Where Did You Grow Up?

I grew up in the suburbs of London, England & loved going into the city on weekends, seeing shows in the west end, walking along the thames, and feeling like a city kid! as well as being close to family and spending every other evening at my grandparent’s house a few miles away.
I did however, crave open spaces and the ocean and every time we went to the sea, I would wish to live by the ocean!

When it came time to choose a university, I picked one in a city by the sea surrounded by countryside. I loved it and met my partner here and we ended up staying – it is 8 years this year! Sometimes I think about moving elsewhere in the UK and I do miss the culture of London (though we visit often to see friends and family!) but having access to countryside, forests and the ocean within 10 minutes of home is amazing and we feel even more grateful for it since the pandemic. In the summer, we finish work and head straight to the ocean to swim – it’s beyond my wildest childhood dreams!

I grew up in a very suburban town in Maryland, between Baltimore and DC. It was great as a child in the ’80s — lots of bike paths, lots of time spent climbing trees and and exploring by the creek, and we always walked to elementary school along paths through the woods, which I loved. But by high school, I was so done — there was no downtown (just the mall!), hardly any non-chain restaurants or charming cafes (or any cafes), all the dull early-’70s buildings looked the same, there was no history, you had to drive everywhere. I went to college in the Bay Area and discovered San Francisco, and neighborhoods full of Craftsman houses, and the glories of western-state road trips. And then I moved north to Seattle, which is beautiful, and similar in many ways to Northern CA (nature-loving, liberal, distinctive neighborhoods, lots of bookstores and coffee shops) but less urban and with more seasons (and of course much more gray damp weather). While I haven’t been here ever since — my now-husband and I moved around for a while longer — we’ve been back now for 15 years, and are very settled with our two kids and their schools and friends, and even when I’m tired of damp gray, it’s hard to imagine where else we’d live. It’s been funny for me to have Pacific Northwest kids who think cool wet weather is normal and over 75 F is really hot.

My mother remarried after a divorce when I was 5 and I don’ have many memories before then. My stepfather adopted me so I have his name now. My new father was a field topographer in the western division of the USGS and beginning the summer before I started first grade, we typically moved twice a year around the seven western states Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, California and Arizona. Since he did outdoor work updating the details of USGS topographic maps, we generally moved with the seasons, north in the summers and south in the winters. Sometimes, due to circumstances beyond my control, we moved more than twice a year. In fourth grade I went to four schools in four states. On two occasions we moved less because my mother decided we would spend a whole year in one place for senior year. Since I had an older brother, I was lucky enough to spend a year and a half in one school when he was a senior and another year in one place when I was a senior. I ended up moving to new schools 26 times in grade school and only 5 times in high school.
We usually lived in isolated places with small schools I went to several schools with two grades in one room and once went to a two-room school with four grades in each room. I graduated high school in a class of 19 which was the number of seniors provided by a collection of four nearby towns. Although I only spent a summer there so didn’t attend school, I lived in one Utah town that was so small and isolated that they didn’t even have a high school and the kids were all sent to a state run boarding school.
I learned a lot of things moving around as a kid. The most important was that in the first couple of days at a new school, I had a very short period of time to become an in or an out kid. I learned to usually become an in by the somewhat draconian process of first befriending the class loser (easy to identify since he had no friends) who could teach me the social structure of the group – then you had to dump that loser and befriend the top of the social pyramid. I also learned how to be a chameleon to fit in. I still quickly adopt the characteristics of any group I find myself in and try to blend in. I am very good a chatting up strangers but not so good at developing lasting friendships. I really hated the first day at a new school and still break out in an anxious sweat when joining new groups.
Another interesting thing is how many small towns work. In a small town everybody tends to know everybody else’s business. This can make people more tolerant. Neighbors overlook each other’s shortcomings for their mutual benefit.
I tell people I didn’t grow up in any place.

I grew up in Gravel Switch, KY.

Go ahead, google it. It’s there.

I guess I should clarify, that’s where I physically grew up as well as went through the emotions of adolescence and puberty. I did a lot of mental growing there as well. Son of farmers, working on the farm, working in the family business helping out on other’s farms. I was never, ever fulfilled. I knew I was destined for more, to grow out of the meager upbringings and into something bigger. The rural setting, the “we-had-everything-we-needed-but-still-teetered-on-poor”, that’s ingrained in my soul, and I grew there. I learned how to make supper on the cheap, I learned how to do laundry and cook and lots of things that are considered “mom’s work” because while I had a wonderful mother and father, they worked hard and I had to learn how to help them.

I really grew up in college.

With a strong base of hard work ethic, I went off to college, a full paid ride patchworked through several scholarships and a work-study program. I took that hard work, I took the domestic skills I figured out for myself, and I took the only aptitude I had and I plowed headfirst into a major that made me hate it by the end of my four years. I could do my laundry, I could make food, and I could work hard, but after many years of being academically pressured so I could get out of the holler and into something better, I just collapsed when it came to school. I got out with a 3.0, but that was barely, and it was mostly on the backs of classes like Music in Film. GPA boosters that covered the fact I wasn’t great at writing code and detested it by the end of 4 years there.

But I found work, and other than a couple of weeks between jobs, and a 3-week-pandemic-layoff, I’ve been employed consistently for the last 17 years. And that’s the last place I grew up. I had to learn to get my ass up every morning, to put the right food in me so I didn’t die, enough of the right liquids and usually too much of the wrong liquids in me so I could both function and then forget the slog I went through. Lots of relationships (one finally stuck a couple of years ago) as well, mostly committed but light on the depth for the longest time. That was the last growing up. Learning to love me and to teach someone how to love me the way I needed it, and to reciprocate that effectively.

I’m 35 now. I’m all growed up.

I grew up in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood of New York City. I and my friends were free range kids. There was always something going on at the playground across the street. This was the baby boom, so there were always lots of kids for a game of punch ball or running around like lunatics. When I was older, we could walk down to LaGuardia Airport, get old weather maps from the bureau and watch the planes take off and land up close. There was also a glimpse of another world; I still remember the amazing display of knives at the Hofritz airport gift shop. We’d walk over to Astoria where there was a chicken slaughterhouse with chickens running around or down to the Howard Johnson’s on Queens Boulevard for ice cream sodas.

Then there was the subway which took me and my friends into Manhattan where I went to high school. There were museums, art movie houses, cheap ethnic eats and vibrant street life. Being nerds, we’d haunt the scientific surplus stores – three test tubes for a quarter. In high school, We hiked from the northern tip of Manhattan Island to the Battery at the south end. Once, we hiked over the George Washington Bridge and along the Palisades to the New York State border.

Living in the city, I quickly learned that there were people fantastically richer and people fantastically poorer, and that people came from all over the world. My old neighborhood was an ethnic mix back then with Italians, Irish and Jews, Chinese and Cubans, Ukraniians and Russians. A Russian friend told me how is father escaped from a Nazi POW camp. There was a Black neighborhood, probably red lined, a few blocks from my house and Hispanics opening Argentinian steakhouses and Peruvian restaurants. The neighborhood is more heavily Hispanic now, and Main Street, a few subway stops away is now little Hong Kong. When I go back to New York City, I mainly stay in Manhattan, but I follow the news from my old neighborhood which was hard hit by COVID.

I grew up in a few places, as part of an Air Force family. That is to say that I grew up belonging to no place. It’s true that we didn’t move as much as other military families (due to family illness), but I always knew wherever we were living was temporary. The house was temporary, the friends were temporary. For the longest time as an adult, when people asked me where I was from, I didn’t have an answer.

With the military, you can live in some absolutely amazing places, and some dead boring ones. We had both. My first four years were shaped by undulating wheat fields, open skies, mountains, oceans, evergreens, and the smell of fish in Pike Place Market. The next three were probably the most formative: thousand-year-old castles and cathedrals, the ability to visit a new country and language in just an hour’s drive. Those seven years have pretty well shaped the rest of my life.

The next 10 years were at a base in the rural Midwest, which was a shock, especially in the depressed early ’80s. I distinctly remember driving the three hours from my grandparents’ house to our new base in a place that was flat, brown and bleak, with stores out of business and shuttered car factories. I wanted to leave from day 1, and spent most of my time dreaming about where we’d go next.

That said, there are benefits to military bases (and probably every small town back then) that I wish I could offer my child now. It was a very safe environment, and I could run and bike up and down the street to friends’ houses without supervision. (I fear this is completely gone in North America, though it still exists in Germany and my child got to experience it there.) We also lived fairly close to my grandparents’ farm in a neighboring state, and I have fond memories of being around the farm, picking vegetables and learning to count change in their farm market. Halloween was the best, as the market was in an old barn which we decorated. My grandfather had strung a rubber spider up on a string above the checkout, and if you played it just right (I was usually too impatient), you could really scare someone. I learned to drive on their farm, both tractors and trucks, pretty much as soon as I could reach the pedals.

But I got out as soon as I could, and haven’t gone back, except to my grandparents’ farm. Funny thing, though I’ve lived in cities all over the world as an adult, in the end I’ve spent the most time in the Northwest and Germany, shaped by my early experiences.

I grew up in Hemet, California. In the early 70s about 10,000 people lived there, many of them retirees. In the summer it was hot, really hot, 115+ degrees sometimes and the pavement burned your bare feet. We’d have dirt clod and walnut fights (unripened walnuts are deadly missiles), build forts from tumbleweeds, run in the sprinklers, catch horny toads and drink out of the hose. In the winter there would be cars in the stores’ parking lots, just down from the mountain, a thick pack of snow on top of their roofs. When you grow up in the desert, snow is a wondrous thing, and we would have snowball fights right there in the Alpha Beta parking lot. I hated living there in high school but I look back on it now with a lot of nostalgia.

I grew up in many places. We are a military family, air force. before I was 18 we had lived in 2 countries and 8 different states. I’ve never lived in one place longer than 4 years. one was six years. we lived on base and off base. I learned how to talk local. I have no accent. I can make friends and I can leave them though I know where they all are. our family did things many other families could not do. I saw things many families never see. I would not trade my life for anyones…

Joanna, I’m pretty sure we grew up in similar areas so posts like these warm my heart. PLEASE tell me you’re talking about the Franklin Cider Mill!!!

I grew up in rural NorCal, in the foothills of the Sierras in a town that was then so small it had one 4 way stop & no zip code, despite being 30 minutes from the nearest post office. We lived in a house my dad built (hammer, nails, etc.) on 5 acres and until I was 14, could not see another house from my house. It was mostly great but very quiet. Loud, nature wise – coyotes, rattle snakes, bullfrogs and barn owls (my god, so so loud!). And, very conservative. I felt like a weirdo for not doing 4-H (I couldn’t bring myself to sell an animal at market) or thinking that faith was something you quietly lived versus loudly said. We rode bikes, ran from rattlesnakes, and tried to get the antennae on the roof just-so so that Family Ties wasn’t scratchy but crystal clear cuz: Alex P. Keaton! We got exactly 3 TV channels. I’ve still never seen the simpsons or bev niner. Our parcel was at the end of a dirt road & our nearest neighbors grazed cattle and sheep. We took looong (11-12 hours ugh) road trips to see our grandparents in SoCal & had a ski boat so spent half the year waterskiing at local lakes. Saw a lot of california & mostly felt safe & lucky. then our parents got divorced when we were 17 & 22 & my mom sold the house, so, kinda no looking back. It was a great place to be a kid but tougher to be an adult. The pandemic has made me so so grateful to have grown up fairly isolated & with slim to no technology — I still crave solitude & that’s served me really well as we go through this. Plus, I just do not get bored. I know how to entertain myself with…not a lot to do (: I like it and yet, don’t much visit. I went to a small college in a big city, and then worked & lived in Germany & China. After China I was crazy homesick & surprised they I was homesick for my hometown, so I flew back & two of my childhood homies drove me out there & it was what I needed, and sad, too. It is/was very different from where I live now and I definitely want to live in the country again someday. I knew that my whole life. That one day I’d see the world & run around catching connecting flights, and eventually, I hope to be back in the boonies again. Wrapping pipes to get the well through the winter and falling asleep under a blanket of the brightest stars to a chorus of crickets.

I grew up in a small town in North East Wisconsin. Crivitz had exactly 996 residents and was a popular summer destination for the Southern Wis. and Illinois folks. You knew that you had to go to the only grocery store during the week, never a weekend, or else you wouldn’t find a majority of the things on your list. I currently live in Appleton, which is 80 miles south of Crivitz. Whenever I tell people where I’m originally from, they always say “Oh I (my family member/friend)have a cabin on Lake Noquebay!”

I grew up in Lafayette, a suburb of San Francisco. As a teenager I found it a bit stifling, and ached to get to “the City” whenever I could, but looking back now through adult eyes, I can see how bucolic it was, and privileged I was. The town was small, surrounded by rolling golden hills that would be covered with poppies in the spring. We’d go cardboard sliding down the hills like sledding. The town was once full of fruit and walnut orchards.My siblings and I would run through the fields, staining our clothing with mustard plants. We’d ride our bikes to school, the library, the local swim club. Everyone know everyone, at the grocery stores, the seafood restaurants, the Little League field. It was a great place to grow up…we never locked the front door! It’s now become a booming suburb, and very affluent, and not in a good way.

I grew up in Houston on a street full of kids. Houston was playing kickball on a dead-end street and “hide from cars” on summer nights when we were allowed to stay out after dark. Everyone lived in their front yards and garages. A dad only had to prop up the hood of his car, and every man on the block came over and started consulting. This led to impromptu pizza or burger parties. Every Halloween, my dad and our preacher staged a spookhouse in our garage that ALL the kids visited. Our neighborhood was swarmed with kids trick or treating and our group, ranging from 3 years old to 10, roamed for blocks, completely safe, until the year The Candyman ruined trick or treating forever. Every Christmas Eve, we girlfriends swam in Sam’s pool, then went caroling on our street with bare feet and wet hair. We thought that was very funny. We rode our banana-seat bikes to stores near us until we graduated to 10-speeds. We went to glossy, over-air-conditioned shopping malls. We had a lot of freedom because things were so accessible.

At 15, we moved to a semi-rural area outside Fort Worth. Moving at 15 is terrible. I hated North Texas, it wasn’t green like Houston. There were no pine trees. My first day there, we went to the home of the preacher of our new church and I flopped into the grass which was spikey, not soft and flowing like Houston grass. The preacher’s niece said, “You’re going to get chiggers.” Chiggers?? What the hell was that? I was a big city kid. The houses in our neighborhood, which wasn’t even a subdivision, were further apart and so the neighbors didn’t socialize as much. We could not walk or bike anywhere and were really stuck or dependent on our parents until we could drive. We had to take the bus to school (in Houston, we walked or our mother drove us and all the other kids on the block, too). The school had its own football stadium (Houston ISD provided only a couple of stadiums that were shared by all schools), played out-of-town games against small-town teams, and had a homecoming parade which I found provincial and hilarious and stupid. So did all my big-city friends when I wrote them letters or was allowed to call them long-distance on Sundays when the rates were lower. Since there was nothing to do close by, no roller rinks or movie theaters, kids had illegal keg parties at the nearby lake. It wasn’t until I was away at college in Austin, a “poor” student living on my own, that I began to appreciate what I had and how fun high school had been, and could see some of the natural beauty in the area. It really is not an immediately beautiful area to most outsiders. It takes years to see it. And I had made lifelong friends by that point.

I moved back to the area and started my adult life. Then my parents moved back to Corpus Christi (our family’s true home) and my brother took a job back in Houston and I was left alone in the area I hated. I moved into Fort Worth. Though it was MUCH smaller than Houston, and not funky like Austin, it was a city and I finally felt like I belonged again. Now, I would not live anywhere else in Texas. I love that it’s too cold here to swim outside on Christmas Eve and sometimes it snows, that there isn’t much traffic in the city proper (much more in the suburbs!). We have fabulous museums and a growing restaurant and gallery scene. I’ve actually watched as this city has awakened and come into its own. Politically, I don’t belong here at all. But I still have Texas in my heart and can’t leave. Yet.

I moved around a lot as a kid but I consider rural Minnesota my childhood home. I don’t still live there and I don’t go visit that particular town in MN because my family has since moved to a more suburban area of MN. I now live in suburban New York. But I definitely miss it. I remember the freedom of being in a rural area as a kid, I could go where ever my bike would take me. My friends and I’d bike 13 miles around the lake, spend full days on the beach or boats, in the winter we’d get snowed in, go ice skating, sledding, snowmobiling. I feel like in many ways life was simpler out there, and I’d love to get back to that.

I grew up in Austin, TX and I absolutely loved it– going to Austin City Limits with my friends in high school, walks around town lake, going to art camps by UT as a child, painting canvases as big as I was. Now every time I come home I feel like it changes more and more. My husband and I have always wanted to move back home, but now I don’t think we can afford to do it within the city limits even though we both grew up close to downtown. It seems Austin has become one of the trendiest places to live. I always say, I don’t want to move to what I think a lot of people view Austin as, I just want to move back home. Maybe one day!

I grew up in very small town in Northumberland in the UK, we are the border between Scotland and England so it’s a strange mix of accents and heritages. It’s also the home of Alnwick castle which was used as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films! It is also used in a few Polanski films, the tv show Vera and Robin Hood Prince of Theives!

It’s a magical quiet place full of national parks and forests and stunningly beautiful white sand beaches. Most tourists holiday in Cornwall and Devon so the beaches are always blissfully quiet! Absolutely great for long walks summer or winter.

I would recommend it to anyone – I miss living there so much and really feel the pull to give my son the same nature filled upbringing and live out of the city.

There were 5 of us, I have 3 sisters and 1 brother and we all grew up in a small hamlet in the South West of France (one hour north of Bordeaux). We had to walk a mile to go to school, 4 times a day since we had lunch at home (lunch breaks are 2 hours long… I know!) In the village where my school was is also the only shop: a bakery. I spent a lot of time playing outside with my siblings, we had a huge yard with trees and we made several tree houses over the years, I rode my bike around and I used to ride to go to visit my best friend.
It was kind of lonely there, especially when I became a teenager. I had to ride my bike to the bus stop, and get on a bus to go to middle school, and ride even further to attend high school.
My kids love to come to my parents’ village, for a holiday, but as they grow up, they feel the boredom, it’s far from everything! I live in a small town with all facilities near a big city, and it’s perfect for me and our kids. I never want to live in such an isolated place.

Also a Midwestern girl, now living in Switzerland, and between small town Ohio and now: Florida, Virginia and Singapore. There truly is no place like home. I visit each year and always make time to drive past all of my childhood homes (we moved a lot) and even the street that my then boyfriend lived on…. full nostalgia. I feel the biggest smile on my face and deep connection to knowing the roads by heart, passing scenes that haven’t changed in 20 years. I wonder who I would be had I stayed there, too, but not an ounce of me would ever dream of living back home. I feel so grateful for the many places I’ve called home including the place that raised me.

I grew up in Toronto,”The Big Smoke”. I’ve since moved to Australia, settled in the Gold Coast and had my first child. We bicycle everywhere here. Walk 10min to the beach everyday to watch the sunset. Drive 30min inland to hike the mountains and explore the rainforests. My sister just bought a place on my street! It’s like we’re building our 2.0 version of our family growing up, but with all the things we wished we’d had then. I often wonder what my daughter will think of this life where sunshine, sand, saltwater and bare feet are the norm. My sister and I growing up could only ever dream of a life like this.

Making me so homesick! I grew up in Encinitas, CA (north of San Diego) when it was a sleepy, little beach town. I miss all “my” beach spots, friends, and that coastal air. It was one of those places where even if we didn’t know everyone, everyone was treated with consideration. It wasn’t always idyllic but it was a pretty lucky place to be raised. You could count on anyone being willing to help you. One time my dad’s Oldsmobile broke down on a random street. He had no problem walking up to a door, knocking on it and asking to use the phone (hello 1989!). The surfers were still zonked on the couches, but one let my dad in and let him call a friend. He told my dad to leave the car and come back for it whenever he could get a tow truck for the car. No one was made at being woken up at 7am, they just rolled with it. I wish it hadn’t changed as much, but so it goes. Encinitas is a different place now – but I love seeing some of my friends hold on to the spirit of the place and make their homes in the area. I moved to Austin ~6 yrs ago…I still don’t get lakes or humidity (lol). Of course, otherwise it’s a nice place to be. I’m lucky my parents still live in Encinitas and we visited (pre-covid) 3+ times a year. It’s been almost 2 years since we’ve been back and my kids and I miss the beach like it’s a part of our family.

Really love reading all the places people hold in their hearts as their hometowns <3

Suburbs of Portland, Oregon (with a couple years closer to downtown as my parents downsized right before I graduated high school). We didn’t spend a lot of time in the city but I will never forget cold July 4ths at the beach, canoeing in the high Cascade lakes, and stopping for lunch in the Gorge on the way to my grandparents’. Oregon is magical. Portland (and sadly, the wildnerness) has changed a lot since I moved away nearly 20 years ago…but I’d move back in a second if I could.

Ann Arbor, Michigan :) Loved it, assumed I’d leave for/after college (but didn’t), left briefly for grad school and moved back for a relationship (which is now a marriage). By the time I ACTUALLY left Ann Arbor I’d bought my first house there, gotten married there, and had my first child. I was heartbroken, and thought I’d move back for years after we left. Now we’re more settled (about 4 hrs southwest in Indy), but I still daydream about moving back someday, and absolutely love going back to visit my parents. I love my life where I am and my kids are having a lovely childhood here–honestly not that different from my own, just in a different midwestern city–but will always and forever consider myself an Ann Arborite.

My father was a park ranger and for the first 10 years of my life (1980s), our family lived in a state park in the Midwest. Where vacationers came to camp, swim, ride horses and paddle boats, my brothers and I lived that year round. We were free range kids to the core. If any one of us complained of boredom, mom would always say, “go outside.” We roamed the park trails and spent most of our afternoons at the pool in the summertime. That life gifted us a collection of stories – like the time my oldest brother was picked up by visitors and taken to the park office as they thought he was a lost little boy. The park was part of a small rural community. For school, a local parent drove an old school bus to pick up the kids who lived along the highway to take us to a three room schoolhouse on the prairie. We were country kids. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized how unique this childhood was. I’ve since lived in four states and abroad, and out of all my lives, I’ll never forget our family’s life in the park.

My dad is a physicist and biomedical researcher, so we made a few big moves when I was growing up. From Long Island, to Chicago, and then to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (central Canada). I went to tiny town Oklahoma for college before coming back to Sask. It is wild up here, where winter days are often -40 degrees Fahrenheit. In my youth I was torn in half between my longing for city excitement and the call of the wild. These days, I am proud to be raising a 4 year old that knows the rules of camping, and how to act around critters like bears and moose. His first concert was an Inuit band who throat sang in Inuk. We danced as a storm opened up and poured rain on us, the natural light show illuminating the fractal jack pine tree tops. All three of us slept like babies that night in our tent with the storm pounding the forest in the background. The city was fun, but I wouldn’t trade my quality of life for anything. I know how to thank the Great Spirit for the grandfather trees of the forest, and how to step lightly where wood frogs lie. I know the feeling of the air changing to autumn or spring on my cheeks, before a single leaf falls or prairie crocus blooms. The knowledge of this place is etched into the fabric of my body, as it will be for my stepson.

Troy, Michigan (Exit 69, Big Beaver baby!). I love being able to share the Metro Detroit experience with my kid – the ice cream stands, the best middle eastern food, playgrounds that aren’t swarmed, hot fudge cream puffs… Mostly I love that she gets to play with my oldest friends’ kids. Sometimes I daydream about moving back but in the end I’m so excited we’re raising a family in Brooklyn. Plus there’s a Target nearby so I’m never *really* far from home.