“Where are you from?”

A basic question, one would think, and exceedingly common among college students. In college, you find yourself amongst thousands of other young people, all coming from different areas of the world, and everyone wants to get to know each other. Most people have a fairly straightforward answer, but I believe military kids, and those who also move frequently, deserve some extra credit when they have to settle on a hometown.

Hometown is a funny word. Depending on how you interpret it, one could be asking about your place of birth, where you grew up, or were you currently live. However, despite the flexibility of the word, and the even greater ambiguity in the connotation of “home,” people rarely specify what they mean when they ask the question. They operate under the assumption that most people have a fixed location for their “childhood home.”

My father is in the Navy and has been my entire life. We usually move every couple years, although sometimes we get lucky and stay in one place for a whopping three or four years. Home has always been, and always will be, where my family is. When I was growing up, whenever someone asked where I was from, I would cheerfully rattle off all the places I’d lived. It was a game to me, to watch another child’s eyes widen in awe as my list of various states continued to grow. As I grew older and that number had expanded to 10, then 11 as of this past summer, then 12 if you include where I attend college, the list began to feel very tedious to explain in its entirety.

Moving to college has made the idea of a home even more ambiguous. For the first time in my life, the place where I went to school and made new friends was not where my family was. I happily counted Wellesley, Massachusetts as a new home— I plan on spending four years here, which sets a new personal record for Most Years Lived in One Place.

But things became complicated when my family moved again between my freshman and sophomore years of college. I found myself feeling strangely detached from what I considered my hometown before college: a city in northern Virginia, where I graduated high school. I had always considered it to be my hometown when asked where I was from, but suddenly I felt guilty for naming it when my family no longer lived there. If I were to return, I would have friends, familiar roads, and my favorite running trails; but I wouldn’t have family.

So, to everyone who has moved around too often to name just one “hometown,” have no fear. You don’t have to settle on one place. A hometown is the place where you became who you are today; it will change as time passes, and it can be scary, and that’s okay. As a college student, I consider the place I graduated high school to be my hometown. Perhaps one day I’ll name Wellesley. But “home” is a drastically different word. It can be defined in even more ways than “hometown,” and that’s what makes it so beautiful— you don’t have to pick one. Home is where my best friends are. Home is where my family is. Home is many places, spread out around the country. And while my hometown may change many times in the coming years, my homes will only continue to grow.