Our writer moved ten times before she graduated high school; her kids have always lived on the same block.
Last summer, I pulled into the driveway of a friend’s summer rental in New Hampshire and was transported 30 years back in time. The windows in my car had been up with the A/C on as I drove from New York City, escaping a brutal heatwave. But the moment I opened the car door and breathed in the air, I was flooded with the memory of the last high school I went to. It’s said that smell is the sense most powerfully tied to memory, and mine had just been rocketed back in time by the deep, rich aroma of the surrounding pine forest. It was so overwhelming it nearly made my lungs itch.
I hadn’t been back to New Hampshire in decades. I moved there with my mother, stepfather, and my youngest sibling the summer before tenth grade. It was, coincidentally, the tenth school I had attended—one for every year of my schooling. Some years, I actually attended two schools, and I made it through a year and a half at others, but the math works out more neatly when I say, “ten schools in ten years.” Every time my mother promised this was “the last move,” I believed her a little less. So by the time I arrived in New Hampshire, I was no longer willing to try to fall in love with a place I didn’t feel I’d be able to stay.
Some formative things happened there—some pretty awful, others more run-of-the-mill. Some wonderful things happened there, too; bless New Hampshire for teaching me how to yank my parking brake at exactly the right moment to create a perfect donut in a snowy parking lot, and for giving me the only meaningful relationship of my childhood, with my friend Robyn. She was everything I ever wanted in a friend: smart, wickedly devilish, adventurous, and willing to share her life with me. We kept in touch well into adulthood, when our lives started to pull us apart.
My folks did manage to stay in one place for the last three years of high school. But when I graduated, I ran from the state with no intention of going back. For years, my hatred of New Hampshire was just an amorphous feeling; I never gave it much thought. It sucked. End of story. I got—and honestly, still get—irrationally defensive when someone accuses me of growing up in New Hampshire. “I only lived there for three years!” I will still angrily spit back to this day. I didn’t want it to identify me. New Hampshire is not me. We are different.
Only recently has it occurred to me that the reason I loathe the state (other than its unending winters and its impenetrable, mildly inbred insularity) is that it was the last place I was moved without it being my choice. It’s a totem for what I feel was a wildly unfair childhood. I’m fully aware that I sound immature when I say it was unfair. In the grand scheme of things, I was loved and cared for, which is much more than some kids get. So what if I had to move a lot? But some parts of us have a way of never growing up, and my feelings about this injustice are one of them.
When I’m able to detach myself from my inner child, I understand why my mom made the choices she did. If I put myself into grown-up shoes, I can find a rationale: If you’ve got one modest income and two kids still in the house, you do whatever you can to keep them fed and housed. You’ve seen all the Gen X kids memes: we were sent out of the house and not expected to come back until the streetlights came on, we drank out of the garden hose, we were latchkey kids. We were resilient and adaptable. But we didn’t really have a choice. So, new jobs, new states, new houses, and new schools it was. Again and again, and again, ten times before I left.
At each new school, I learned to get the lay of the land fast. I was uncannily skilled at knowing who ranked where on the social ladder, and where I would fit in. I still can read a room better than anyone I know. Within the first month, I’d establish a friend group or two. In the following months, I’d make it to the honor roll, and genuinely be accepted as a new part of the community. Before the year ended though, my parents would tell me that we wouldn’t be able to stay. A new job or a promotion for my stepdad meant we’d be packing up.
Normally, hints of a move would start creeping in at the dinner table with lots of job talk. As much as I tried to wish it away, my parents would eventually break the news that we’d soon have to go, but not until summer vacation. Hot tears would fill my eyes, and my bedroom door would slam closed to them, along with a little piece of my heart. Sometimes I’d tell my new friends that I’d be moving, but other times I didn’t have it in me. I’d pretend nothing was different and simply vanish after summer break, unable to handle the goodbyes. I’d expertly pack my room, and we’d be off to the next school, where I would repeat the process.
Even though I believe my parents were trying to do their best, as a mother, I decided I would never do this to my kids. The relocating has continued for my mom and stepdad, long after each of us four kids left. During my last phone call with them, I found out that the new house they moved to this winter was back on the market, and there will be a new one as soon as they can get the closing dates worked out. That’ll make three different houses in under a year. I’ve lost track of how many places they’ve lived since I moved out.
I’m approaching my 25th anniversary of living not only in New York City, but in the exact same intersection that whole time. Our first apartment was in a brownstone next to an elementary school, about five houses away from the imposing pre-war brick building where I live now.
I didn’t plan on staying here forever when I arrived as an intimidated 24-year-old with my future husband. It was just a big adventure we were having; I had no idea where it would go, or where we would go. When we had our twins, I only knew one thing for sure: they’d have a life rooted in one place. I wanted them to have an answer when people ask them where they’re from. I wanted them to have a home. They would not be moved around, no matter what I had to do to stay.
I’ve wanted to throw in the towel on this city plenty of times. World-changing events, like the COVID-19 pandemic, have made me want to pack whatever I could fit into our car and drive as far away as I could get—but there was no place for me to run back to. There have been two separations, one reconciliation, one divorce, sick parents, and job loss after job loss.
The year our kids were born, my ex and I split up for the first time. I didn’t make enough money to support us, and I had two little babies, so I had to make choices about which bills to pay. I let the gas bill go unpaid, and it got turned off. I credit my love for my children and the unbelievably kind technician from the gas company, who sent someone to turn it back on after believing my (true) sob story, for getting us through. The first exhausting year of their lives, I hustled hard and pitched myself for a job that I probably didn’t deserve yet. My drive and desire to give my kids the life that I wanted for them must have been effective, because I got that job. If I hadn’t, though, I would have found another way.
Anytime the thought of a move has come up—because of an exciting opportunity in another state, or the need for more space—I’ve asked my kids what they wanted. Of course, I know parents sometimes have to be the ones to make the decisions, and kids have to accept that, but not this one for me. Even when a move would benefit them, by getting each their own room, or the chance to have a long-wished-for dog, they’ve chosen to stay. I’ve respected their opinions and kept them in our sweet apartment. The same home we brought them back to from the hospital after they were born.
Unsurprisingly, these big feelings have surfaced because my twins are about to enter their senior year of high school. Soon, they’ll let me take their very last first-day-of-school picture on the stoop where every first-day-of-school picture has been taken. It’s a sentimental time. The babies whose faces I stared at and wondered who they’d turn into are near-adults who I’ve helped to form, in good ways and bad.
I think a hell of a lot about the things I’ve done right as a parent, and what I wish I could have done better. But my kids have only changed schools when all kids usually do: from elementary school to middle school, and then on to high school. We still live across the street from their elementary school (the one next to my first brownstone apartment), where their old teachers ask me about “the twins” when we see each other around the neighborhood.
Next year, my kids will be graduating with friends who were in their kindergarten class. They will have lifelong friends—something I’ve never had. When that thought first crossed my mind last month, as they finished out their junior year, I realized that I am the reason they had that. I’m really proud that I was able to give them that one thing. I know that home can be wherever you make it. I’ve made a home in every place I’ve ever lived. But for my kids and me, home has always been just this one apartment in Brooklyn, where their heights have been marked on the kitchen wall ever since they could stand.
When my kids leave, a whole new life will open up to me, too. I could stay, or I could move. I’ve imagined a world of different possibilities for myself when I no longer have kids living with me. I could pick my life up and put it down anywhere in the world. I think for a while, though—until they’ve made a home of their own—I’ll stick it out in ours. Because I don’t only need a home for them. I need it for me, too.
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Lili Zarghami lives with her teenagers in Brooklyn. She’s been writing for and providing editorial direction at women’s websites like Redbook, HGTV, Better Homes & Gardens and more since the turn of the century. She can remember the addresses of all the places she was a latchkey kid but has no idea what her email password is.
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