By: Brian Ferguson
Text below—as published in the GLMS Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 6
What is Home but the area to which we have the greatest past?
To most, this area is host to the majority of their cataloged time.
A filing cabinet of experiences to anchor one’s life,
Tethering life to its beginning, and naturally to where it is going to end.
Obvious is usually the label on this cabinet—
A collection of experiences from our first experiences:
First walking, first bike rides, first driving and first kisses,
Where we know the street names, museums, restaurants and parks.
As early adolescence washes away,
We grow weary of the safe and the same.
Experiment with the new, embrace the change.
Expand the horizon—we leave to broaden our life.
Eventually we find a wider perspective, and realize a more elaborate center.
While the shimmer of the new at the shoreline fades,
We discover a longing to return to the narrow center of our collective joy,
Where childhood resides and family remains.
Efforts double back with a focus on returning Home—
A safe and familiar area to begin a family anew.
Dreaming of children with a Grandma and a Grandpa,
With a strong center of experiences building on our own.
Yet, the Home location for a return is far less obvious,
When key memories are split between many far places.
So many separate sets of experiences, and sets of friends,
This pattern of military life—well known to its families.
Where can Home be when we are told where to go for so long?
Two years here, three years there, far away trainings and deployments.
As soon as we arrive in one place,
We begin to anticipate, leaving to another.
Time to go, rank your sights. We choose our favorites:
Colorado, Hawaii, California, and Florida.
We look forward to a new and familiar adventure,
Fingers crossed, we open the response: “North Dakota.”
“Don’t worry, Family Readiness is great! Lots to do.”
PCS, DITY move, meet with Finance.
Integrate, uniform on, chin up—
Husband and wife both.
Kids: “Welcome to a new home”.
Time to start over with new friends and new schools.
It’s hard to fit in with other people’s more permanent lives,
Always thinking: “I’m going to leave them all anyway”.
Where is Home when the house is:
The 10th house, in the 10th city,
With permanently transient neighbors, friends, confidantes and loves,
With separated Moms and Dads, that don’t want to be separated.
When integrating is hard: “It’s okay, at least your Dad’s not deployed.”
Because to a military family, Home is the family.
Home cannot be boiled down to a single location file,
Because there are so many locations, and so many files.
Home to us is Mom, Dad and I together,
Because I can still play dinosaurs with Dad,
When Dad comes Home at night.
A bad Home is: “Dad’s not coming home”.
When Dad is deployed, Mom shops by herself, and cleans house by herself,
Mom cooks by herself, sleeps by herself, and grows another baby by herself.
Mom and I eat breakfast together, lunch and dinner together.
We are in the car together, the park together, and we read books together.
Like most families with Dad’s deployed, ours has a board.
This board is daily updated and habitually watched,
Marking progress forward, a dry erase of countdown days,
That says in so many days, “Dad will come home”.
Already our prior life and Home far away,
So many first moments cataloged without Dad,
I look at the board: the remaining still three digits long—
Hundreds more days of, “Dad will come home”.
Every night Mom takes me to bed and we open our stories,
The house is empty, the air feels thick, anxious, and our Home is not here.
When the books close, the promise is always the same:
“Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t worry: Dad will come home.”
I want to believe it, and I try to remember it,
But after Dad being gone for so long, and so much to go—
While Mom struggles, and the horizon is ever more of the same,
Our Home never felt further away.