When You Move Three Times Before the Age of 6 … Where is Home?

“You’re an American. Say something. Say something in American.”

I don’t remember it as a taunt. More of an annoying request, repeated at lunch time and in the boys room on my third first-day-of-school. It never really bothered me. Not until I was cornered on the playground and held personally responsible for U.S. foreign policy by a couple of 10 year olds.

“It’s your fault, you Yank.”

This was my third first grade in 6 months. I attended three different first grades, with three different teachers in two countries before I turned 6.

It’s your fault, you Yank.

We had just moved to England, and before we found my final first-grade my parents enrolled my older sister and myself in an Air Force Base sponsored community theatre music revue called ‘Family Portrait.’ They wanted to keep us occupied while they sorted out where we were going to live. The penultimate song in the revue was ‘Home’ from ‘The Wiz,’ immortalized in the 1978 film by the incomparable Ms. Diana Ross. We performed it alongside an oddly curated array of scenes about family from classic works like ‘You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown,’ ‘Grease,’ ‘Death of a Salesman,’ and ‘The Diary of Anne Frank.’ You know, real uplifting crowd-pleasers.

When I think of home, I think of a place…-The Wiz

When the Divine Ms. Diana Ross thinks of home in ‘The Wiz,’ she thinks of a place “where there’s love overflowing.” When I think of home, I have no fucking clue.

I’m proud to call myself a military brat. It’s often the first thing I proffer when someone asks me to “Tell me about yourself.” or “where are you from?” because it’s a foundational part of my identity.

“Weeeell,” (I respond, as if this is the first time I’m recounting my history) “I’m a military brat, which pretty much means I’m from everywhere and nowhere. I was born in Oklahoma. At the age of three, my family and I lived in a motor-home for a few months in Alabama en route to Sacramento, California. When I was 5, we moved to England. When I was 11, we moved to Germany. When I was 15, we returned to the U.S. to live in Virginia after 9 years living overseas. Then I made my way to New York.

Where are you from?

My family lived in temporary housing every few years before I turned 16. That’s just part of the deal of being a military family. When you relocate, you usually start in billeting (kind of like an economy motel on base). Then you have one of two choices: live on base, or live off base. We usually lived off base. In England, this meant I grew up in an English Village called Barnack. That’s the home of my childhood. I was literally raised by a village. As an American youth in England in the ’80s, I enjoyed a peculiar perspective on pop-culture. I played cricket and football (soccer), but I never learned baseball, basketball or football (football). We had 4 television stations (BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV and Channel 4), and very little programming from the U.S. These 4 TV channels were reduced to 1 when we moved.

Growing up military

When we moved to Germany, we lived off base following the prerequisite few weeks in billeting. Our lives were ultimately centered around the base, where both parents worked and where I and my siblings attended school. Even if I considered Hahn Air Force Base a ‘home,’ it was deactivated and no longer exists. My 6th grade elementary school, middle school and the high-school where my sister graduated are defunct. Gone. Poof. This fate is fairly typical for military brats who spent time in DoDDS (Department of Defense Dependents Schools). Your homes and histories get deactivated. It’s the collateral damage of growing up military.

Collateral damage

I used to joke that I was emotionally unavailable and easily detached. Was I joking? I kind of meant it. It’s my survival strategy for navigating the normalized upheaval of growing up in a military family. If someone at school was giving me a hard time, I knew it would all be over in a year or two. Either they would relocate, or we would. These days I bear the brunt of unpleasant social relations through my highly cultivated skills-pairing of tolerance (detachment) and avoidance (emotional unavailability). It’s my superpower.

When I chat with folks who grew up in the same town, and attended the same elementary, middle and high school as most of their friends, I’m a tad envious. Relationships built over time seem like no other bond I’ve encountered. This isn’t to put them on a pedestal, or minimize relationships born of other circumstances. I just feel like there’s a culturing process that long-term relationships require, kind of like gardening. You can’t fake it.

After 10 plus years of living in New York City, I’m still looking for ‘home.’ The thing about living in NYC is that you can go years without seeing people you consider to be ‘friends’. It’s odd. Maybe even socially accepted assholery. Growing up as a military brat we would allow years to go by without seeing my extended family. I’m acculturated to not seeing folks for a bit, and then picking up where we left off.

I’m still looking for ‘home.’.

You know what? I don’t know how I feel about ‘picking up where we left off’ anymore. Because then it’s a game of catch-up rather than depth and intimacy. I pride myself on ‘picking up right where I left off’ as well as building relationships rather swiftly. The thing is, I’m beginning to question my strategies for relationship building. Most of my strategies are based on patterns I developed as a displaced juvenile expat. When you have three different first days of school within one year, clearly it’s an opportunity to start over…but starting over is exhausting. I’m tired of starting over.

I yearn for the illusion of stability. My friend Will, a psychotherapist and avid tarot card diviner, was giving me a reading and wondered if my quest for stability was a search for emotional connection. I can’t disagree with that.

I yearn for the illusion of stability.

Home is… Home was … Is home overrated? I almost believe that. What if home is a myth? Myths are a foundational part of culture. They’re how we transmit knowledge. They’re larger than life. For me, home is larger than life, but it’s also an anachronistic fantasy. Something that maybe used to exist in another time, in another age, for other people. Perhaps it’s something I aspire to, something I seek and hope to return to. Home is my Odyssey: my ongoing search for meaning and belonging.

Author as a young boy, leaping from the weeping willow tree in his front yard in Barnack, England.