You have all probably been to my "Hometown"

Home town. What a funny phrase. Since I was a kid, I have been asked, "Where are you from? Where is your hometown?" I'll be honest, I've never really known how to answer that question. As a kid, I'd always countered the question with one of my own. "Are you asking me where I was born? Or the last place I lived". You see, I grew up as a military brat. I have lived in almost all fifty states, and if I haven't lived there officially, I have spent enough time going there to almost give me a residence.

To me, the entirety United States has been my "hometown." From coast to coast, zigzagging in every direction, I have never thought of just one state as home. I just had a huge "backyard" to explore. You might be skeptical thinking—Yah, but your continually changing houses and meeting new people. If you really think about it, though, even people who have an "official" home town have the same kind of constant changes. There are always changes in the world around us, new clothes, new people to the community, new areas of the town they have never seen, new buildings. Our world and the people in it are constantly changing; my changes just happen a bit faster than most.

I always thought of my "hometown" as one big adventure. There were never borders for me. Everywhere I went was just a part of my home I had never gotten to see before. Each place held its own special comfort, from the spectacular lightning storms in Florida to the never-ending plains in North Dakota. Every place had my unique little nooks never changed, though. I made a checklist.

A place to get books

A pencil and paper (for sketching and writing)

A quiet place with a shady tree

A place with yummy food

A bathtub (don't judge me, hot water is fantastic)

As long as I had these things, everything else was just a continuation of the last place. In the past, people have brought up the point about having to continually make new friends. That is where my mother's wisdom came into play "new people are just the friends you've never met." If you ask just about any military brat, they will also tell you that there is its own unique community for its civilian dependants. Most children within that particular community have never stayed in the same place for more than three years and create a kind of transient small-town community. Thanks to that, I quite literally have friends in every state. So no matter where I go, I always have someone happy to see me.

Iv had some people feel pity for me or even disturbed at the very idea of uprooting so much. To me, though, my roots are in something much more profound than a particular place. It is in the people and things that I treasure most in this world. This gives me the ability to go anywhere in the world without judgment and see all of its quirky differences the way one would see different relatives. Some are a little quirky, some are serious, and some are annoying, but all of them are family. So to finish off, in the spirit of MY "home town," I'm going to list a few of my favorite things about specific states.

Florida- hands down, has some of the most beautiful lightning storms I have ever seen. My favorite time was that moment just before a big storm breaks, and you could feel the temperature drop. The smell of ozone and roses permeated the air, and the brilliant purple the sky would turn is breathtaking.

Hawaii-technically, only my parents and brother lived here (this was after I moved out of the house). Hands down, it was the surfing. I discovered a love of surfing down there, as well as a

Minnesota- technically where I was born. I love the snow and the rolling hills when the wheat is just about ready to harvest. When the wind blows and the sun hits it just right, it looks like a sea of gold. My grandparents used to play dress-up with me, have tea time, and id get to help milk the cows with one of my man uncles.

Montana- I was really little when I lived here, but I will never forget the snow-capped mountains. As a toddler, I was too small to see out the windows, so I would steal my mother's makeup mirror and use the reflection to watch the snowfall on the mountain tops. If I was fortunate id see a far away deer herds move slowly across its face.

North Dakota-where I met my best friend of eighteen years! My most memorable moments were of us walking around the small town that had one stop sign, contemplating whether the ground was actually flat enough that we could let the dogs run for three days before we'd lose sight of them.

South Dakota- Horse Thief Lake. A lot of sad things happened to me in this state. Still, to this day, I will never forget the midnight picnics with my best friend, venting about life, and reveling about how if you came to this spot on a moonless night, the way the stars reflected the water would make it look like there was no difference between earth and sky.