on origins.

Little White Liar’s latest composition challenge deals with origins—with where we grew up and what shaped us. Here goes my effort.

* * * * *

I usually tell people I’m from Washington, D.C. I feel like it gives me an edge—not the glossy, sparkly edge of a Los Angeles or the gritty, worldly edge of a New York City, but a sharp, passionate, justice-seeking, attractive-in-a-shirtsleeves-rolled-up-kind-of-way-a-la-Sam-Seaborn-from-The-West-Wing edge all my own.

And even though it’s true that I was born just outside of Washington, moving away at age 2 probably took my street cred down a notch or two.

The truth is, I’m from everywhere. My parents’ work with The Salvation Army—and you should know that being a pastor in The Salvation Army is not a career; it’s a complete existence—stretched my life across six states, nine schools and eleven jobs.

I am, therefore, not the product of any hometown. And I fear sometimes that the ugly secret behind being from everywhere is that where I’m actually from is…well, nowhere. When reflecting on my childhood, I usually sadly realize that the “old neighborhood” doesn’t really exist for me—in any of those six states. “Going home,” now that I’m an adult, means going wherever my parents are stationed at the moment. There are no notches carved on a wall marking my height, no bedroom in the shade of an elm tree still decorated with my childhood artwork or adolescent trophies, no grade-school teacher that still greets me by name and inquires about whether I’m a famous artist now, seeing as I had such a talent for fingerpainting back in the day.

I wonder sometimes, if I ever ran for president, what long-lost specters from my past the press would even be able to dig up to say that they “could always tell I had big things in store.” I’ve drifted in and out of so many places that none of the stationary people I’ve encountered had enough time to make any such determination.

Luckily, my reflection doesn’t stay this bleak. Because while I may not always have a home in Grover’s Corners, I do have a history that’s just as packed with folksy anecdotes and inside jokes as anyone else’s. But the people I grew up with were not the people that lived next door, or on the next street, or in the next county. My strongest friendships from childhood are with a community of other rootless people—people who also chose or had chosen for them the same nomadic Salvation Army life I lived.

As it turns out, the Army isn’t a faceless machine that uprooted me every couple of years. It’s not a life my parents had apart from me. Other Army kids became a rare constant feature of my life—always showing up at the same summer conferences and youth retreats.

Together, we went to summer camp—and later, worked at summer camp. We joined “Divisional Youth Band” together, taking up trumpets, trombones, baritones, etc. in the long-standing Army tradition of teaching musical theory and technique via blasts of air from dented instruments. I set down the alto horn for the last time about five years ago—but if you think I regret the years I put into developing a horn player’s lip, well, go ask any of the boys I’ve kissed if they mind very much. We commiserated about having to explain to our school friends that yes, our dads worked for the Salvation Army, but no, that didn’t mean that we had all our family dinners at the soup kitchen.

The mementos of my youth are, therefore, in the stories we tell when we get together. They’re in a flat wooden saxophone and a purple mesh laundry bag. They’re in surprise parties in the camp kitchen, and Denny’s on Tuesday nights after rehearsal, and Charlie’s Angels overlooking Rio de Janiero, and too many mimes to count. And in that time that I blurted out an impromptu testimony before singing in the TYI talent show and ended up speaking with more clarity and maturity than I had ever known I was capable of. And in that other time that I hit the ground hard after running full-speed into a locked door at church.

Do I wish that I had grown up in one town? Sometimes. But what would I have missed as a result?