Goers and Stayers

By Jules Older

As more and more folks seek their tribes, let me add one more tribe to the list. It’s more significant than Jewish or Buddhist, Italian or Iranian, male or female, maybe even gay or straight. 

I'm talking goers and stayers. 

I come from a town of stayers—Baltimore, Maryland—or as the stayers call it, Ballamer Murrilun. Nearly everybody I grew up within what was then rigidly segregated (by religion and money as well as race), Ballamer was white and Jewish. We went to the same few elementary schools, junior highs, high schools. We dressed pretty much the same, used the same slang, dated the same girls. Even Orthodox families occasionally ate what the rest of us ate — Murrilun crabs, Harley’s sandwiches, fresh corn on the cob. We all drank National Bohemian beer.

And, with few exceptions — yes, I'm one of ‘em — they all stayed. My friends married girls who lived within a two-mile radius of where they grew up, and still today, they live in that same, safe circle. 

So, I come from a place of stayers. Now, I live in a city of goers — San Francisco. My friends here are other goers; they're from China, India, Jamaica and Spain; from Massachusetts, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. They're straight and gay, religious (Baptist, Buddhist, Greek Orthodox, Jain, Jewish, Lutheran) and questioning (atheist, agnostic, “spiritual,” and “truly, don't care”), with skin the colors of the human rainbow. 

In background, we’re wildly divergent, but we share one commonality — every one of us, of our own volition, came here from somewhere else. In my case (really, our case, since my Vermont farmer’s-daughter wife is another goer), we've gone to other places as well; New York City, the South Island of New Zealand, a northern Vermont village of 50. 

So, if goers are significantly different from stayers, what makes us different? A lot. Here's my partial list:

We’re obviously bolder, but we’re also more ruthless. We goers walked out on home and family despite our mothers’ tears, our sisters’ entreaties, our fathers’ stern disapproving glares. We left Anatevka. As well as Bombay and Montego Bay, Nanjing and Deerfield.

We are far, far more curious. As our Deerfield-born friend told us after a visit home, “They still eat at the same restaurants, still play golf at the same club, and they never — not once — asked me about my life in San Francisco.” 

Here in San Francisco, we goers dine Persian, Taiwanese, Mexican, Szechuan, Italian and American. And want to know as much as we can about art in Beijing and the last Indian election.

We goers are also braver. We've been the only non-French speakers at Quebec parties; the only Asian at bar mitzvahs, bat mitzvahs, faux mitzvahs; eaten muttonbird and maple syrup, haggis and hakarl. 

And, by definition, we travel more. There's not one of us without a current passport. A fair number have two. A few have three. We use them. Yes, to visit family in Nanjing, but also to explore the Greek islands, kayak with humpback whales in Newfoundland, go on photo expeditions to Mongolia, and help bring potable water to the Samburu in Kenya.

We also partner up with folks who most definitely are not the boy or girl next door. Indian and Spanish. Mexican and San Franciscan. Jamaican and Nigerian. Californian and Kenyan. Chinese and German. In our case, the now tame (but then, wildly bold) combo of Ballamer Jewish and Vermont Congregationalist. 

Stayers and goers; we’re as different as day and night or, as we say in New Zealand, chalk and cheese. We’re a tribe, all right, a tribe I'm proud to belong to.

Jules Older is author of the ebook, DEATH BY TARTAR SAUCE: A Travel Writer Encounters Gargantuan Gators, Irksome Offspring, Murderous Mayonnaise & True Love. 

Reference: “The Threat of Tribalism.”