Finding A Forever Home

In the language of the dog-adoption world placement of an animal is referred to as “finding his/her forever home.” Adoption websites are filled with listings of dogs in need of adoption who are described as such: “Joey is quite agile, high energy, active and playful. He is very sweet, submissive and gets along well with other dogs and cats. He would love to have an active forever home with someone to run and play with him every day. Joey is about 2 years old.” Or the description might read something like this: “Snickers is a shy chocolate and white parti boy. He really wants to make friends, but isn’t quite sure how to go about it. Every day, he gets just a little happier and a little more sure of himself. Snickers is 3-4 years old and is looking for his forever home.”

Since Martini passed away, our family has been in search of another dog to add to our pack. I have read dozens of doggie adoption ads, and every time I do I find myself pausing on that phrase – “forever home.” What is a forever home? Is it a particular 785 sq foot apartment? Is it with a certain set of people who love you even when you pee on the floor? Is it where one gets fed and can lay his or her head down without worry? Is it where one is confident that being left doesn’t mean being left behind? The question of what constitutes “home” is where this blog began, and recently, through the perusal of sob-stories about abandoned dogs in need of their “forever homes” my thinking on this question has been occupying much of my mental space.

In part, I have been considering what my own adoption description would sound like. My wife offered the following (just in case she needs to put me up for adoption someday): “Stephanie is 33 years old and good with dogs and older children.  She really wants to make friends, but isn’t quite sure how to go about it.  She likes others but needs a little time to get to know you; once she warms up to you, you will have a loyal friend and companion for life.  She is housebroken, for the most part at least.  Stephanie would prefer a forever home without cats.” (I like to think that if she did give me up, I would at least take myself home.)

Primarily though I have been mentally stumbling over the phrase “forever home” because I struggle with what it means. Or perhaps more accurately, the romantic side of me that believes it to mean the physical location in which children are reared, careers blossom, friends gather, and grandchildren visit resists what I think is a more accurate truth: That what constitutes one’s forever home is very different for every furry and furless being, and as such, one of life’s labors seems to be honing the particular definition of each of our distinct forever homes.

A few examples may help to illustrate this point. I’ll start with me, since “me” is what I like to think I know best (though I know this is not always true). Since I was eighteen, when I left my childhood home Littleton for upstate New York, my home – understood as the city, state, and zip code in the third line of my address – has been dictated by the schools that I or my wife have attended or the work opportunities that were accepted in the hopes that they would bolster the aforementioned educational pursuits. When I went to Colgate for my undergraduate work I lived in Hamilton, NY 13346. While at Harvard I lived in Cambridge, MA 02138. Home has also been Washington DC, 20001; Houston, TX, 77057; Philadelphia, PA 19133; Kingston, Jamaica; Dallas, TX 75205; Santa Barbara, CA 93117 and 93103; and Austin, TX 78704 and 78741. In the past ten years I have lived in eleven different cities – the shortest stint was for three months and the longest stay was four years. That’s a lot of moving. That’s a lot of not-so-forever homes.

I know a lot of thirtysomethings who have had similar moving experiences over the past decade. It seems that as a generation that has been taught the importance of attending the best schools and “snatching up” the most potentially profitable opportunities presented to us, many of us have come to form a sort of Diaspora community wandering and hoping that the promised land, the forever home, is just around the next desert oasis or parted sea.

Now, I do have some friends who can rightfully claim that in their late-twentysomethings they had already found their forever home. I know two who graduated from college, got a job in the city in which they attended college, and still live in that city today. (They both live in Texas, which I think is more than coincidental. There is certainly something to be said for southern charm.) I admire these people. I like that they are so comfortable where they are. Undoubtedly, they have their own restlessness in other areas of life, but they generally don’t spend the hours before they fall asleep wondering where their next move will be. They have, quite likely, found the city, state, and zip code that they will stay in for decades. They will raise their children there, and their children’s children will likely visit them there. I am happy for them, and admittedly a little jealous.

But I am also a little jealous of another friend, Jill, who is a flight attendant (not a stewardess by the way – she gets very upset at such degrading labels). Jill’s home is in the sky. She flies twenty-five out of thirty days a month, logging in an average of 150 flight hours. In thirty days Jill sleeps in thirteen different cities and cooks one meal at her “crash pad” apartment in DC. Jill always says that her home is the network of friends and family that she gets to visit while she is on the road. It’s a kind of forever home that defies the boundaries of cites, states, and zip codes.

In the work to hone my own definition of a forever home I have oscillated somewhere between these two extremes, never fully engaged in either but dabbling in the romanticism of both. I could never really live like Jill does. I love my wife’s cooking, and in order for her to cook for me, she has to have a kitchen stocked with her favorite spices and that said kitchen has to be close enough to a reliable market for quality meats and fresh vegetables. Plus, I hate navigating my suitcase through the airport. But I understand and appreciate the ways that family and friends, though dispersed across miles and time-zones, are always our homes. I also know that in my late twenties my restlessness – for experience, for diversity of climate, for intellectual stimulation, for love – would never have allowed me to stay in one place for too long. But as my bedtime grows increasingly earlier these days and my ovaries’ whispers for use shift into “barbaric yalps” I find myself longing for that city, state, and zip code that will afford the type of stability that the Texans in my life have found.   

Dog adoption agencies love to post “success stories” on their websites, likely with the hopes that those with pending adoptions will be patient with their new family members who are chewing on the Julia Childs Cookbook and peeing on the quilt that their great-great-auntie made. I like to think that my success story might someday read something like this:

“Stephanie has found her forever home. She lives with a loving partner whose unfaltering support grounds her restless will and whose humor keeps her humble. Her forever home is a place where the work that she felt like she was always meant to do get’s done without ever feeling like work. Her forever home is a place where her brilliant future-Nobel-prize-winning children create masterpieces of finger-paint art, practice their to-be-doctor-signatures on construction paper, and debate over the rights of toddlers to attend need-blind day care facilities. Her forever home is a city, state, and zip code where the gifts of friendship flourish and where courage is allowed to arise from comfort and contentment.”

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