Home, Sweet Hope

I was born in Newport, Rhode Island.
I lived in Pennsylvania.
Moved to the Philippine Islands.
Lived in Garden Grove California, and began school.
Did grades 3-5 in Okinawa.
Went right back to Garden Grove.
Moved right away to Huntington Beach.
In seventh grade, moved to Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.
Started college, but moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Finished college in Fayetteville got married and moved to El Dorado Springs, Mo.
Two years later, moved back to Fayetteville.
Years later, moved to England.
After two years, moved to The Netherlands.
Moved back to Conway, Arkansas.

When I met my wife, she was living with her parents in the second house they’d ever owned. She knows Fayetteville like the back of her hand. She can tell you stories, she can show you the hospital where she was born, and the church she attended until we married there and moved away.

I on the other hand can only hope to find my residences on a map. I know Fayetteville well, and Ft. Smith faintly. To none of those other places have I ever returned. Rhode Island, Wisconsin, California, and here I live in Arkansas, an average distance of 1,300 miles from any of them. I have never seen the hospital where I was born, or any school I attended from the day I left it.

Some men my age find themselves wishing they could go home. And I, I wish I had one.