Category: Theme 1 – Origins: Early Glimmers

365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

On the Edge of After – Day 11

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Prompt – A time you wanted to be younger again.

The piano opened first with a simple and steady melody, like someone knocking softly on a door they were not sure was the correct one. It felt hesitant and determined at the same time, as if grief and hope agreed to share the same bench and the same keys. The singer did not arrive with rockstar swagger, but like a sinner entering a confessional. His voice carried a tremor that lived just behind the note, a thin crack that told the truth long before the lyrics did. There was a pleading quality there. Not begging. Just longing for a different outcome than the one that already felt written.

The drums slid in, not loud, not dramatic, simply present like a heartbeat that remembered it had work to do. The song continued to build without rushing. Each layer came in carefully, the guitar weaving around the piano like hands trying to help without making things worse. Nothing in the mix tried to show off. Everything served the ache.

How to Save a Life played on the radio on my way out of Japan as Holly drove me toward the airport in April of 2007. The world felt both too big and too small at the same time. With my bags packed and goodbyes said too quickly, it felt like a chapter was closing without the dignity of a final paragraph. I did not know then how much that song would follow me, like a ghost that refused to leave the room.

There was a part of me that wanted to be younger in that moment. Younger and untouched back in 1999. Younger and unaware back in 1999. I wanted the version of life where choices did not echo so loudly, where leaving did not feel like breaking something inside my own chest. That quiet piano line carried the weight of questions I did not have the courage to ask. What could have been different? What should have been done or not done? What part of myself was I leaving behind without realizing it? What I was carrying with me “home”?

The song did not offer comfort. It did not fix anything. It simply sat beside me, naming the ache I could not yet name. As the chorus rose, I realized that some moments mark a before and an after. In that moment, I wanted to be younger. I wanted to be back in 1999 when I arrived in Japan, when mistakes felt smaller and outcomes did not carry so much weight. I wanted to be less worn out by the world and more untouched by loss. It was not nostalgia. It was grief disguised as wishing.

When the chorus lifted, it felt like someone replaying a conversation in their mind, hoping that if the words repeated long enough, the past might loosen its grip. The music did not save anything. It stayed and witnessed the silence between notes to speak the parts that hurt the most. By the end, the repetition became prayer and punishment at once. If only. If only. If only. The piano never stopped. It kept moving forward, even when the voice sounded like it might not. That was the tender cruelty. Time kept going. The song kept going. The loss remained.

And still, something else lived there too. A quiet thread of hope, not loud, not heroic, not cinematic. Just the steady recognition that I was still here. That the ache did not erase the love of Japan and my time there had indeed been real. That leaving did not cancel the life that had been lived. Inside that ache, a stubborn spark refused to vanish. It was not redemption and not resolution. It was the fragile belief that naming the truth, even when it hurt, could keep me from turning numb.

Maybe growing older does not steal everything. Maybe it gives language to feelings that once lived unnamed in the dark, and maybe that language makes the weight lighter to carry. Not gone. Not fixed. Simply held with more honesty and a little more gentleness.

Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

The Fourth Chair Slide – Day 10

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Prompt – A time you wanted to be older than you were.

T. G. Smith Elementary School could no longer contain my academic prowess, so I began the new school year at Central Junior High School in Springdale, Arkansas, saying goodbye to Ms. Hayes and Ms. Parker’s sixth grade class. I signed up for band because it felt right, like something that might make me more adult and more complete. I imagined music, rhythm, and belonging. I imagined the part of me that always felt outside finally finding a door in with music.

Instead, I marched. That was it. Marching drills in the heat, day after day, carrying an instrument I could not play while pretending any of this made sense. No music. No sound. Just lines and formations, like the military, across a field that never seemed to end. I waited for the wonder to arrive with the community. There was no pulse. The moment never came.

Just as I began finding my way around Central, the boxes came out again at my house. We packed our life, taped our stories shut, and pointed the car toward upstate New York. Big surprise… another move. I traded the armpit of Arkansas for what felt like deliverance country. What could possibly go wrong?

I had chosen the trombone back in Arkansas. I liked the idea of it, as it seemed bold and confident with a little swagger. When I arrived at Peru Central School — the word Central stayed with me like a tired friend — the kids in band had already learned to read sheet music. This allowed them to squeak and squawk with their instruments. They were ahead of me in ways I did not want to confess. When the band director asked if I could read music, I said yes with the false confidence of a seventh grader who would rather choke than be seen as weak. I mistook silence and lying for strength. Large mistake.

He placed me in fourth chair. A compliment, apparently, as I could not play a single note. My greatest skill was making quiet tromboner jokes in my head to keep myself from panicking while I watched the kid beside me glide through his part as I mirrored every movement. I slid when he slid. I was always a second behind, always wrong. The sound was chaos. My body knew it. My face pretended it did not.

When the fall concert arrived, I wanted to disappear into the metal of the chair. I wanted adulthood. I wanted choice. Why did I have to play a damn instrument at all. I wanted the privilege of walking away and saying no. I wanted to choose absence like so many adults did when things became inconvenient. But I sat there, present, exposed, and stuck.

I stayed silent. I copied the player beside me and never blew air into my horn. I pretended participation. I survived by vanishing. I do not remember how the semester ended, only that I held on with stubbornness and made a quiet promise to myself. Never again.

Behind the awkwardness, the shame, the noise that never became music, something else formed. Not a lesson. Not a tidy moment. More like a bruise that refused to fade. I began to see that life kept handing me roles that did not fit, and I kept trying to wear them anyway. Good kid. Good student. Good soldier. Smile. Perform. Pretend it is all fine. Pretend you know the notes. Pretend this is who you are. But pretending had a weight.

It pressed into my chest. It made my shoulders ache. It turned every room into a test that I could not study for and had no way of passing. I started to suspect that every lie I told to survive was costing me some part of myself I might one day need. Somewhere inside that seventh grade kid, sweating through another rehearsal and praying the song would end, a quieter truth began to move. Maybe the problem was not that I failed. Maybe the problem was that I kept disappearing in order to pass.

A voice whispered. Tell the truth. Tell it even if your face burns. Tell it even if someone rolls their eyes. Tell it because silence eats at you from the inside out.

I wanted to be an adult in that moment so I could make a choice to vanish. Now, I know what I need to do as a “real” adult is to slowly and painfully come back.

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

What The Middle Teaches: Notes From The Fringe – Day 9

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Prompt –  A childhood game that taught you something about power.

P.E. sucked. Full on sucked. It was rarely fun. Inflatable projectiles flying across the gym, ropes that reached for the rafters, laps to check off a box for the that year’s President Physical Fitness Award, and knowing that teams had to be made with no assistance from the teacher. None of it was my cup of tea. But as a card carrying member of Generation X, I was metal-slide strong and did what needed to be done, even when it sucked.

On rainy days, the parachute came out in the gym. It always arrived like a promise. The teacher delivered a speech about cooperation and character while the smell of dust and sweat hung in the air. Sneakers squeaked on the gym floor, and the colors of the parachute glowed, promising community, but the sense of community never really followed. Still, we circled the parachute, fingers hooked around the edge, waiting.

Lift. Lower. Again.

The middle was different. The middle was the prize. One kid received the honor, always with quiet ceremony. The lucky kid would slip beneath and disappear into that cool, secret bubble of air while the rest of us kept the parachute alive.

Lift. Lower. Again.

Life on the fringe had a simple assignment. Pretend the work on the edge and the fun in the middle were the same thing. From the outside, it looked magical. From the edge, it felt like labor. Wrists burning. Shoulders tight. No glory. No cool air where it mattered. Still, hope lingered. Maybe next time the middle would belong to one of us. Maybe someone else would carry the weight.

I remember wanting the middle and fearing the middle at the very same time. Long before I understood language like power or systems, something quiet inside that circle told the truth. The kid in the center lived differently. The fabric rose for them without effort. Joy arrived without cost. Power gathered beneath the tent of color while the rest of us stayed at the fringe and pretended it was equal.

Life kept offering new parachutes after I left the gym…at home, in the classroom, and at work. The language was still teamwork. The reality was often a bright center that glowed while everyone else kept the rhythm steady. If I am honest, I have lived in both places. I have held the edge until my hands felt raw. I have also stood in the middle and felt how easily the circle can disappear from view.

The parachute taught a lesson I wish had waited until I was older. Joy is uneven. Work is invisible to those not doing it. And if you are not paying attention, you can live your whole life on the fringe, convincing yourself that the view is the same for all.

Now I pay attention. Who is chosen? Who is always lifting? When I find myself in the center, with air and space and room to move, I work to remember the circle. I notice the hands along the edge. I try to live as the kind of center that makes more room for everyone to breathe, and the kind of edge where collaboration is real.

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

The Pain Behind the Pane – Day 8

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Prompt – Something you believed about adults that turned out to be wrong.

I used to believe that adults arrived somewhere when they grew up. I carried this picture in my head of a final landing place where life would settle and the air would clear and everyone would communicate. With all this communication I would finally stand steady and know what to do. I imagined grown-ups as completed people. Whole. Wise. Calm. I held on to that belief like a promise that would arrive someday. I was wrong.

Adults are not finished. Adults are not completed works of art. Rather, adults are children who kept moving forward with broken pieces stitched loosely together carrying what shattered them, what rescued them, and everything they never learned how to name or were too damn afraid to name. Adults may have larger bodies with larger responsibilities, but inside, the storms still swirl. Inside, fear still resides and speaks. Inside, the past still taps on the glass and demands to be heard.

Adults call certain habits maturity. I see now that much of it is simply survival dressed in nice clothes. The same protective moves. The same rehearsed smiles. The same patterns repeating themselves quietly in the background like an old song that never stops playing.

For a long time I believed adulthood meant having life all figured out. I wanted that future version of myself to finally make sense of the chaos, to sort the pain of a dysfunctional military family childhood into neat boxes that would not spill over. Laughable, really. Instead, I began to realize that many adults remain stuck at the exact age when everything veered off course. The unprocessed parts of the story get dragged forward like heavy luggage. There is pretending. There is numbing. There are smiles that hide more than they reveal. And then there are a few, the rare few, who finally turn around, face what hurts, and begin again with shaky, honest steps leaving the past at that window.

Growing up, it turns out, is not about age. Growing up is about truth. It is about finally saying out loud where the freezing happened. It is about noticing where the running began. It is about admitting where fear still lives quietly inside the bones. Adults are not fully grown. Adults are still learning in real time. Adults are trying to parent younger versions of themselves while raising children, paying bills, showing up at work, and doing the best they can with the tools they have.

The sobering part is simple. No one fully arrives. There is no final plateau. There is becoming, and then becoming again. But buried inside that realization is something surprisingly tender. If no one is finished, then there is still room. There is room to soften. There is room to learn new language for old wounds. There is room to live with humility instead of perfection. There is room to forgive the child and the adult at the same time.

I did not get the certainty I once imagined. What I received instead feels truer. I am still growing. I am still learning. And that means the story is still open despite the adults in the room!

365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

In the Margins, Where I Breathe – Day 7

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Prompt – A rule you refused to follow.

The cover of my Trapper Keeper glowed like the inside of an arcade, all neon and loud. “Stay Rad” splashed across the front like graffiti that wanted to be dangerous but felt more like a fat kid trying to be cool. Behind it, a glowing triangle pulsed like the screen right before a new video game loads. That brief pause held its breath and made a promise just like my planner. The Trapper Keeper whispered that anything was possible, if only life was structured in just the right way.

The lie it tried to sell me, and an entire generation, was simple. Stay organized and life will fall into place. Keep my schedules straight. Keep my notes tight. Keep my dreams in tidy sections, labeled, hole-punched, and snapped into place, class after class. If I could trap it, I could keep it.

There was a rule hidden inside that message, and I have bucked that rule since the moment I knew it existed. Use the planner and live by the calendar, treating the schedule like scripture, is what the academy says to be true. As a student and later as a teacher, I saw it everywhere, as common as desks and whiteboards. Another system. Another promise. Another planner with color-coded order pretending to tame the chaos. Such bullshit.

So I refused.

I refused the Franklin Planner. I refused the Full Focus planner. I refused the Roterrunner. I refused the PalmPilot because that thing never flew! I opened them. I turned the pages. I studied the boxes and printed times that tried to tell me where my life belonged, and something in me said no. I even carried some of them, like talismans I was expected to believe in. But schedules felt like cages. Those preprinted lines felt like a stranger beside me in the cafeteria, offering advice that did not know my story. I did not want every minute accounted for, nor did I want my thoughts sealed into plastic sleeves like tiny body bags for the dead.

Instead, I wanted space for the unexpected. I wanted room to scribble, cross out, wander, and return. I wanted the wide, blank page where anything might appear. Teachers said that being organized meant being mature. Colleagues said that being planned meant being professional. The rule insisted that if I could not live inside the planner, I would fall behind, lose track, and fail.

Maybe. Maybe not. Or absolutely not and immediately no.

What I knew, even then, was simple. My mind did not grow inside boxes. My imagination did not breathe inside time slots. The most important learning arrived in margins, in scribbles, in the slow wandering back to myself. I carried the Trapper Keeper and with it I carried the illusion of control. But the rule that said the planner must run my life. I refused that one.

And in refusing, I learned something I could not learn any other way. Life does not live on lined paper. Meaning does not arrive neatly labeled. The heart does not follow gridlines, and neither does grief, or wonder, or love, or anything that keeps me waking up and trying again. The planner promised certainty. What I needed was presence.

So I chose the blank space. The risk. The messy page that told the truth. Not tidy. Not perfect. Just alive. That became the real rule for me. Stay curious and be willing to get lost. What matters most cannot be trapped, and it sure as hell cannot be kept.

It can only be lived.

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

Family Rules Silence – Day 6

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Prompt – A rule you did not understand but followed anyway.

As a child, because I said so had a different flavor in my house. It showed up inside the command, Do what you are told, when you are told, and how you are told. I always wondered where the who and the why disappeared to in that little piece of military mantra nonsense. Every time I asked, the answer never arrived in words. It arrived through clenched teeth and lips pulled tight, the way a body looks when the mortician fucks up, followed by insults sharp enough to make my questions feel like crimes. The message was simple. Obey. And at the time, that is what I did.

Growing up under that rule taught lessons no curious child is meant to learn. I learned that questions were dangerous and not appropriate. I learned that curiosity was rude. I learned that authority did not need to make sense because authority owned the room. I began to shrink my voice. I memorized the script. I moved with a fixed response instead of a living person, at least inside the walls of my house.

Later, when I stepped into other systems as an adult, I recognized that same mantra living under different names. I saw it forcing its way into classrooms. I saw it showing up in workplaces built on top-down structures that pretended to be leadership. I saw it sitting quietly inside families that claimed love while everyone hid the truth. Do what you are told. When you are told. How you are told. It sounded efficient. It sounded orderly. It sounded like discipline. But beneath all of that shine, it trained me to doubt me and silence my own gut.

As a kid, I obeyed, even when nothing made sense. Obedience created quiet. It created peace, or at least the illusion of peace. But, like all things, there was a cost. What I believed to be obedience was actually just braided fear and respect until both looked the same. Obedience convinced me that the loudest voice in the room must also be the smartest. Obedience placed me inside someone else’s version of right and wrong.

I followed that rule because I believed it made me good. A good child. A good son. Much later, I began to notice the cracks. The whole thing felt like a performance. It was less about obedience and more about fear. Fear that if even one of us asked too many questions, the fragile idea of family might shatter and reveal what was already broken.

Real families ask questions. Real families sit in the discomfort of truth. Real families refuse to treat because I said so as a final answer. It took years for that realization to settle into my bones. My life’s work has become the practice of asking why, again and again, and creating spaces where others feel safe asking as well. And I am grateful to report that the world does not collapse when why is asked. The opposite happens. Everything begins to breathe.

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

Secrets the Air Remembers – Day 5

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Prompt – The first time you felt left out.

The third grade was my year, but not the banner kind of year. I began to understand that the world is not only what sits in front of my eyes. There are other layers beneath the seen, humming quietly, sending signals that not everyone can receive or understand or even wants to comprehend.

Another move pressed my family into boxes as we traveled from California to Alaska. The world grew colder and wider. The sky stretched in a way that felt endless. Mountains rose like silent witnesses to something that could not be named. This move felt different. It carried secrets. Each of us held our own private weight, and each of us carried it alone.

At eight years old, I could barely understand the ordinary world that everyone else seemed to agree on. Then something was added. Colors slipped out of their lanes. New surroundings arrived with weight and feeling attached. I began to hear with my whole body. I remembered air. I understood that walls could breathe, floors could whisper, and space held echoes of grief and laughter at the same time. I had no language for any of it, and I would not for years. What I had instead was loneliness, and the quiet fear that something in me was wrong.

The other eight-year-olds in my class spoke of Saturday morning cartoons, which kid cheated on the playground, and who ran the fastest at recess. Their worlds felt simple. Contained. Safe. When I shared my experiences, I noticed the slow and careful distance that formed around me. There was no vote. No raised hands. No secret ballot. Only the quiet math children learn too early…subtraction. A new seating chart formed without the teacher. Conversations paused when I walked by. The circle tightened, and I found myself outside of it before I even knew it was happening.

That was the first time I remember being excluded because I was myself. Not because I misbehaved. Not because I broke a rule. In that moment, I learned to step backward, to become smaller, to study the room before the room had the chance to study me.

However, every story finds its own way to balance loss. When some people leave, others arrive, carrying lessons that are needed. Ms. Mullins, my third grade teacher, was one of those people. She carried lessons, and she carried me, for the entire year. She noticed. She always noticed. During recess she invited me to sit beside her and asked me what the day felt like. Not what happened. Not what I saw. But what it felt like. I told her the room felt loud even when no one spoke. I told her the air remembered things. And she listened. She did not laugh. She did not try to make it smaller. She spoke in words an eight-year-old could hold. “Your brain is paying deep attention,” she said. “That is not broken. That is a gift. You will learn how to walk with it. I did.”

January 2026
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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

Good Bones & All The Damn Receipts – Day 4

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Prompt – A moment when you felt small in a good way.

The fat never goes away. I carry it with me like a witness that knows what has been seen cannot be unseen. The fat settles into hidden corners of my body and builds its own archive, not just on a cellular level, but the fat moves into identity, into the story I tell myself about who I am. The mirror changes. The scale changes. Clothes fit differently. People respond differently. But my mind has all the damn receipts. My mind remembers the weight…that one picture…that one shirt that clings. In a real way, fat becomes my lens and an unwanted narrator. I feel it when I choose a seat. I feel it when someone lifts a camera to take a picture. I hear it whisper when I try on clothes, and it is there when I decide who I am allowed to become.

Diet. Exercise. Programs. Pills. Injections. All the glittering promises that sound like salvation never shrink the fat. Through the discipline, the tracking of steps, and portion control, the fat remains. No longer on my body, but in memory sitting quietly ready to apologize for taking up too much space. Over time, as the fat weaves itself into identity, it becomes the voice that reminds me to be careful and not draw attention to myself. The fat wants to be heard and invisible at the same time, and I feel the contradiction living under my skin.

Hollywood gets a fat suit. Put it on. Learn a lesson. Take it off. Credits roll. Real life does not work like that. My body remembers. My skin remembers. My joints remember. My heart remembers. Once fat, always fat is not shame. It is truth. My body carries history, and history does not vanish just because I walk it away.

So the work is not pretending I have lost the fat. The work is staying honest inside the body that carries me. I name the pain. I admit the embarrassment. And I honor the parts of me that survived and have thrived anyway. The parts that keep loving. The parts that laugh. The parts that refuse to disappear, even when disappearing seems easier. The story of fat is not only about size. It is about protection. It is about comfort. It is about armor I once needed. And slowly, I am learning that I am worthy inside a body that shifts and changes. I am worthy when the mirror tells complicated truths. I am worthy without shrinking myself to make other people comfortable…including myself.

This morning, I read this prompt and laughed. I had just finished getting ready. I caught my reflection and almost missed it because my fat lens was still doing its job. But there it was. My clavicle. Beneath everything…bones. Strong bones that have carried this body through more than I ever thought I could hold. It feels like a quiet gift to know I have good bones. And it feels even better to finally see them.

January 2026
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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

Storms Outside, Stories Inside – Day 3

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Prompt – A childhood place that made you feel safe.

Axl Rose sang about a warm, safe place where, as a child, he would hide and pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass. When I sang those lyrics, I kept circling that place in my mind, like walking past a house at night and wondering who lives there and what stories are inside. Where was it? What did it look like? Did it smell like rain, or like dust, or like a home that has been carrying histories longer than I had ever experienced. Was there room for another heart, or was it meant to be a solitary shelter? I also wondered why thunder and rain carried fear at all. Guns N’ Roses never revealed any detail about the space, but they hinted at a world without violent streets, without addiction, without love that wounds, and without that deep, rattling question of whether I deserve to exist here. They hinted at a place where the mind loosens, the body unclenches, and the soul finally exhales. A place that leans close and whispers that I matter. Everyone needs a space like that, especially in the years when the world grows louder than any child can tolerate.

My safe place was never a single room or secret hiding spot. My refuge arrived as words. School became the doorway, books the shelter, and language the quiet country I could travel without asking permission. Inside sentences, storms that belonged to me lost their teeth. Inside stories, I could breathe. I could sit with characters who carried their own griefs, their own bewilderment, and still somehow moved forward. In those pages, a different kind of safety revealed itself, not the kind that erases the world, but the kind that steadies a body long enough to survive it.

Nine schools before graduation. New towns. New faces. New rules about belonging. Again and again. The desks I occupied became the closest thing to permanence. The classroom did not care about orders, moving trucks, or how many times a heart could be asked to reset. Bulletin boards held more order and consistency than the houses I called home. School libraries felt like cathedrals, quiet and alive, each book humming with an invitation: Sit. Listen. Stay awhile. On air bases that never quite turned into home, the constants were teachers taking attendance, paper waiting for stories, and books wide enough to hold a kid who needed a place to land.

Over time, I learned something that felt almost sacred. Safety is not always locked behind a door. Sometimes it lives inside a paragraph, inside a voice on the page telling the truth without apology. Sometimes it lives in the discipline of showing up, sitting down, and letting language hold what feels too heavy to carry alone.

That was my warm, safe place. Not made of walls. Not built with wood or brick. My shelter came stitched together with words, strong enough to weather the thunder, patient enough to wait for the rain to pass, and honest enough to remind me that I matter, even when the world forgets to say it out loud.

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

East of Hoth – Day 2

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Prompt – The first time you realized the world was bigger than your house.

Alaska is a large state. So large, in fact, that it pumps Alaskan egos up enough that people have created shirts with the outline of Texas carved out of Alaska with some smart-ass one liner bannered across the chest. For folks from Texas, this lands about as good as a well-done ribeye and a warm beer at a Sunday tent revival in west Texas.

Jeremy had lived his entire life on Randolph Air Force Base outside San Antonio. Same streets. Same house. Same bedroom. His father never had orders to move. Not once. Then, suddenly, they were ripped from south-central Texas along the San Antonio River and dropped at Elmendorf Air Force Base, somewhere just east of Hoth.

All this kid talked about was how bad Alaska sucked and how amazing Texas was. It was exhausting because I had no understanding of the words he spoke. I had never lived anywhere long enough to grow brand loyalty, root for the home team, or care two shits about the dump we were calling home that year. But Jeremy loved Texas. Fiercely. It was his. It was his home. And he reminded everyone that his home was better than this frozen hellhole.

Until Jeremy, I had never stood next to someone who had actually belonged to a place. The military does not usually allow that. On paper, the reasons sound noble. Rotations create experience. Rotations build leaders. Rotations prevent complacency. New base. New mission. New commander. Pack the boxes. Sign the forms. Start over.

But that is the polished version.

Underneath, constant movement serves the system more than the families inside it. When people stay rooted too long, they grow networks. They build equity. They find their own worth outside the rank on their shoulders. Roots create options. Options create questions. And questions slow obedience. So the military keeps the ground shifting.

Families never quite become local. The church is temporary. The school is temporary. The friendships are temporary. Even the dog feels temporary because the next base might be overseas and not allow pets. Moving trains the family to quietly to pack fast, detach sooner, and care, but not too deeply.

War needs people who will go where they are told and fight who they are told without needing to reconcile that decision with a neighborhood they have loved for twenty years. Do what your told, when your told, how your told! When you belong to the uniform more than you belong to the street you live on, it becomes simpler to leave. Simpler to fight. Simpler to lose and keep moving. Movement builds loyalty upward, not outward.

That was the world I lived in. So normal I could not see it. Then came Jeremy.

He had blown out candles at the same kitchen table for his third birthday, his fifth birthday, and his ninth birthday. He knew which tree in the yard was his climbing tree. He had a house that remembered him. Standing beside him on top of a mountain of snow pushed into the middle of the cul-de-sac while he mourned Texas like a lost Tauntaun, I felt something crack open. It was at that moment I knew the world was bigger than my house. And some people actually got to keep theirs.

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