To the Base I Loved Before

I still speak of you in the present tense. I still speak of you as home. And even though it’s only been a week, I know that won’t continue much longer.

We have a house now to look forward to. We have a date for our household goods to show up. I am making plans for what is ahead, and, for the most part, I’m able to honestly say that I’m getting excited, even if I’m not fully there yet.

But I’m thinking back to you still.

You were the house I loved the most. The neighborhood that won’t be replicated. A place where we learned and grew in ways we couldn’t have anticipated.

And there’s no going back. I know that. If we could, you would’ve changed. The friends that made you are drifting off to other bases. Those who stay are filling in the gaps our family left, moving on to new routines. And that’s how it should be. We can’t freeze moments in time, even if we want to.

But thank you.

Thank you for being the place where I ran more and wrote more and taught more and loved more than I could’ve ever anticipated.

Thank you for letting us serve until it hurt.

Thank you for desert trails and the company of hummingbirds and sunrises worth getting up for.

Thank you for a house that held space for nerf wars and backyard soccer games and late night friends (who didn’t mind me falling asleep while they were over) and Bible studies and co-op classes and friends who wanted to talk about things that mattered.

Thank you for teaching me that the main difference between pilot families and everyone else is that pilot families always have ear protection available.

On a similar note, thank you for traumatizing the pets with sonic booms. I’m sure it’s building character somehow.

Thank you for letting our kids pretend they were being free range parented for a bit. They weren’t. I promise.

Thank you for nights in the backyard, burning piles of paper (Dear Santa: please bring SF’s front office a shredder for Christmas this year. They’ve given out lots of speeding tickets and been very good.), while the Man and I talked and the sparks played tag with the desert stars.

Thank you for trying to get it through my thick skull that not everyone is going to like me and that is okay, that I’m not going to be able to do all of the things and that is not the end of the world, and that it is okay to say no and that no means saying yes to something better.

I hope our family leaves you better than we found you. You definitely helped improve us.

The next base is waiting with its own gifts and challenges. I think because of everything you gave us over the last two years that we will be better suited to whatever is next.

That says something about you.

We are really going to miss you. Yes, you. Even with all your prickers and parched plants, your isolation and inconvenience.

You may not know what you’ve been to us, but we do. We really do.

Photo by C. Frizberg