1 post tagged “my past”

How many places have you lived in your life?

You're kidding, right? Let's see if I can remember them all:

• Ketchikan, AK (first three months of my life).
• New York City, NY (two apartments over the course of six years).
• Portland, OR (stayed with grandparents for a while).
• Vancouver, WA (two apartments over the course of about a year).
• Brewster, WA (grandparents' place again... same grandparents, that is... then about five different house-like places in and around town over the course of one-and-a-half of Mom's subsequent marriages).
• Bridgeport, WA (along the Bridgeport Bar, actually).
• Soap Lake, WA (during the stretch when Mom dumped us off for a few months with an elderly couple we knew from church).
• Back to Brewster, WA (just one place, still along the Bar, but going to school in Brewster instead of Bridgeport).
• Salem, OR (staying with aunt & her girlfriends, then two different apartments once Mom got out of rehab, for a total of three homes... within just three months).
• Back to Brewster, WA (yet again, and back to the same place as before, so maybe that doesn't count).
• Hillsboro, OR (with a brief layover at some guy's house, for a total of two places, one of which is mere blocks from where I now work!).
• Kent, WA (an apartment w/ the aforementioned guy, now stepdad #3).
• Bellevue, WA (one house, amen).
• Des Moines, WA (on a boat, no less, for part of the summer).
• Anacortes, WA (same boat, new location, for the remains of the summer).
• Concrete, WA (first living in tents at a campground site up in the hills, then crammed into a tiny hotel room, then finally in our house!).
• Back to Portland, OR (two apartments in the same building with my father, then living with my wife and her family in their house, then rooming with a friend in a house off of NE 82nd, then back to the wife's family in a different house, then rooming with another friend in a house off SE Foster, then an apartment along SE Powell, then the house near SE Holgate where I lived in one place longer than anywhere else in my entire life, and... finally, my current residence near NE Broadway).

So, what does that all add up to? Thirty-seven "homes" in thirty-four years? Sounds about right. It probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that I hate moving...