TOADTalk: What Makes a Place Home?
In her TOADTalk, Ms. Snyder wonders about home. "Now that I've lived at Thacher as long as I lived in [my childhood home] Hawaii, which one is home?"
Monday morning's All-School Assembly launches with the Teacher On Active Duty (TOAD) sharing something of interest—a reflection, a story or song, a demonstration of some sort, or a simple poem. In this way, every week of the school year, the community gets to know one of our own a little better. Theana Snyder, whose TOADTalk is featured below, teaches upper level math classes: AP Calculus and Math III Honors. She is also a faculty advisor for the student Community Service organization. Ms. Snyder joined the Thacher faculty in 2001.
Seventeen years ago this past August, I arrived on the Thacher campus to begin my new job. I was 23 years old, and had just finished a teaching job at a public school in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I was single and thought that I would be here for 5 years at the most. Yet, here I am, standing in front of you 17 years later.
Let me paint a picture of The Thacher school that existed at the time that I came. The Milligan Center and the Commons did not exist. Casa, Lower School and the Hill were all in their previous forms. The Carneys were newlyweds who didn't have any kids. The Perrys had a toddler and a 7-month-old. Ms. Livermore was a sophomore. Mr. Jensen and Ms. Popa hadn't even started high school yet. Mr. Pidduck was working here and had recently begun dating a former Thacher classmate who lived off campus. I certainly hadn't met Mr. Snyder yet, because he was still a junior in college. I had just made my first "big" grown-up purchase, a new VW beetle (this is notable for me right now because this car, which I loved so much, lived a long and full life and was just towed off to the junkyard this past Saturday.) My first two years here I lived in what was known as Lee Quong, which most of you now know as the Health Center. My former bedroom is now the nurses' office.
I have been thinking about this 17-year marker a lot recently. This is because I have now lived at Thacher as long as I lived in Hawaii with my parents and brother, when I was growing up. This is really strange for me to think about, because growing up I never even really thought about establishing a new home somewhere other than Hawaii. Some of you may have the same sort of connection with the place that you grew up, where it feels like your anchor, the place you come back to. And, this is a very interesting thing for me to ponder in the context of home. What makes a place home? Is it where your parents live? Is it where you live? Is it where your partner and/or children are? Is it where you grew up? Now that I've lived at Thacher as long as I lived in Hawaii, which one is home?
I have always called Hawaii my home. I grew up in Waimea, a small mountain town on the Big Island, surrounded by lush green pastures, beautiful scenic vistas and lots of rainbows. I was a faculty child at a small private boarding school and felt very connected to the community there. On weekends, my family often took camping trips around the island, we horse camped in the rainforest, hiked across volcanoes and camped along the shore. I loved growing up in Hawaii. I loved the natural beauty, the diversity—the mixture of cultures that results in a distinct Hawaii culture, with its own language and food.
When I first moved to the mainland, for college, some things felt really alien. I remember playing a Hawaii comedy CD for some of my roommates shortly after arriving at college. It was a flop. They looked at me like I had two heads as I sat there and laughed, because they couldn't understand a word the comedian was saying in his Pidgin English. When my mom would send care packages bringing a little bit of Hawaii to my California life, my friends' reactions made me feel a million miles from home. They butchered the pronunciation of "arare," my favorite treat calling it "a-rare," and when my mom sent me a box with a sweet smelling maile lei, they were utterly bewildered to see my joy at opening a box full of leaves.
And so, with how foreign things sometimes felt when I first came to the mainland, and with how much I loved my childhood home, I always assumed I would end up back there. I continued to think of Hawaii as home, even as I continued to live here. But over time, the Thacher community has grown in importance in my life and it has come to take on some qualities of home, as well.
I've shared big important moments with this community—my engagement, my wedding, my pregnancies, and my children. My friends here I have known just as long as my childhood friends when I went off to college. This is where I am raising my family, and it is such a fabulous place for my children to grow up—how awesome is it that Gavin, Zoey, and Luke have 250 reasonably well-behaved teenagers to look up to? They feel seen and important on this campus. Granted, their comfort and trust in the people they encounter throughout the day sometimes translates into some weird interactions off campus (like the time that Luke decided that he was going to hug the TSA agent at the airport, resulting in a large armed man backing up and shouting at him), but that's another TOADTalk.
Maybe, we can think of the concept of home like the chambered nautilus. Every year, you have experiences in an environment that shape who you are. You carry those experiences with you wherever you go. There are still parts of Hawaii that I keep in my life now. I regularly cook Spam musubi for school lunches, and my children religiously celebrate Aloha Friday. You carry your childhood with you, now and always, and you'll take pieces of your Thacher experience with you when you graduate and create your new home, wherever that may be. I hope that wherever you end up in your lives, when you come back to this campus, it will feel like home, just as it does for me.
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