Where Everyone Knows Your Name

When I was single, I had spent some time in a very small town.  There are definitely pros and cons to small towns.  One thing that I had to overcome was that the locals didn't know my extended family and weren't related to me in any way.  While "new blood" may seem like a good thing in this kind of situation, suspicion of outsiders was a hard thing to surmount.  The major "pro" that made living with the before mentioned "con" was that EVERYONE knew my name.  Through a lot of trial and error, I found my place in that tiny town, despite my great grand parents absence from the town census records.

When we moved to the Great White North, I found myself, once again, in the same predicament. However, instead of assimilating into one small town, I had to accomplish this in two simultaneously. I would LOVE to say that I set out with vigor to slay the dragon of "newness," but I didn't.  Looking back, I see all the mistakes I made in the name of timidity that caused me to waste two of the three years we were stationed there.

Despite the social waste that was the product of my asinine hesitancy, my engineer and I did do something right.  We found a local coffee shop/used bookstore...and went there often.  Before we knew it, we were "regulars."  There was nothing like the feeling that came with walking through that door and having the manager greet us by name.  Within the walls of the humble coffee & book shop, we were home.

Honestly, I have no idea how often we went there.  We are book addicts and found comfort among the stacks of books accompanied by the rich smell of coffee.  There were countless times when my engineer would get off of work and we would drive all the way into town just to have a cup of coffee and look at books.  It was a place of solace where we would go and talk or just "be" together.

During times when my engineer was away, I would go there to get out of the empty house.  Familiar faces and a cozy setting would bring a sense of peace when I needed it most.  Hours were spent lost in a good book and a delicious cup of coffee there.

Too often, after having to relocated my family, I have that feeling of just not wanting to find that place AGAIN.  It is so easy to fall into the rut of just wanting the familiar and not wanting to try something new anymore.  With every move, there is an increasingly stronger feeling of wanting to just "wait out" the tour and not putting down roots...at all.

I fight it.  Sometimes it takes a swift kick in the pants from my engineer, but I do fight it.  The fruits of that fight are evident all over the world: from the Great White North to the Orient, from the Orient to Europe, finally, from Europe to the Pacific. As Blue has pulled up our roots, we have searched for the places where everyone would know our names.  In the midst of the search we always find that, not only is it worth it, it is the best thing we could have ever done.