While I may call myself rootless, I don’t feel as though I was ever alone.
You see, I had a built-in travel partner. Our extended family may be spread out all over the world, but my sister was a constant in my world.
Being with my sister is being at home.
I’ll admit that my sister and I weren’t always the closest set of sisters growing up. We had our fair share of shoe throwing fights. Especially when she decided to start a hair salon with my favorite dolls. But when push came to shove, she was there. She was always my first friend at a new duty station and the last person I’d ever have to say goodbye to. She was the one I ran through new neighborhoods with when we moved and the kid I knew would be around for a birthday party if it fell just a week after we relocated.
As we got older, she was my go-to person when I didn’t know how to handle the mean kids at school and I was her secret keeper when she met a cute new boy that mom and dad didn’t need to know about.
And when our parents split and our world shifted, we knew that we always had each other to confide in.
No matter how far I travel, she is my home.
Even outside of the military community and my biological family, I do feel a pull to one more thing.
Julie Beck wrote that “the location of your heart, as well as the rest of your body, does affect who you are.”
My heart tends to pull my body to the water.
I was born on an island. I’ve been up and down the east coast as my dad was stationed from base to base. Some days, I feel as though saltwater flows through my veins. You can walk through my apartment and see shells, beach photos, sand in bottles and feel that I use my small space as a display of who I am and where I come from.
It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since my to
es have hit the sand, the moment I smell sunscreen and hear the waves, I feel calmed.
On the longest days of deployment I could stroll through the hangar, stare out at the sea and feel grounded again.
I got to watch sunrises and sunsets over oceans that people can only dream of seeing. When I return from assignments, the first place I want to go is to the beach.
It doesn’t matter what coast it’s on, what country it’s found in — the water is my home.
So, how do you define home when you can’t find it on a map?
Easy.
You find it in your heart.
