Daughter hugging her Military Mother outdoors (Andrew Lipovsky - Adobe Stock)

Picture this: You’re sitting in a class at the start of the school year, answering an “About Me” survey on your computer. One of the questions says, “What’s the worst part of your life?” The next question asks, “What’s the best part of your life?” You think hard about these two questions. What would you say? How would you describe your answer? 

Hello! My name is Lucy Rose Carisio, and I’ve been in a military family since I was born. I have moved six-going-on-seven times and have been to more than 10 schools in my life. As of right now, I’m about halfway through my 8th grade school year. 

At the start of the year, I was asked those same two questions in a survey. What’s the best and worst part of your life? There were an infinite number of answers I could give.

Surprisingly, I answered both questions with the same word. “Moving.” 

As I said before, I’ve been in a military family since I was a child, and I’ve lived in six different places. This means that I’ve been able to see amazing things: the Seattle Space Needle, the city of Tokyo, the Eiffel Tower, the Sistine Chapel, the Bamboo Forests of Kyoto and so much more. I’ve gotten to meet so many people and make friends from all of those places, and I’ve even learned a bit of some different languages. 

But, there is a downside to all of this. There’s a sort of existential dread over the entire time that I live somewhere because I know I’ll eventually have to say goodbye to it all. I’ll be leaving my house and my friends and taking a long trip on an airplane to live in a new house in a new place that’s who knows how far away.

The worst- and best- example of this was my move from Spokane, Washington to Okinawa, Japan. We’d only been living in Spokane for a year and a half, but I’d already made so many great friends and seen so many amazing things. I found a genuine best friend for the first time in my life, and I even got a new little brother.

Then one day in August, we had to say goodbye. We had to leave everything behind and move to a new place that I’d never been before. When we first stepped into our empty husk of a house in Japan, I cried. I cried for a long time. I kept on saying that Spokane was the best place we’ve ever lived. 

Little did I know that my time on Okinawa would take the cake as the best time of my life. I went to three amazing schools on Kadena Air Base and learned so many new things about Japanese culture, both from school and the trips we took. 

Okinawa is actually just a small island off the south coast of Japan, so in the winter, we would take trips to Tokyo and Kyoto and learn all sorts of things about the culture and way of life there. I learned what things like “Tanjobi Omedato Gozaimas” means  (“Happy Birthday” in Japanese). I learned what authentic Asian sushi tastes like. I made mochi, which is a Japanese rice-jelly dessert. Plus, I’ve seen all of the stereotypical “ninja architecture” in real life, as well as Buddhist rock gardens, Shinto shrines, and temples.

But like I said before, we eventually had to say goodbye.

So that’s why moving is the best and worst part of my life. So many new opportunities and experiences can be found with moving, and yet so much sadness and loss can be found as well. I hope this gave you a new understanding about the life of a military child, made you think about how you would answer those two questions on a survey now, and perhaps gave you insight into the complicated emotions that accompany the organized mess of a military lifestyle.