Home is where the Army sends you

I have great memories of each place I called home over the years. Unfortunately, I feel like in moving so much, everything kind of got mushed together. Still, what I can remember, I'd like to share over the next few weeks. So here's looking back ...

When we moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, I started kindergarten - with my 'Dorothy Hammel' haircut - and my parents bought their first house. It was a beautiful colonial on a block that was just blooming. They had to lay the grass and plant the trees. And I know today they regret selling it. During the summertime, I clung to my next door neighbor, Nicole, who was a few years older than me. I would set up a 'house' in the garage, marking off rooms with wood chips. There was one rather large one that I pretended was the remote to the TV.

In Fayetteville, I got chicken pox — which I then passed onto my little brother — and began to learn to play the piano. My mom also enrolled me in ballet and we soon realized it wasn't meant to be: in pictures from our first performance, with me in my silver tutu and glittery tiara, I was always a step off from all of the other girls.

I remember being completely outgoing and hyper in school ... and still wonder when and why that part of my personality changed. Buying lunch was a treat. Instead, my mom packed up my mid-day meal in that year's lunch box. I know one year I had a Care Bears-themed box, and I was especially excited when mom would fill the thermos with Campbell's chicken noodle soup. Yum. In either second or third grade, one of the boys in my class taught me to crack my knuckles ... it's a bad habit I still have today.

I don't remember how often my dad would be gone ... but pictures show it. The Army would send him out to the field for weeks at a time. And when he'd go out of state, the pageantry of his return was pretty impressive. We'd head over to Ft. Bragg and watch tanks get parachuted out of military planes, followed by the soldiers. I don't understand the draw of throwing yourself into the open air, thousands of feet above land. But at that age, I stared up in awe, trying to find my dad, not worrying that his parachute wouldn't open or that he would fall somewhere and we'd never find him. I thought he was so brave — and I still do. One Christmas, my mom sewed together hundreds of fabric Army boots, which she filled with goodies for the soldiers away from their families for the holidays. Then she made me an elf costume and had me pass them all out.

Our vacations were two-week trips back to Michigan to visit the grandparents. My favorite part of those long car rides was either sleeping stretched out in the folded-down backseat of the station wagon or getting to sit in the very back seat and stare at the cars behind me. I also loved driving through the lit tunnels carved out under the mountains.

I got introduced to Vacation Bible School in Fayetteville, and ever since, even as an observant adult, haven't been able to find a better one. I can still picture my mom in clown makeup and cowboy boots. I'm not sure why we did that on the last day of the week, but it still makes me laugh.

Before we left for our next assignment, my mom bought me an 'autograph' book and I made sure all of my third-grade friends signed it. It was in Fayetteville that I first felt the sadness in saying goodbye. I always wonder what happened to all of them.