It won't come as any surprise to most of the folks who are reading this to hear that this family has had it's share of moving around in the last 33 years. Interestingly enough, as a child, and up until my 18th year, I had always lived in the same home, on the same street, in the same town...and then overnight, everything changed. I became an army wife, married to military man...who was never going to be in one place long enough to learn all the street names in each of our new neighborhoods.
One day, just for laughs, I decided to write down as many of the addresses from all our homes, that I could remember, along with the dates we lived at each place. Even though I was actually one of the people who did all the moving around, packing and unpacking, telephone number changing, redecorating, painting and reorganizing our life each time we relocated, I was shocked with the list I eventually came up with....are you ready....drum roll please....we've lived in 23 places in 33 years...not counting several 30 day leave/vacations spent staying with family, in between different duty stations.
We've lived in 16 towns, 5 states and 2 countries.
We've lived on streets, drives, avenues, roads, a lane, a circle, a place, a way and eventually a boulevard.
We've lived in government quarters, apartments, condos, houses, a trailer, a duplex, a fourplex, and even a hotel.
We've been on the ground level, the first floor, second floor, third floor, fourth floor, seventh floor and even an attic.
We've had garages, covered parking, parking lots, parking garages, and driveways.
We've had community pools, gyms, community game and party rooms, saunas, pool tables, racket ball courts, putting greens, playgrounds, tennis courts, bike paths, waterfront dock space, and manmade ponds with fountains.
We've had iguanas, geese, manatees, egrets, hornets nests, vegetable gardens and fruit bearing bushes.
We've had a hotel room, 1 bedroom, 2 bedrooms, 3 bedrooms, 4 bedrooms and up to 2 and 1/2 baths.
We've had patios, balconies and screened porches.
We've had covered stairwells, outdoor walkways, indoor stairwells and elevators.
We've had a back yard large enough for a family size baseball diamond and one that was surrounded by 70 foot 50 year old evergreen trees.
We've had fireplaces, central heat, oil heat, central air, forced hot air, and electric heat.
We've had formal living rooms, formal dining rooms, family rooms, play rooms, guest bedrooms, finished basements, attics and crawl spaces.
We've lived in brand new construction and a 90 year old home..and on more than one occasion, had to wait for the builders to finish, before we could move in.
We've lived on an army base, an air force base, in old German military housing, in residential neighborhoods, apartment complexes, high-rise condos, and a trailer park.
We've had apartments turn condo when we had a choice to either buy or move.
We've even been evicted as renters, when we learned from a bank notice, that our landlord had neglected to pay their own mortgage.
We've lived on a pond, a river, and the inter coastal waterway.
We've lived with a view of the train tracks, the highway, a ball field, a military airfield, a train station, a church, the woods, the ocean, a hotel, a marina, a bank, a hospital, a synagogue, a school, a beauty salon, a fire station, Walgreens, Dunkin Donuts, IHop, Publix and Dennys.
We've lived in gated communities surrounded by fences and accessed through a manned and unmanned security gates.
We've used key cards, clickers, pass codes and actual keys to access our homes.
We've lived in one place for the shortest amount of time, only 46 days...and for the longest amount of time.....4 1/2 years. Currently, we are coming up on 4 years in our waterfront condo, and surprise-surprise...we have absolutely NO plans to relocate!!!
To say we have lived in some interesting and challenging places would be an understatement. It was never much fun to make the actual physical move, however, I always looked forward to each new town and residence as an opportunity to meet new people, discover new areas and potentially, when necessary, find another job. During the first 12 years of our married life, Uncle Sam pretty much decided where we would live. When Roger was discharged, after all those military tours of duty, it was finally entirely up to us to settle wherever the wind blew. Some hits, some misses...but always a lesson to be learned and experiences to carry with us to our next home. We never seemed to have any issues adapting to our new environment...all four of us learned to quickly make each residence into a comfortable home. I always managed to pull things together and create an environment, no matter how big or how small, to suite our needs as a family. Our homes were not just brick and mortar or stucco and wood...they were the base of operations for a typical family of four, on the go. When I take the time to look back at my memory box full of pictures, I'm reminded of each of the homes we've lived in and all the wonderful accomplishments of the children as they grew into the adults that they are today. Each and every place, for the 18 years all four of us lived together, holds many sweet memories and some that have the power to make us sad.
It's never really about where you live or what the physical structure is like, more importantly, it's how you grow as a person while rolling through this ever changing life. Each of our experiences, in all those different locations, eventually led the two of us to where we live today...right here....in a little place we like to call Paradise.
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