Home is Where the Military Sends You

“Where are you from?” A pretty simple question, right? Not for me. When someone asks me that question, I’m instantly flustered.  I honestly have no idea where I’m from.  I don’t know where I call home.

I wasn’t a military brat, but my family moved around enough that I was somewhat prepared for the transient lifestyle I now live as a military spouse. I learned at a young age how to say good-bye, make friends, and adapt to new surroundings.  By the time I married my husband, I had learned to crave a change in scenery and was already a pro at relocation and reinvention.  What I didn’t know was how to define the word home.

Sometimes when I close my eyes and think about home, an old house pops into my head, and I struggle to remember what my current one looks like. Sometimes when I’m filling out forms, I mistakenly scribble in an old address. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble navigating to the bathroom because I can’t seem to recall where I am or what my floor plan looks like. Sometimes I dream about my children in houses where I lived long before those same children existed.  Maybe I can blame it all on the craziness of military life. Or maybe it’s because the word home holds so many different meanings for me.

I’m far from the only military spouse whose concept of home has changed as the result military orders.  Kate Canady, a Navy spouse of nearly 26 years, grew up living in the same house in the same small town from the time she was 6 months old until she left for college.  She always had a strong sense of home. And then she married the military.

After 9 PCS moves and 11 houses, Canady has learned how to adjust her image of home.  She relies on a refrigerator magnet to remind her of that well-known saying: Home is where the military sends you.  “A house is just a house,” she explains.  “But it is your family and your traditions that make it a home.” 

Canady makes it a point to decorate her houses with framed photographs of immediate and extended family in different stages of their lives together.  “Having that sense of family around is very important in every house we live in.  The one constant I have tried to maintain wherever we have moved is that our family unit comes first.  We support each other no matter what.”

Although Canady is lucky enough to claim a hometown, she admits that her two sons have a hard time figuring out where they’re from.  But that doesn’t seem to bother them.  “Both of the boys have flourished in this Navy life,” she says proudly.  “And while they may not have one town to call ‘home,’ they are both truly citizens of the world.”

I feel that way about my own children, who weren’t even born in the same continent.  My daughter lived in 3 different houses by the time she celebrated her first birthday, and my son lived in 5 different houses before he turned 5.  Somehow, they’ve never been fazed by moving to another house.  It isn’t the house itself that they care about, it’s what and who are inside that house that matter to them.

I may not know where I’m from (or where I’m going), but with every move, I’ve managed to turn an empty, unadorned house into a home, regardless of whether I was there for a few years or a few months. In my mind, every place I’ve lived is a little piece of home.

Home is more than just an address. Home is where my family is. Home is what I make of every new location. Home is where the heart is.  And yes, home is where the military sends us.

Read more from Wife on the Roller Coaster at: http://www.ridingtherollercoaster.com/