In February, I missed what I’ve long considered an important milestone. By “missed”, I don’t mean the milestone didn’t occur — just that I failed to notice it, celebrate it, or write about it.

As of February 23 of 2019, I have now lived at this house longer than at any other address in my lifetime. On that date, I had lived in this house for eight years, six months, and six days, and by the time the sun went down that evening this residence moved into first place. My second-longest duration living anywhere was at the two-story apartment in Seminole, Okla. Coincidentally, that living arrangement also involved a Feb. 23 — the day I moved into it in 2001.

Even as I saw daylight for the first time — in Hawai’i of all places — I had already failed to have any “roots” — ties to a specific location. Because my parents had moved there weeks earlier, and both had been moving their entire lives. (Query: Is the tendency to move often genetic?) One parent born in Texas, one born in Arizona — they met in Oklahoma. Their ancestors too, had moved quite often — at least as far back as my mother could find in historical research.

It didn’t stop when I was born, of course, or I wouldn’t be writing this entry. For those readers unfamiliar with my story, I went to preschool and kindergarten in Japan, elementary school in Oklahoma, middle and high school in Texas, college in Missouri, and began my independent adult life in Arkansas — where I had at least five addresses in five years before moving to Oklahoma for the second time.

I’ve met people who lived in the same house throughout their childhood. (I have a couple of cousins, for example, who lived from birth through adulthood right across the street from our shared grandmother. But they too have spent their adult lives on the move.) And I’ve known a few who continued to live in the same city as their parents once they were grown. And you see this in movies and TV shows quite often.

I don’t know what that would be like, though I have often wondered.

In each spot, I couldn’t help but grow a little attached — a place to live, regular stores and restaurants, workplace, short-term friends. I learned the streets. After a couple of years, you start to learn shortcuts and backroads, start to find new places without needing a map. But then all that knowledge and connection becomes useless when you move again.

So here I am, closing in on 10 years in Killeen and nine years in this house, and every year here, I've thought about “the next place”. I’ve always assumed there would be a next place, because... well, because there always has been.

But now I wonder. Is this the last place? It’s the first time I’ve ever seriously considered the notion that I might be in the final house I’ll ever live in. Will this be the street I look out on when I’m old and infirm? Will the new high school currently being built beside our neighborhood be the one my children attend? Will my kids be the first generation in my line to live their entire childhoods under a single roof?

On Sept. 11, 2000, I wrote a poem called A Nomad, As Always (The Saga), my second-longest poem ever, upon making the decision to move back to Oklahoma from Arkansas. In it, I attempted to express the feeling of pulling up what few shallow roots I’d put down there, and comparing and contrasting that move with all my others — which I referred to in the poem with veiled terms. At the time, I assumed I’d always be moving. I had no plan beyond the next few months. That guy wouldn’t recognize me now, wouldn’t believe I’m the older version of him even if we compared fingerprints and DNA. That guy would have a hard time believing I’ve lived in one spot for more than 8.5 years and that I’m seriously considering hanging up my nomad hat.