Home is wherever you want it to be

Native New Yorkers are kind of cheated. Growing up here, many of us take the city completely for granted. For me, it wasn't until I was older that I began to understand that this was a particularly special place, a place that people who live far away from NYC view not only as a city but also as the end of the rainbow, a kind of mythic place, an Oz if you will.

A state of mind. Make it here, etc.

I feel cheated because I'll never know what it's like to come to New York for the first time. The city was already here when I bumbled my way onto planet Earth.

So what is it like to move here from middle America? What's the transition like? And how does this affect the transplant's relationship with their place of origin?

I direct you to this short but insight column from the New York Press by a recent Michigan emigree who addresses these very questions: My Own Private Michigan.

As the column's title suggests, even when you move to NYC, you never entirely leave home behind. It transforms into another place, a place that stays with you.

P.S. I've met a number of Michigan transplants and they really are some of nicest people I've ever met.