I always dread the question, “Where are you from?”
It’s not that I mind answering, just that it’s so – complicated.
I prefer qualifiers like, “Where are you from, originally?” or, “Where do you live now?”
My answer to the latter is that I live in Hawaii, for now. It’s our third time being stationed here – meaning we’ve moved here three times from posts on the mainland. I guess that qualifies me as an unofficial expert on moving to (and from) Hawaii, so if you’ll be moving to paradise any time soon, feel free to reach out to me for pointers. I’ve got some doozies! But I digress.
When asked, I explain that I’m originally from North Carolina. I was born and raised in a small town where everyone knew everyone. I left the only home I had ever known when I was 20 years old, met my husband a year later, and the rest is history. We’ve lived all over the world, packing up and moving our family more times than I can count on both hands.
There’s No Place Like Home
For half my life — and for half my entire adult life — I have lived far from my family and the friends I grew up with in North Carolina. We bought a house there a few years back with plans to retire there someday, but if truth be told, in my heart that house doesn’t feel like home…not yet, anyway.
Someday, we will retire and settle for good somewhere, and that place will be home. Will it be in that house in North Carolina? Maybe, but if I have learned one thing from military life, nothing is for certain. And I’m at peace with that – now.
In the military, there is a saying, “Home is where the [insert branch of service] sends you,’ and I despised that saying for years – thought it was the biggest cliché in the world. If truth be told though, the saying has grown on me. Home IS where you make it, and for me and my family, that happens to be wherever the army sends us.
You learn, sooner or later, that no matter how much you plan, you really have no control over where you will live. Regardless of what some folks say, there is no sure-fire formula for ending up at the duty station of choice. To pin your hopes on any one destination is – in the end – an exercise in wishful thinking, and wishes don’t always come true.
So, every few years we move, and with each move we settle into our new space and make it home.
There are challenges. You leave so much behind when you move – familiarity, friends, routine. But you know what I hate leaving the most? My hairdresser and my church – if only I could take them with me!
You leave your neighborhood and friends, but you take the friendships with you. Leaving church though, is really hard for me. Not the building, mind you – the people; the fellowship — that’s what I hate leaving behind. Finding a good church is H-E-double hockey sticks, I tell you. When you have fostered relationships and worshiped in a place that is comfortable for not only you but your entire family – a place that is truly your “church home”, it’s hard to walk away. You never arrive at the next duty station and settle into the very first church you visit. Wish it worked that way, but it doesn’t. It’s a process and it takes time.
And judge if you will, but…I really, really, really, REALLY miss my hairdresser after a move because it’s not easy finding someone who gets me AND my hair. But that’s another story, and you can read it here.
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