On her mother's wings

Published April 11, 2014
By Stephanie Newburg
Military Dependent

TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. -- I always feel an exotic sort of pride when I claim Hawaii as the place I was born. I can also rattle off a long list of the different places, people and events I've seen since I was a little girl. I can tell the story of how my family and I became a part of the largest peacetime evacuation of military personnel and their families in history. We traveled across the ocean on the USS Abraham Lincoln during the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Phillipeans.

However, I cannot tell you the name of the place where I grew up or the names of my best friends since childhood. I cannot tell you where my family's home has always been or what it feels like to re-visit the place I've always called home.

I am just one, of many, who are better known as "military brats," and to us, the entire world becomes our home, and travel and adaptation, our middle names.

As I look back upon my childhood as a "military brat," I remember those times when my mother's relocation orders would come in. We all dreaded it as kids.

It was never easy to say those painful goodbyes to our friends we had just made. We would promise to keep in touch with one another, but it never panned out. New friends were made and new environments became the latest home. To us, it seemed a never-ending bittersweet cycle: The orders come in, we packed, shed a few tears as we say goodbye, traveled on, got settled in, made new friends, got used to it, then when we started liking the new place and new friends, bang, new orders came in and the cycle started all over again.

It was rather unsettling, but, as I look back upon it, it gave us an incredible gift: the ability to adapt and become very comfortable in any environment we were placed in. It gave us a strength that makes "military brats" a unique and universal lot. It's a blessing I would never trade in for the names of my life-long childhood friends or for the "only place I've ever called my home." I mean, how many other kids get to say that they've lived all over the world before the age of 10?

So, as my mother celebrates her remarkable achievement of attaining the rank of colonel in the United States Air Force, I can say with pride, I have been along for the joy ride ever since the beginning of her service to our country.

I am proud of the choice she made for not only herself and her family, but for an entire nation.

I love that I was able to see so many different parts of the world and meet so many different people. I now see the world from a more universal perspective than many others are able to. Traveling the world and meeting with all the people of the world is a part of my work now, and it is all because of my mother's service in the Air Force. So I thank you, mother, and I thank you, Air Force, for the gifts and lifetime experiences that were both a challenge and a blessing. They helped the family to grow with a greater and more comprehensive worldview. We are all the better for it.

On her mother’s wings