all right. Her whole life demonstrates them.

Now that I've lived in multiple locations, and the people I love are scattered, I’m not sure I could ever be that devoted to one place. Unless I want to be heartless and cruel, it’s too late for me. I can say to Doylestown and its residents, “We go way back and you’ve been good to me. I love you and I’m going to fight to be emotionally present as long as I’m here.” I can say to Phnom Penh and its residents, “You’re my adopted home, my srok jing-jeum, and I’m willing to say no to a lot of things and people to say yes to you.” But the truth is, even if I plopped down somewhere tomorrow and never again left it for a moment, pieces of my heart are already strewn across the world. I've been on the move since before I could walk, with stints in Vermont, New York, and Munich by age 3. There's been a lot of richness to my travels, and I wouldn't trade them, but sometimes I have to stop and mourn. With limits of time and geography, there's just no way I can be there for everyone I care about, to nearly the extent that I'd like.

Quote by Miriam Adeney, image by ... Google?

That's why I envy Grandma, despite the losses she's endured. Nearly all her favorite people who are still on earth live practically in her backyard. I'm realizing that like me, she traded some good things for something she valued even more. And her choice is a beautiful one. But even if practical constraints weigh on my friendships, even if my destiny is to be more nomad than homebody, maybe I can still walk in her footsteps of faithfulness to God and to others. Maybe I can still choose to love people the very best I know how, for as long as possible, as often as possible. 

Be grateful. 

Be humble. 

Love people. 

Be faithful. 

Words to live by, whether I'm packing up again or parking for the long haul.