Sometimes life deals the cards just right and you are lucky enough to be in the right place at the precise moment in time and have the most amazing opportunity to share this fantastic thing called life with the bestest of people! We have had that here on Okinawa! Kat and Matt next door and Leilani and Angus across the way have been our neighbors since we moved into this little concrete house on Camp Foster on the itty bitty island of Okinawa! I still remember Kat coming over on our very first day and giving us a plate of brownies and introducing all the kids on the street. My munchkins immediately scattered with the neighborhood children that were their age and I went back inside to finish unpacking. Not having the slightest idea that Kat was going to become a friend that will always be held dear to my heart. Vicki instantly began playing with her daughter Alex and Jorden hit it off with Cody. Ty and Ryan, 2 and 3, began to play with the giant group of little boys and a few little girls their age. Later that day I came home and found a note taped to my door that the neighborhood was going to be grilling together for Labor Day and to join them for some fun. My only thought at that moment was that these people were frickin insane! It was like a few hundred degrees outside with humidity that saturated you in a heartbeat! Why would you grill when you could just throw your meat out on the pavement and watch it cook? But, needless to say, we went out in the heat and sat drenched in our sweat and the friendships were formed that would never unravel, no matter where our future duty stations would send us! That has been the last 5 years of our life on this island! Spending it with the most incredible of people. Our kids have grown up together, potty trained together and began school together. Our husbands have deployed together, gone to war together, and thru it all we have been one big family. Ohana it is! Always there for each other, thru the good and the bad. Laughing when we have wanted to cry and crying because we have laughed so hard! Securing our houses when the typhoons have approached, the Dad’s on island making sure the houses with deployed Dad’s were set and ready. Hanging out during lockdowns and playing games till we could not keep our eyes open. Santa’s visits on Christmas Eve, Thanksgivings, trick or treating, roasting marshmallows and sitting by a fire, even if it meant with umbrellas! Angus practicing his aim with his paint ball guns at our front door, bringing out the left over’s and having a buffet so nobody had to cook that night……….the list goes on of all the fun times shared! We have lived in the kind of neighborhood where you can take your trash out in the morning and 5 hours later realize you need to go inside and figure out what to make for dinner. There is always someone sitting outside and a chair waiting for you to join them. Every year we have endured the sadness of the moving trucks pulling in to pack out our dear neighbors as they head out to new horizons. Now, the last two families from our original group are leaving and I am so very grateful for the treasured memories and saddened by the thought of not seeing you each day! Kat, I couldn’t have asked for a better family to share walls with! You were my very first friend on Oki! You are the wise one and I will miss all of our chats in your front yard and watching the clouds on your trampoline to the tunes of my iPod! Tank has made us forever family! Leilani, you have been the twin I never had! Thanks for being the brave one and enduring my screams during the late night scary movies and letting me grab your arm and making you tell me when I could open my eyes! It was the best swimming laps everyday while we traded watching each other’s kids! I think we are the only ones to sneak into the pool during lockdown in a typhoon and take pictures of each other jumping off the diving boards as we flew in the wind! I can’t imagine going to the beach this summer without you and the rest of your crew! I’ll miss not seeing you plopped on my couch or vice versa hanging out on yours! Who is going to help me move my furniture around?! I know this is not good bye; it is just merely a switch in our locations. With tears running down my face and a shaky smile I bid you all farewell and know that our paths will cross again. We have truly been blessed to live among you all!!! And as the song goes…. “I will remember you……” Now, I guess I will just catch up on everything that I have put off over the last 5 years!!!
