I’m pretty good at the Glass Half Full game, Navy Life Edition.
“It’s a lifestyle, that’s for sure. You get to see different parts of the country, sometimes the world, and that’s cool. It can be hard leaving friends when your family gets orders to transfer, but it definitely teaches you things like how to meet new people. I didn’t want to live a military life as an adult but I still use a lot of the skills it taught me.”
Alrighty then. Let’s remove the rose colored glasses, shall we?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it’s like not to be from anywhere. This wasn’t really a critical issue for me — I never even noticed it growing up since we lived in Navy towns filled with transients just like us. Sure, it made answering “so where are you from?” complicated in college but I treated it like an amusing anecdote over beer.
You know when it became a big honking deal? When we moved to the south.
I don’t know if other parts of the U.S. are like this but Lord Almighty this place loves to ask a girl where she’s from. It comes up everywhere: PTO meetings, doctor’s offices, church coffees, grocery store lines, in the freaking waiting room at the local Jiffy Lube, for Pete’s sake. It sounds like idle chitchat except the answer matters, you see, because some folks here are transplants while others are Born And Bred. And I don’t fall into either category.
I haven’t been consciously troubled by this for most of my adult life but I have to say, sitting here on the fifty yard line, I realize how extraordinarily disorienting it is being from Nowhere. It’s impossible to describe my uneasy rootlessness while talking to someone whose family goes back generations in this area. I suppose it’s the closest I come to grasping zero gravity.
And when I try to sort through the implications of having no childhood homestead — of feeling like I have no home — my brain short-circuits a bit. Can someone ever really feel settled when they spent their formative years with moving vans? Because I’ve been here since 1997 and in conversation that still comes up as “so I guess I’ve lived here the longest now.” Like any minute rootlessness could take hold again. Maybe this is just a permanent state for someone with an origin story without a home base.
I’ve lived on all three coasts and in the midwest as well. I always answered the question with I was born in Detroit. That usually stopped the conversation.
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Ooh, maybe I’ll try that one. “I was born in the Philippines.” Mic drop. 😆
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hahaha. Good one.
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I can partially relate, and my girls can totally know what you mean. I didn’t grow up moving around – same city, same house – until I married. The Mr. was Army so we moved here there & everywhere, stateside or other countries for over 20 years. My girls were always the new kid, but then on the Army bases, pretty much every kid was off and on the new kid. I think it helped them to be able to get along with everybody, make friends fast, and even enjoy the lifestyle. Some of those friends are still in touch as forever friends, too. What was scary was after he retired from service we were back on civilian turf, where people had never moved anywhere so were set in their ways. But they managed just fine. 🙂
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I find other military kids fascinating. Did any of them go on to either join the service or marry into the life like you did? My brother went into the Navy and is still serving — he and his wife just had their second baby over in Spain. 😳
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Nice your brother is kind of following tradition by joining the Navy. How wonderful they have little ones.
No, my girls didn’t join or marry into the Army. They traveled around on their own though for awhile, before getting married to local guys. I’m proud of how independent and strong willed they are, come what may.
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Oh yes. I think my love of travel is rooted firmly in my upbringing — I just wanted to do it as a vacation instead up uprooting my life every few years. Your girls sound like amazing people! 🙂
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Thanks, Laura! Yes, as a vacation now, instead of packing up everything and moving. 🙂
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I can so relate to what you’re saying. My dad was an asbestos worker – and we moved a LOT – I get confused, but I went to 35 schools and was in 38 states, or the other way around. That makes at least 3 schools per year – so saying goodbye was a common thing for me in my growing up years. I think the after-effects that I feel the most is that growing up that way almost makes saying goodbye too easy – no lifelong friends, no real roots. Although it also means that my friend made as an adult, who has not been my friend for 50+ years, is a special treasure.
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Oh my word, Carol, I know you must get this a lot but that is a CRAZY amount of moving around. Mine was rough but they managed to move us in the summertime so at least there was that. I very much agree that my friends made in adulthood are a real gift.
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I wasn’t in a military family, but I’ve often been asked that because my family moved a lot, too. I went to three high schools and was always the new kid, and it definitely was not in communities of other transplants. Nope, I was the odd one out, always. I have continued the constant migration.
I’ve lived in the South. Yes, they are insular. I think New England is worse. Geez O Pete. A few years ago I was talking to a “native” about something. She brought up another person (whom I didn’t know) and was making a point about how “it all makes sense” because that person wasn’t “from around here.” I was thinking, “Oh, what state did they move from?” I didn’t get a chance to ask that before she revealed the “foreigner” was from… thirty miles away.
There are stereotypes about New Englanders being very insular for a reason.
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I wish this didn’t sound so familiar but yep, sure does. I moved to a small town south of Boston for my senior year of high school — the girl who’d moved there in KINDERGARTEN was still the new girl. I remember being perplexed when people balked at driving someone home because they lived in the next town over, twenty whole minutes away. 😆
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I had a similar experience as my parents moved every year or two until I was in high school. I was born in NY, but I spent the longest stretch in a small Illinois town. And I’ve been in California since 1983. So where am I from? Idk!
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Whoa, that spans the whole country! No one can accuse you of having a (whichever) coast mentality… 😉
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A geographical butterfly borne on the wings of change. How can they hope to compete with that ?
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That’s a decidedly upbeat perspective. Most people blink and say “that must have been so HARD.” 😆
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that is a challenge for people with families who move often. at some point, i guess you just have to say, home is wherever i am.
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It does force you to rely on yourself. Conversely that can make it hard for me to ask for help so…
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Home is where the heart is!
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Our motto growing up was home is where our family is. And that’s true…yet still unsettling when we kept shifting around. 🤷🏻♀️
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We did that a lot when I was young and then I married a government employee who has had frequent transfers. It’s only the last 15- 16 years that we have settled in Lahore, my favorite city.
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Glad to hear you love the place where you settled in. 🙂
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It’s a smaller country than USA, and incidentally, I was born here as well.
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