New acquaintances are sometimes taken aback by the speed-dating approach to friendship I perfected in military life.
Hello-my-name-is-Terri-I-just-moved-here-How-many-kids-do-you-have-I-have-three-How-old-are-your children-Where-are-you-from-Who-is-your-dentist-Love-your-hair-Here's-my-number-Want-to-have-lunch-sometime?
A fearful look in their eyes is just one indication that I need to slow down. Way down. The acceleration is not only unnecessary; it scares people.
Military life means starting over every two or three years, so I’ve spent a dozen or so moves perfecting my short game. I learned to dig in quickly, to make friends practically on the spot as I made each new house our home. Our family made each new community our own without wasting much time.
Our short game was honed by the ticking clock, a constant reminder after one move that the next one was coming. If we took too long to settle in and get acclimated, we knew we risked spending precious time living out of cardboard boxes. Instead, we learned jump right in. Unpack, hang those pictures, meet the neighbors, and find a babysitter. Discover what’s fun to do in this new place. Accept the stuff that's not so fun. Get over it and get on with it.
When we left active duty and the routine of frequent moves came to an end, my husband and I discovered it was time to work on our long game. Not that we didn't have a long game. In spite of living all over the world, we still managed to maintain extended family ties and build lifetime friendships. We figured we were masters of transition, and we could certainly master another one. We knew what to expect from this move, just as we knew what to expect from any other.
It was all so familiar. Everything except the timetable. We discovered our long game needed some recalibration.
We’ve moved to a home and hometown where we plan to stay for a long time. We are putting down roots we hope will go much deeper than most we have planted before. Without a countdown to the next move, we’ve had to adjust our expectations of the time we could take and should take for those roots to take hold. We also need to use more discernment about where to plant them.
Moving every couple of years meant we could afford to act quickly and take chances. From new kitchen curtains to a new Sunday school class, we knew we wouldn’t have to live long with our choices. We could take more risks in our decisions, relationships, and commitments, because our next set of marching orders would deliver us from any mistakes, mismatches, or over-commitment.
But now, we don’t plan to leave this home in two short years, or even ten. The choices we make now will be with us for many years to come. We’re learning to explore our new surroundings and opportunities carefully. We have more time, so why not take it?
In spite of our multiple moves and quirky getting-to-know-you techniques, after thirty years of military life, we don’t have commitment issues. We’re ready to engage. We have the skills for a long game, and we are learning to adapt them in new ways and to a wider swath of our experience.
We know we have more time, but it’s not so easy to unlearn the carpe diem habits of a mobile lifetime. Sometimes we get impatient. It’s a recurring challenge for us. We want to feel settled. Accepted. Connected. Today.
My husband and I have started reminding each other, when one of us gets frustrated about the pace of adjustment: This is not the short game. We’re playing a long game now.
We’ve repeated it so often that now we just smile at each other and say, “Long game, baby. Long game.”
Terri Barnes is a writer and book editor and is the author of Spouse Calls: Messages from a Military Life.
