Keep their friends close
Last week, we had a visit from our old “base housing” neighbors. They’re stationed in San Diego, we’re in Virginia, and they spent a few glorious days with us in the middle of an east coast trip.
Nothing beats the way our younger son’s face lit up when he saw his best buddy. It had been about 18 months since they last got to see each other in person, and the visit reminded me that these kids need enduring friendships as much as we do.
How does the saying go? “You can’t make old friends.” You can only keep them.
Military kids navigate so much hardship and transition as a result of their parent’s profession, and making and losing friends tops the list. Saying goodbye to great friends isn’t easy at any age.
But as I wrote a couple weeks ago, our friends give our lives meaning, and this is no less true for our kids.
Growing up differently
Our boys have such different childhoods from ours. My husband lived in the same house from the age of five. His parents still live in it, with no plans to leave.
I never had to change schools outside of promotions to middle and high school. Most of the kids in my kindergarten class were also at my high school graduation.
Year after year, our military kids experience change, either with a move that takes them from the home they know, or when their friend group shifts as kids’ parents get new orders.
I’ve found that this gets harder as the kids get older, and their capacity for remembering extends. They don’t get to hang onto their friends, and they know it. And it’s hard.
Because they handle all this change with so much grace, I tend to underestimate the challenges this lifestyle places on them.
I never had a pack of neighborhood friends like these kids!
Redefining home
At the end of my freshman year of high school, we moved houses. I didn’t even have to change schools, and yet the move devastated me.
I remember sitting in our backyard one night during the move when my mom said something I now say to my kids: your home isn’t made of walls. It’s made of the people within them.
She was talking about our family, and that couldn’t be more true of our Navy life, except that our definition of “family” extends to the friends with whom we live and build our daily lives.
We don’t have the privilege of living in the same town (or choosing to live in the same town) as parents, grandparents, siblings, and cousins. Often, we’re stationed thousands of miles from “home.”
So our neighbors become our emergency contacts, our friends become the people with whom we vacation and celebrate holidays and birthdays.
The same is true for our kids.
Gearing up for a neighborhood slumber party!
Making friends
If you’re human, you’re a relational being. I don’t think we can underestimate the power of friendship and the peril of isolation. Our kids know this intuitively, but that doesn’t make the process of making new friends any easier.
When we moved to Virginia from California last year, I could feel their loneliness, despite being surrounded by new people.
Our older son broke down in tears the first time we visited our crowded neighborhood pool. He didn’t know anyone, and it looked like everyone else knew each other, like everyone was having a great time.
The isolation crushed him, and he curled up under a towel and cried. I didn’t know what to do, so I just rubbed his back and choked back tears of my own.
It took a few months, but he made some buddies down the street. Over time, those friendships helped this new place feel more like home. It didn’t erase the loss of his old friends, but it made life sweet again.
It’s a double-edged sword":
The best part of military life for our kids has been the many friends they’ve made.
The hardest part of military life for our kids is losing those dear friends - when either they move away, or we do.
Saying goodbye never gets easier.
Staying in touch
For awhile, I felt like it was on me to manage the kids’ friendships (and it was hard!). As they’ve gotten older, they need and want the tools to manage those relationships on their own.
We don’t do phones for the kids, but last Christmas they got an iPad to share. They’re using it to stay in touch. They FaceTime friends, build group chats with our old neighbors, and set up times to play Madden or Minecraft together.
It hasn’t replaced the in-person friendships they’re making where we live today, but it’s empowered them to stay connected with their friends. They don’t have to lose what they gain at each duty station.
July 2021
July 2023 - same boys, different state.
When our former neighbors visited last week, we hadn’t seen them in 18 months, but the kids picked up like no time had passed. Ben got to be a “big brother” to five kiddos, including a toddler. Owen got his best buddy back for a few days.
The goodbye was hard, but we reassured them, it’s not goodbye, right? It’s “see you soon.”
I think now that we’ve made the effort to stay in touch, to see each other, they’ll believe us.
January 2022 - the first of hopefully many reunions with these sweet friends.
18 months later - neighbors reunited at a museum in Washington, DC!
Learning to be a friend
Ben told me the other day that he likes military kids “because other kids build brick walls, but military kids build glass houses and know how to open doors.”
It might be painful to move, to endure change, to struggle with loneliness. But these complex experiences and sometimes short-lived friendships build resilience, empathy, perseverance, and kindness in our kids unlike anything I had to develop at their ages.
When the day comes that we leave military life, I hope our boys will remember the kindness of the kids who built glass houses and opened doors.
And they’ll do the same for the kids whose faces they don’t recognize.
Say hello, throw them a baseball, ask them to hang out.
Making friends isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to be complicated, and you never know when someone might need one.
What a gift: friends who are like family.
Learning from our kids
Watching our boys - and all these military kids - navigate so much change and loss in their lives is teaching me how to navigate all of it myself.
Perhaps the biggest lesson is to let them feel it all - the joy and the pain. To not distract them with shiny new things or experiences. To allow them to work through these complicated emotions and have conversations with them that acknowledge and affirm their suffering.
We recently talked about it in these terms: in order to avoid the pain of losing friends, we have to never make new ones.
To feel loss means we’ve experienced love.
And friendship isn’t optional. It’s the best part of all of this. We need each other, and I’m so grateful our boys are learning those lessons at these tender ages. They’ll be better for it: stronger, more empathetic.
And maybe, so will I.
