It's Time To Move On...

Our apartment is almost empty.

In Japan:

A few remaining boxes, rolled-up rugs, and the porch furniture on the roof- that we never ended up using because Japan's swampy summers are too damn hot- are all that remain.  The car is sold.  Little TF is attending the last day of her beloved preschool.  We have moved back into the Navy Lodge for the quickly fading remainder of our time here.  Our safety deposit is going to be returned- hopefully mostly intact.  Neighbors and the veggie man down the street will soon receive reluctant, good-bye bows.

In the United States:

Our old car, that we left in a California storage facility, has arrived at our new destination on the East Coast.  We close on our first home in March.  Little TF's already been accepted into a preschool for next year, and can even finish out this school year if she wants.  My brother is getting married this spring, and we've got a bridesmaid dress and a flower girl dress hogging space in our luggage.  Mr. TF has been slated for a mid-spring deployment, and Little TF and I have summer plans at my parents' house to prove it.

Those of us who answer the military's call, for whatever reason that may be, slip so easily out of one life and into another.  It only takes a couple weeks to completely pack up our lives and send them somewhere else. At the same time, it's not so easy. My family has spent the last three years building a beautiful life in Japan.  Deployment stress, natural disaster stress, not speaking the language stress, it all became less and less stressful until it became...normal?  (Well, not the natural disaster stress.  I'm still holding my breath against the looming Tokai Earthquake until our airplane wheels leave the ground.)  Walking to the grocery store every day, chatting in fragmented Japanese with our local flower vendor, listening to the children singing at the preschool across the street, catching a view of Mt. Fuji as I hang out the laundry...that's all become normal, too.  I already miss it. 

Friends and family say, "You must be so excited to move back to the States!" And I am.  The United States is my home.  But I am a bit fearful that I don't quite remember how to be an American.  My English is sometimes a bit off...hearing a majority of only Japanese or broken English spoken means I have started to occasionally stumble over my grammar, and can't remember little-used words (What do we call that shelter that cars park underneath?  Two days later- carport!  That's it!).  American-sized food portions in restaurants look grotesquely excessive, and American cars look shockingly large.  From a distance, filtered through the lens of online news sources, it's sometimes hard to recognize my country. Have we always been this environmentally indifferent?  Tolerated such poor education in so many of our public schools? Screamed this loudly about our gun rights? Been so excessively loud in general?  Or has the distance just made the indifference and the screaming and the noise seem more acute?  Also, shoes in the house?  Why do we stubbornly adhere to such a filthy habit?

But it's time for us to go back.  It's time for my daughter to learn how to be an American.  Time for her to learn that to thank someone, Americans look the person in the eye instead of bowing towards the ground.  That to gain and extend trust, Americans extend a confident handshake.  That to become an American, one need only to possess the desire (although I suppose some would also argue for legal entry) to do so.  That a person may personally have the freedom to be a bigot and judge by skin color and cultural background and sexual orientation (I advocate none of those things), but our governments, businesses, and schools do not have such a freedom.  These are good things that my daughter needs to learn and I am proud that she is a citizen of a such a country.

As we close the last page of the book, Three Years In Japan, we have already started to open the first page of our First Year On The East Coast book.  Every military family has a stack of such books.  These are rich, difficult, fascinating tales, and everyone's books are different.  Yet, somehow we are all writing the same story, wherever in the world we might be.  In leaving Japan, we have friends that are leaving our book's pages.  In moving to the East Coast, we have old friends that are rejoining our story. We say a reluctant "good-bye" and then a "good to see you, again," practically in the same breath. And so the military moving cycle continues.

We will always be grateful that our stack of books included Japan.


Disclaimer:  I do my best to make sure all my information is accurate.  However, details may change or I may just be flat-out wrong.  Please let me know if something needs a correction.  Thank-you!