Where do our origins lie?
It’s a complicated question.
There’s the biblical explanation, with the tales of the Garden of Eden. There’s the scientific explanation, which ties us back to prehistoric Africa. And there’s the literal explanation, which links us with the community where we entered the world.
Each explanation covers one angle of our origins. So, it’s hard to fully dispel any of them.
And yet, none of them truly provide us the satisfaction we desire.
For when we ask this question, we’re looking for a compelling narrative. A story with a cathartic ending.
So, we turn to genealogy kits. To old photographs. To family heirlooms and documents faded by the hands of time.
And we organize it all into a system of roots and branches. Of family trees, tribal allegiances, and cultural identities.
By weaving this yarn, we hope to learn more about our ancestors. But quite often, we’re also seeking to find something within ourselves.
I’m a longtime Texan.
I’ve lived in the Lone Star State for more than a decade, and I’ve felt more at home between the Rio Grande and the Red River than anywhere else.
And yet, I’m not a native Texan. I wasn’t born here, I didn’t grow up here, and I didn’t go to college here.
In fact, prior to moving to Texas, I’d spent my entire life on the eastern seaboard, in a completely different cultural environment.
So, why has Texas felt so familiar to me? Why have I felt so at home here since just about Day 1?
I’ve pondered this question for quite a while. But eventually, the answer became clear: My father.
Now, to be clear, my father’s only connection to Texas is me. He went much of his life without ever setting foot here.
But my father also has ties to the heartland. For he was born in Missouri.
This was as much as matter of circumstance as anything else. When my father was born, my grandfather was attending medical school in the Show-Me State. And my grandparents had no other relatives living west of the Mississippi River at the time. But regardless the context, Missouri is the place where my father spent the earliest months of his life.
My father has no memories of those days. The family moved to Michigan before his second birthday, and then to Pennsylvania before he turned four. My father lived in the Philadelphia area through college, and he’s spent his entire adult life in New York. So, his own narrative — his experiences, memories and perspective — it all has a distinctly Northeastern tilt.
And yet, when I was growing up, my father would occasionally throw out a passing reference to his Missouri origins. He would pronounce it as Miz-OR-uh, just as he claimed the locals do. And occasionally, he’d host our neighbor — a Missouri native — for a barbecue in our backyard. My father and our neighbor would drink beer and talk late into the night about life far from the big city.
I should have recognized how ridiculous this all was — my father waxing poetic about a life he had barely experienced. But I never did.
Instead, I started to view my father’s time in the heartland as part of him. As a story that had been cut off mid-sentence.
And so, when I moved to Texas to work in broadcast television, I viewed it as more than a career decision. It was a chance for me to pick up the narrative my father had started. The narrative of life in the heartland.
Living that narrative was my mission and my purpose. Falling for Texas the way I ultimately did — that was just gravy.
Yet, even as my life transformed in the best of ways, something was still nagging at me. The narrative of my father’s origins still felt as open-ended as ever.
Fortunately, it wouldn’t be for long.
On a temperate August afternoon some years ago, I strode up a jet bridge at Lambert International Airport in St. Louis. I was fresh off the plane from Texas, taking my first steps over Missouri soil.
Inside the terminal, my father was waiting for me. His flight from New York had arrived moments earlier. And that meant he could greet me at the gate, instead of baggage claim.
As I looked at my father, a rush of emotions flowed through me.
This was the first time he’d been back in Missouri in 50 years — since that day the family packed up and moved east.
He was a toddler then. Now, he was a middle-aged man with gray in his beard. And here I was, bearing witness to this historic moment.
If my father also felt sentimental about all this, he didn’t say so. In fact, neither of us mentioned much about it the rest of the trip. There was no time for that.
We were slated to visit both St. Louis and Kansas City over the course of that weekend. We had tickets to baseball games in each city, along with plans to visit the Budweiser Brewery, the Gateway Arch and a few other sights. In fact, our schedule was packed so tight that we didn’t even consider taking a dogleg to the town where my father was born.
But even if the reunion tour wasn’t quite as advertised, that first moment still sticks with me. That sensation of arriving in a new place, while somehow feeling as if you’re returning back home.
There was nothing quite like it.
As I look back on all of this, I find myself perplexed.
What drew me to the narrative of my father’s origins? And why haven’t I been able to let that fascination go?
After all, I have no natural affinity for Missouri on its face. I don’t fantasize about Toasted Ravioli. I haven’t read Mark Twain in ages. And the St. Louis Cardinals haven’t stolen my heart — they’ve only broken it.
This dissonance is natural. For I represent the branches in my father’s life story. And those branches are far removed from the roots.
And yet, a connection remains. A connection that solely exists because of who my father is and what he means to me.
It matters that the man who raised me, believed in me from day one and challenged me to be my best took his first steps on Missouri soil. That he uttered his first words there. That he breathed in that fresh prairie air, just as I do all these years later.
His roots might not be my roots. But they’re part of my legacy.
So, forget the biblical or scientific explanations. Throw away logic and labels.
I am my father’s son. The heartland will always be where my origins lie.