After graduating from college and getting married, my parents packed up their car and began the long trip south for flight school and for the entirety of the first half of their marriage, moving was the theme. Every two or three years, my father would get his orders from the military and my mother would begin the packing up process.
Before I finally left for college, we'd already lived in a half dozen states plus Japan, Greece, and South Korea, where we spent my last two years of high school. We moved. A lot. But we knew nothing different, so it didn't seem difficult and was generally made easier by the fact that when we moved, for the most part, we moved to military bases and everyone was doing the exact same thing as our family. Transitioning.
We were professionals at weeding out and packing up, the military being notorious for household belonging weight limits and because my parents made everything about moving fun. They loved it and so in turn, we loved it too. For the most part, we lived in base housing, but periodically none was available or provided and we lived on what we called the economy, which was exactly the way it was when we moved to Greece.
I have the most incredible memories of that first few months in Athens. It took my parents and the military about a month to find us permanent housing so in the interim, we stayed in base officer's quarters (the boq). Generally the boq is a drab apartment-like temporary situation on base but in Greece where there was no housing on base at all, consisted of a full-fledged hotel called the Bona Vista converted to boq facilities.
It rocked. There was a pool and Monday night bingo and Friday night all you could eat Mongolian bbq and all sorts of places that kids our age could get in trouble. My dad taught me to play blackjack at the Bona Vista and I learned to french braid my own hair from the lady across the hall - a skill that has actually been invaluable over the years.
Of all the moves, the trip to Korea was undoubtedly the most difficult. Korea was considered a remote assignment which basically meant that my dad had the option of going for a year on his own, or two years with the rest of us. I guess I wouldn't want to be alone for a year either, and in hindsight running away from home for a few days in protest probably wasn't the smartest move I have ever made since obviously, we all ended up in Korea.
Alright, maybe I didn't exactly run away from home, but I did go to school one day where I was a cheerleader and on the student council and madly in crush with the quarterback of the football team, and subsequently refuse to return home until my mom signed me out of math, took me to lunch, said she'd miss me and... cried. I hated to make my mom cry and I am certain my mother was well aware of that fact since now that I am a mother myself, I might also have used tears on demand to my advantage a time or two.
So, we all moved to Korea and to this day it remains one of the most significant growth periods of my life, both in terms of what I learned about myself but also what I learned about the world.
Since then I have lived in Arizona, Tucson for a few years while I attended college and then Scottsdale afterwards when I found a job, met a guy and started a family. For many many years, I shopped at the same grocery store and filled my car with gas at the same pumps. I lived near the same people. I frequented the same places and I ran the same trails, mile after mile after mile.
For a military brat, twenty plus years in the same place can be a lifetime, and for me in more than one respect, it was a life time. One that changed leaving me no choice but to change as well.
I didn't move out of state, or out of country, in reality our new home is not terribly far away from the old, just a thirty minute drive, although it might as well have been to a new planet for as different as everything is now. I have a new love, new neighbors, a new hair salon and a new path to get to my trails. I can ride my bike to yoga and walk to a taco shop that serves the greatest breakfast burritos ever. There is a farmer's market every Saturday at the church around the corner and at rush hour the traffic on the side street can sometimes be loud, but somehow after just three months, I don't seem to hear it anymore.
I find that I really love it here and I feel such gratitude to the people who have eased this transition for us, who have welcomed us with open arms and helped to make us feel part of this space. I think back to the experiences I had as a child moving with my family, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that those experiences contributed to the content I feel now.
They say that life is change and I can attest that this is true. The past few years, what has not changed in my life has been a much shorter list than what has. But on the heels of that truth also comes growth is optional and the admonition to choose wisely.
Our lives are in a state of constant change, from our relationships to our jobs to the places we live. Sometimes those changes come about by our own hand, and sometimes they are changes that we neither appreciate nor are willing initially to accept. However, in both instances, I find that it is my attitude toward that change that will inevitably set the course I follow. Will I accept, open my heart and subsequently, grow? Or will I fight that change, inevitable as it is, ending up frustrated, resentful and bitter?
I am consciously choosing acceptance these days. And believe me, it is a choice and it is a hard choice at that, at least for me. I find it so much easier to play the victim and to complain that life is not fair and yet, on the occasions I choose that path, my happiness quotient, or whatever that thing is that measures our contentedness in life, takes a face first fall into the abyss tout de suite.
What are you choosing?
xxo.
m
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