4/40 Geography Matters

When I was born in Omaha, NE, my parents had one of their friends read my name Andrew Thomas Ellwood and say, "You know, if you move to Texas, they'll call him Andy-Tom!"

When I was three years old, we moved to Texas. Fortunately, no one ever called me Andy-Tom.

But it was a move that completely changed the trajectory of my life. Not slightly, but in a huge way. I look back at my early childhood friends and extended family that were about my age and realize how different our lives were. Sure, there are a lot of reasons for that, but so much of who I became as a child and later as an adult feels germane to the culture and opportunities that came from moving to Texas.

Because we moved to Texas, we were further away from both sets of grandparents. None of my aunts, uncles, or cousins lived close by and rarely visited us.  We were the family that moved away, so we spent every summer vacation driving back to Nebraska and Iowa to visit them. But in doing so, they became once a year family, not close relatives like some families that we knew growing up that had their extended family in the same state, even some in the same city.

Since my extended family was an infrequent part of my childhood, there was room for other people to fill that "extended family" role that a lot of my midwest family had with their geographically-closer relatives. My friends from church and school became like family for me, and eventually for our whole family. We were in a community of people that had a lot of kids and as a result, there was always someone you age to play with. My parents became friends with my friends' parents and we became friends with my parent's friends' kids.

As I became an adult and began to choose where I spent my vacations and free time, going back to the midwest or traveling to see family became less of a priority for me. I was really close with all of my grandparents but less so with my aunts and uncles and cousins.   If it weren't for social media, I wouldn't have had contact with most of them for decades except for the funerals of our grandparents.  And even that connection led to disagreements or that one uncle being a jerk, it was pretty easy to intentionally lose touch for good.

Moving to a house on Green Oaks Dr. in Plano, Texas in 1985 was the first of only two times my family moved growing up. The next time we moved, was in 1998 to Big Horn Drive, a whopping 3.7 miles away.

The next time a geographic move really changed things for me was moving to London in 2004. I already had my job lined up after college and they'd asked me to come back and be an intern for a third summer. But that spring semester as I was thinking about it, my girlfriend at the time said, "What would you do if you could do anything this summer?" and without thinking, I said, "Move to Europe." During my summer abroad in London, I learned how much I didn't know about the world, spent all my time with people coming from different lived experiences, and got my first glimpse into living in the middle of a truly global city.  I would later realize how much that trip changed my point of view on the world and would inspire me to one day make my home in NYC.

Moving to New York City is the move that changed me the most, but I guarantee you, that move is gonna have its own post later in this series.