"What is this 'home' you speak of?"
So this popped up on the Book of Faces today, and immediately resonated with my current state of mind. I shared it, of course, with the comment that this is the sort of thing one gets after spending much of one's childhood in temporary buildings on military bases.
That's only partially true, to be honest; while it is true that I have a ton of memories associated with places on Bolling AFB (which itself technically no longer exists) which have been torn down and their functions moved to new and more permanent structures, I am nonetheless fortunate among my fellow service brats in that I wasn't constantly on the move, shifting from one military installation or garrison town to another every couple of years. I finished elementary school and did high school (junior and senior) while living in the same house in Forest Heights, and I spent most of my time in Minnesota in the same house in south Minneapolis. Even on active duty, the length of my language training meant that I stayed on in Germany past the two years of a normal overseas tour.
The houses on 16th Avenue and Fox Way were sold and foreclosed on, respectively, and it leaves me feeling very rootless and impermanent. I've been essentially living out of a suitcase since I moved out of Foxchase in December of 2012, trying (and mostly succeeding) not to accumulate more things, and feeling very ill at ease about living in someone else's house. Well, six months from now that'll be over; I will be bankrupt and on my way to Las Vegas. Maybe for a couple of years, maybe for the duration. It will be nice to have a place of my own, someplace I can call home again.
That's only partially true, to be honest; while it is true that I have a ton of memories associated with places on Bolling AFB (which itself technically no longer exists) which have been torn down and their functions moved to new and more permanent structures, I am nonetheless fortunate among my fellow service brats in that I wasn't constantly on the move, shifting from one military installation or garrison town to another every couple of years. I finished elementary school and did high school (junior and senior) while living in the same house in Forest Heights, and I spent most of my time in Minnesota in the same house in south Minneapolis. Even on active duty, the length of my language training meant that I stayed on in Germany past the two years of a normal overseas tour.
The houses on 16th Avenue and Fox Way were sold and foreclosed on, respectively, and it leaves me feeling very rootless and impermanent. I've been essentially living out of a suitcase since I moved out of Foxchase in December of 2012, trying (and mostly succeeding) not to accumulate more things, and feeling very ill at ease about living in someone else's house. Well, six months from now that'll be over; I will be bankrupt and on my way to Las Vegas. Maybe for a couple of years, maybe for the duration. It will be nice to have a place of my own, someplace I can call home again.