Roots vs. Roaming : While some would rather just stay put, others find moving offers them a chance to spread their wings.

Since moving into their Granada Hills home 33 years ago, the McGraths never considered leaving. In this long, rambling ranch house they raised seven children and have since opened the home’s doors to 11 grandchildren.

“Things just wouldn’t be the same if we moved into a different house,” said Geraldine McGrath, 64, who has directed a nearby church choir for the past 40 years.

“Our kids couldn’t bring their children here and tell them things like, ‘This is where I sat when I did my homework,’ ” McGrath said. “I think an attachment to the past is important. You don’t set down those kind of roots if you move around.”

For Jay Livingston, 60, the concept of filling up closet space in one house is a foreign one. The novelist and video writer, director and producer calls himself a nomad, and he has definitely earned the title. He has moved 45 times in his life, with no regrets.

“All the moves made me who I am--an extrovert who can get along with just about anyone and adjust to almost any situation,” he said.

Livingston, who now lives in the South Bay, is married and has two children. As a child he lived, among other places, in New York City; on a dude ranch in Santa Maria, where he rode horseback to a one-room schoolhouse, and in a 36-room English tudor mansion in Cleveland, Ohio, where he held his senior prom in the third-floor ballroom.

During his adult life, Livingston and his wife and children have lived on the Palos Verdes peninsula, Upstate New York and on a tiny island off the coast of Seattle.

While most people today don’t move around as often as the Livingstons, changing residences has become a lot more common than in years past.

“Thirty years ago families were much less mobile,” said Joanie Heinemann, an individual and relationship therapist at Coastline Counseling Center in Newport Beach. “People would tend to stay in the same jobs, and some families would even pass homes down through the generations.”

Today, for a variety of reasons, including job changes and transfers, divorce and the need for bigger or smaller living quarters, moving has become much more common. Every seven years the average Californian moves, according to the California Assn. of Realtors.

What that number doesn’t show is how moving and staying put affects families and the individuals in them. For some personality types, moving represents a chance to spread their wings and experience new things, while for others it is a stressful time and they would much rather stay put.

“Not much research has focused on the subject, but moving affects us psychologically and emotionally much more than anyone gives credence,” says Heinemann. “The fact that a move can and usually does affect our work/school and personal relationships makes it a major life stressor.”

Even when the move is an anticipated “step up,” leaving a home represents a loss of a way of life, including daily routines, friends and neighbors. And when someone doesn’t want to move, leaving a way of life can be very traumatic and potentially threatening to a person’s emotional well being, Heinemann said.

Long-distance moves tend to be much harder and more disruptive than local moves.

“Moving far away, out of the state or country, is very hard on people of all ages, because it represents pulling away from important ties in their life,” Heinemann said. “Cross-country moves very often put distance between close families. It’s hard to be directly involved in someone’s life if he or she lives across the United States or world.”

Local moves aren’t as traumatic for most people, because friends and family are still close. Although for some individuals, even leaving a particular house and neighborhood can be hard.

Staying in the same house, on the other hand, can create familiarity and stability in a person’s life.

“There is an intense feeling of home you develop when you’ve lived in a house for some time,” said Carlfred Broderick, who is a professor of sociology at USC and director of the school’s Marriage and Family Therapy Training program. Originally from Long Beach, as an adult Broderick lived in various areas of the United States for 20 years, finally settling in his present Cerritos home 22 years ago.

“When I counsel people, and they tell me they’ve moved a lot, usually they consider moving a deficit, rather than an asset,” Broderick said. “People will say the frequent moves hampered their sense of self-identity. Some people will even say that constant moves have caused them to avoid putting down roots anywhere; they don’t unpack physically as well as emotionally.”

For other people, moving has its benefits. “For some people, moving away from family and friends puts excitement and change into their lives,” Heinemann said. “They’ll start new hobbies and develop new interests.”

Staying in the same house year after year isn’t for everyone. “Some people are risk-takers and thrive on change; they tend to get stagnant and bored with their surroundings if they don’t make a move,” Heinemann said.

When it comes to how people react to moving, experts say the biggest factor is personality type.

“Some people are cosmopolitans--they move more readily than others,” Broderick said. They tend to be outgoing people who enjoy the excitement of newness.

Those people who don’t enjoy moving thrive on security. They are often stable, and their home is their haven, Heinemann said. “People who stay put aren’t usually risk-takers and don’t adapt well to change,” she said. “They will even become upset if a member of the neighborhood decides to move away. Many of these people are comfortable in their home, and they figure, why change things and move?”

For people who have lived in a home a long time, it is especially difficult to move, because who they are is rooted in their house and neighborhood, Broderick said.

Jay Livingston’s wife, Bernice, 51, feels that there is something about her personality that allows her to have moved 18 times in 22 years of marriage to Jay.

“I’m not a real joiner,” said Bernice, who is an executive assistant. “I’m not a member of clubs and groups, which makes it easier for me to leave. Jay and I also aren’t dependent on large groups of friends; we entertain each other. We’re self-sufficient, self-contained and comfortable wherever we are. I’ve always had a wandering streak, which I think attracted me to Jay.”

For Bernice, the experiences she has had in her many different homes created precious memories that she wouldn’t have if she had stayed put.

When the Livingstons lived off the coast of Seattle on a tiny island with just three other houses, they had to travel to and from the island on a small boat.

“The winter days there are very short,” she recalled. “It was pitch black outside when I’d take the kids on the boat over to school. As I returned to the island, the sun would start to rise over the water. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen--like a Hallmark card.”

A house at Lake Sherwood in Thousand Oaks was Bernice and Jay’s favorite. “That was a warm and lovely home that had a certain charm to it. We had a sailboat at Lake Sherwood’s docks, and we used to picnic by the water,” she said.

Some people fancy themselves nomads, yet find out they don’t have the wandering streak after all. Broderick calls them “boomerang movers.”

“If people leave an area and within a two- to four-year period don’t re-establish a network of intimacy and trust with friends, associates and community services, they are likely to return to what they consider home,” he said.

Broderick has seen the boomerang phenomenon often.

“After retirement, many couples will sell their homes and buy a house in a remote area or even a motor home, without having any concept of what it is like to be rootless.

“Within a couple of months they realize they overestimated the value of clean air and long to see their grandchildren and neighbors. Or in the case of a motor home, they’ve had all the gypsy driven out of them, and they could care less if they ever see another campground again.”

Betty, 61, a Huntington Beach woman who didn’t want her last name used, knows what Broderick is talking about. Nine years ago she and her husband were each anticipating surgery that would make it difficult to climb stairs, so they decided to sell their two-story Westminster home of 25 years and move to a house they own near the beach.

“At first we thought the move would be ideal,” said Betty, 61, who is living in Huntington Beach. “We thought we’d fix the house up a little, and it would be fun to live near the beach.”

In reality the house needed more renovation than they were willing to do at this time in their lives, and Betty’s husband found that he didn’t like the cold and damp weather at the beach.

Most of all, the couple misses their old house. So much so that they’ve attempted to buy the house back from the present owners three times, but were turned down.

“My husband and I are more traditional than we realized,” she said. “That was more than a house--it was a real home. We raised our two children in that house, and my daughter held her wedding reception in the back yard. Our whole life was there.”

Now the couple is looking for a house in the area near their old home.

Because of her experience, Betty has very definite advice for individuals who will be retiring:

“Carefully weigh the pluses and minuses of moving away. You may find that it would be better to stay put and enjoy your home. It’s probably almost paid for, the taxes are low and you will be close to friends and familiar shopping.”

Sociology professor Broderick agrees:

“Most people are wise if they establish a continuity between retirement and working life. If you will be moving to a place after retirement, make certain you’ve already established it as a nourishing place--not just an area you saw once on vacation or somewhere you’re moving to just to get away from where you are. Many people are so anxious to retire and move that they forget to notice what they are leaving.”

Moving is generally more difficult when the move is away from family and friends, rather than closer, said Irene Goldenberg, a family psychologist at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute in Westwood.

Moves that aren’t a family decision are also hard, Goldenberg said. “It can be extremely stressful if the family has to move because dad got a better job.”

No one knows this better than Lynn Kelley, 48, who found herself moving around the East Coast and out of the country for 16 years to further her husband’s career.

“When we left California for New Jersey, I was only 19, and I felt like I was leaving my entire life behind. I was so miserable,” said the registered nurse, who is now remarried and lives in Orange. “It was fall there, and we lived in cold and drafty student housing where I spent my first Thanksgiving without my family.”

Although Kelley and her husband befriended other married couples and she decorated so that their place was cozy, she says she never felt at home in that apartment or the following three homes that kept her away from California.

“Because we moved about every four or five years, everything we did in a house was for resale. There was never any sense of permanence,” she said. “The first time we bought a new house, I remember thinking, I should be happy. This is a wonderful time. But I wasn’t home. I wanted to be near my parents and share my four daughters with them. Instead, I wrote my mother nine-page letters every week because phone calls were too expensive.”

Although in retrospect Kelley says that she gained from her experiences living in different areas, she gave up more.

“Moving was broadening, but during some of those years, my grandmother, with whom I was very close, was alive. I regret losing the time I could have shared with her and my parents.”

After 16 years of living away from California, in 1981 Kelley returned to Orange County and remembers clearly how she felt at her homecoming.

“When I walked off the plane and my two feet hit the ground, I was so happy to finally be home after all those years. I start crying now just thinking about it,” she said.

Frequent moving due to employment in the military or a large company can be very difficult for family members, agreed therapist Heinemann. “I’ve seen military and corporate wives who have no personal items and no pets. They are generally dissatisfied with life and have a lack of personal identity.”

Moving a lot in childhood can also be traumatic, as Roxie Martin discovered when she moved nine times before 6th grade, with a mom who married three times during that period.

“Just when I was getting settled in a school and starting to be accepted, we’d have to move,” she said. “The first day of school I’d usually have to go to school by myself because my mother worked. I’d get really nervous and vomit. It was horrible. Although some kids might have learned to adapt quickly, it was not in my nature. I ended up standing in the corner with no one.”

Martin, 28, now has a 19-month-old daughter of her own, and although they have been renting for the past few years and saving for a house, it’s very important to her that they settle in a home by the time her child starts school.

To Martin, the ideal childhood is like her husband Clay’s. He was brought up in the same Texas house where his mother still lives.

Clay agrees. “I treasure the fact that I was able to grow up in the same neighborhood and go to the same schools,” says the 33-year-old Orange County urban forester.

“When I brought Roxie back to my house in Texas, it was really neat to show her the trees that I planted when I was a kid and my old bedroom. I didn’t know it at the time, but when I was a kid, my dad turned down a promotion for more pay because it would mean moving to another city and out of the house. I’m grateful for my parent’s decision not to uproot the family, and I’d like to do the same for my daughter.”

Even nomads like the Livingstons agree, there is something to be said for living in one home. The couple has decided they want to settle in one place and satisfy their desire to wander by traveling.

“I’d like to not have to pack again, and to have closets and drawers with shelf paper that never has to be changed,” Bernice said.

Davis is an Orange County free - lance writer.