What's The Deal With Roots?

With our pending terminal leave date being Oct. 1st, Ryan has been at TAPS all week. For my non-military readers, TAPS is a week long class that is geared to help military personnel prepare and adjust to civilian life. At the end of the class the attending party will receive a page 13, this paper signifies the Navy moving the sailor, his family and their belongings back to their home of origin at no cost to the sailor, and let me tell ya with the price of gas what it is, THIS paper is like gold.

For Ryan, his place of "origin" is Nashville, TN. Now, I like Nashville, it's a great city, I'm a city person. I love his family, more so than my own family sometimes (excluding my sisters who I completely adore). Ryan wants to get out of the military, move back to Nashville, and start a family, plant roots he says. This is all fine and dandy, dandy and fine, except for the fact that I'm not really sure I want to plant roots right now. I grew up moving every four years always to a different city where my dad thought "he could do better here", when I was 16 I moved from NY to SC, then when I was 21 I moved from SC to VA. I like moving, it's a change of pace, a new adventure, a new home to explore. If I stay in one place for too long, I get restless, bored, I feel like I'm taped up in a box, claustraphobicated (a new word), if you will. When people talk about establishing roots that means staying....in one place....FOREVER. And usually kids come along not too far from establishing those "roots". What about working as a columnist in NYC, living in Paris, driving out west, and becoming a Vegas showgirl? Ok, so I know that at least one of those dreams is completely unrealistic especially if you have ever seen me dance, but that doesn't mean I'm ready to just say, "Well that's it, I guess no more dreaming big, we have roots now and baby formula is almost as expensive as gas so forget Paris, forget writing in NYC, and forget road trips out west, it's all about diapers, taxes and school districts now." Don't get me wrong being a mommy one day could be cool, but seriously I can't even get my dogs to behave, how in the world am I supposed to raise a person, a person that goes out and affects this world and other people, dogs don't vote and work jobs. For me the military is safe, we'll always move, we'll always have money coming in, it's highly unlikely the military will go through a drastic budget cut and fire 1/2 the Atlantic fleet.

The love of my life wants to move back home, and stay there....forever. He wants to have kids in the near future, and he wants roots. I was kinda hoping that I would just grow out of the whole moving around bit, that I would get tired of it, that I would eventually want to settle down and have kids and "roots". You can't be 19 forever, someday you have to grow up. People change, dreams change, situations change, needs and desires change, I always thought that I felt this way because I was young and as I got older my feelings on "roots" would surely change, well it's been 6 years and they surely haven't. Is it possible to adjust and get used to a lifestyle, to learn to like having "roots"? Maybe once I actually start establishing these "roots" I'll like them? Am I just being selfish holding on to these dreams, that are, in reality, completely unrealistic? Don't get me wrong, if we try the whole "roots" deal and I do start getting restless and claustraphobicated, I'm not the type to do anything drastic, unless of course you call booking 2 flights to Paris for a week drastic. :)

SD