Rootless and Rooted
Life on the Move
He stood on the porch of the house he finally thought would be home. A retired military man, he had moved twenty-four times in his service years – enough to have more addresses than some people reading this have birthdays. This was supposed to be the last stop. Yet, a bittersweet memory lingered: once before, they built their dream home, only to live in it for three months until the next set of orders arrived. That house became someone else’s home while they packed up their life. Now, as the evening light slants across the yard, he wonders if this time will be any different.
During those decades of constant relocation, the family’s motto could have been “home is where we are.” Every move was an upheaval – new town, new school, new neighbors – but they refused to fracture their family. Many might have chosen to let the kids stay with grandparents or have the spouse remain in one place, but not them. They all went, every single time.
His daughter jokingly called herself “the new kid, year after year,” because she attended a different high school each year. The man lamented the friends left behind and the familiar places that became fading postcards in his mind. They were cherished moments that ended too soon.
Yet, in leaving each place, they carried something with them: each other. Husband, wife, daughter – they were the one constant address in a life of change. While their furniture took a beating from constant moving trucks, their family bond only grew stronger with each relocation. They became experts at leaning on one another. In a strange way, every time they uprooted their lives, it planted the seeds of a fierce togetherness.
After twenty-four moves, the family learned that “home” wasn’t a matter of soil or scenery – it was the people gathered around the dinner table each night. They reminisced about Christmas mornings in half a dozen different living rooms, realizing the tree and the laughter felt the same everywhere.
Mobility had made them adaptable, quick to find joy in small rituals that could be carried anywhere – Friday pizza night, Saturday morning hikes, a certain playlist they played on each long drive to the next home. These became their portable roots, anchoring them internally when externally everything was new.
But mobility had its price. The closeness between them sometimes came at the cost of distance from everyone else. Grandparents and cousins became voices on phone calls and faces on holiday cards more than day-to-day presences. Old friends from early postings drifted away, despite promises to “keep in touch.” There was never enough time in one place to become truly woven into a community’s fabric. No long-standing reputation, no childhood home to show the grandkids. He felt it most strongly at family reunions (when they could attend): the subtle ache of not having those deep local roots others seemed to nurture effortlessly. They were rootless in the eyes of hometown folk, always visiting from somewhere else, guests even among relatives.
This paradox – being so bonded within and yet untethered without – defined their life on the move. They had traded one kind of stability for another. In every empty new house, before the movers arrived, they would echo their voices in the bare rooms and joke, “well, it’s home now!” Somehow, it always was. Their stability was simply of a different sort: emotional rather than geographical.
Settling Down (Or Not) After a Lifetime in Motion
With his retirement, he thought the journey was finally at its end. No more dictates from the military on where to live or for how long. He pictured planting a garden he would see grow year after year, making friends he wouldn’t have to part with so soon, maybe even becoming a “regular” at that coffee shop down the road. For once, he could answer the question “Where are you from?” with an actual place and not a list. The prospect of staying put felt both exciting and strangely daunting.
His wife, however, surprised him. After a few months of relative stillness, she began to float the idea of moving again – this time entirely by choice. One evening, as they sat on that long-awaited porch, she mused, “What if we tried living by the coast for a while? Just because we can.”
He nearly spilled his iced tea. It struck him that after years of being uprooted by necessity, she had developed a taste for it. For her, the idea of staying in one place indefinitely was quietly unnerving – an unexpected twist. They had been propelled for so long by duty and orders; now the only thing prompting a move would be their own curiosity. It was a new kind of freedom, one she found intriguing and he found a little frightening.
He chuckled softly at the cosmic joke: here he was eager to finally rest, and there she was, itching to chase the horizon one more time. “Maybe unpacking these moving boxes was premature,” he joked, eyeing the still-folded cardboard boxes they hadn’t thrown away (old habits die hard). They both laughed, but the question hung between them in the dusk light. Should they stay or go, this time on their own terms? It was a question many in their situation might never ask, but then again, most people they knew hadn’t moved two dozen times and lived to tell the tale.
Their dilemma shines a light on a question that extends far beyond one retired family: What keeps so many of us rooted in one spot, even when we’re free to move? For a lot of people, there are no orders forcing them to stay put; their chains are more subtle, woven from threads of comfort, fear, and expectation.
Comfort in the Familiar: The known streets, the reliable neighbors, the daily routines that require no extra thought – there’s a deep comfort in familiarity. It’s like a warm blanket that’s hard to step out from under. Uprooting means trading the ease of “knowing how everything works” for the effort of starting from scratch. It’s tempting to just hit the snooze button on change and continue with business as usual.
Fear of the Unknown: Beneath the comfort often lurks fear. What if the new city doesn’t welcome us? What if the job doesn’t pan out, or the schools are worse, or we end up lonelier than before? The unknown can loom monstrous in our imaginations. It’s easier to cling to the devil we know than risk an uncertain angel out beyond the horizon. Fear whispers that movement could be a mistake, even when a part of us is curious about a different life.
Expectations and Identity: By the time we’re adults with established roots, society all but hands us a script: settle down, be stable, don’t rock the boat. Friends and family take comfort in knowing we’re not going anywhere. We ourselves start to tie our identity to a place, a community, a routine. Moving by choice can feel like breaking an unspoken pact – that we’ll all stay in our lanes, in our familiar hometowns or chosen cities, living the life expected of us. The thought of explaining a voluntary uprooting (“Wait, you’re moving why again?”) can be enough to make us dismiss the urge to change as a silly whim.
These forces – comfort, fear, and expectation – form an invisible anchor. They keep many people moored to the same spot, sometimes long after the winds have changed and their heart has already begun to wander.
Yet, staying put isn’t free of charge. It comes with costs that aren’t listed on any mortgage statement or lease agreement. In choosing not to move, we inevitably give up certain possibilities.
Growth Left Unexplored: Just as our military family found growth in every move, those who stay may miss out on challenges that would have stretched and strengthened them. A new environment forces you to learn – whether it’s navigating a different culture or simply finding your way in a strange city. Those lessons can become stories of resilience and self-discovery. When we stay, we keep those chapters blank.
Missed Connections: Think of all the friendships never formed, the mentors never met, the chance encounters that never happen because we stick to the same circles. Staying can mean deepening the relationships we have (which is beautiful), but moving opens the door to people who might change our lives in equally important ways. Our retired friend often wonders about the people he would never have known if he hadn’t moved. New places bring new people, some of whom can leave a lasting imprint on our lives.
Complacency: There’s a quiet risk that comfort breeds complacency. When every day mirrors the last, it’s easy to fall into autopilot. Years can blur together in pleasant routine. Meanwhile, the dreams we shelved for “maybe someday” gather dust. Uprooting, by contrast, jolts us awake. It forces decision and action, which can be scary, but also invigorating. It reminds us that life is not limitless – if we want something different, we might have to go out and seek it.
The Illusion of Stability: Perhaps the most poignant cost of staying is the mistaken belief that it guarantees something permanent. We plant ourselves thinking we’ll have solid ground forever. But even if we never move, life moves. Neighborhoods change, industries rise and fall affecting jobs, children grow up and scatter. The ground beneath our feet is not as static as we assume. Our retired military man knows this too well; he’s seen how even “staying” people lost their anchors. In a way, change finds us all eventually. Refusing to move doesn’t mean nothing will ever change; it just means when change comes, it might catch us unprepared.
Recognizing these hidden costs isn’t about convincing everyone to sell their house and buy a one-way ticket to somewhere new. Rather, it’s about questioning the automatic assumption that staying is always the safest or best choice. It’s shining light on the path not taken – not to induce regret, but to broaden how we weigh our options in life.
Uprooting as a Road to Ourselves
The story of this well-traveled family invites a provocative thought: Could the very act of uprooting ourselves, now and then, lead us closer to the lives we truly want? It sounds contradictory – after all, how do you get closer to your life by disrupting it? But consider how each move this family made clarified what mattered most to them. They couldn’t cling to external landmarks or possessions (most of those ended up in garage sales before each relocation). Instead, they discovered their true home in their relationships and in their ability to adapt. Stripping away the familiar again and again was hard, but it also meant that whatever stuck with them was real and essential.
For those of us settled comfortably in our own nests, maybe there’s something to learn from that. Uprooting doesn’t have to mean literally moving houses (though it could). It could mean embracing change in other ways – changing jobs, traveling for an extended period, even rethinking our routines – anything that shakes up the status quo. The point isn’t to discard stability for its own sake, but to recognize when stability has turned into stagnation.
Sometimes, we stay in a place (or a situation) because we think that’s who we are. But we are not oak trees; our legs were made to move. If there’s a whisper inside asking “what if?”, perhaps it deserves more than a dismissive shush. Perhaps it’s pointing us toward a version of ourselves we haven’t met yet – one that might only emerge on new shores or under different skies.
As the retired officer sits on his porch in the deepening twilight, he ponders that very question. After a lifetime of being everywhere and nowhere, where does he truly belong? He looks at his wife – the one who packed up with him two dozen times – and sees in her eyes a spark of adventure that hasn’t dimmed. He feels the pull of staying – the tomatoes he wants to plant, the comfort of finally knowing every creak of this house. But he also feels the echo of all the farewells and fresh hellos that defined their years.
Maybe belonging isn’t a spot on the map at all, he muses. Maybe it’s something they carry inside, something they built over years of hellos and goodbyes. Their daughter, now video-calling from yet another city (it seems she caught the family wanderlust after all), once told him, “Home is kind of wherever I decide it is, Dad.” At the time, he chuckled, but now those words resonate.
In the end, he realizes their story was never purely about leaving or staying – it was about choosing how to live. Each move was a choice to face change together. Now, staying would be a choice, and moving again would be a different choice – not forced, but intentional. He understands that whatever they decide, it should come from the same place all their moves did: a willingness to embrace life, in all its unpredictability.
The porch light flickers on as night settles. He takes a deep breath of the familiar air, savoring it, and acknowledges a truth quietly: life will move, whether they do or not. The difference now is they get to steer. And that is a comforting thought, as well as an exhilarating one.
Perhaps the real question for all of us isn’t whether to move or stay put, but whether we’re living where – and how – we truly want. In the answer to that lies our own sense of home, wherever that may be.
