Until you've moved to a completely different area of the country, you might not realize the nuances you've become accustomed to in your home-region. If you've lived your entire life in Alabama, for instance, grits are as much a part of breakfast as orange juice. If you've lived your whole life in Minnesota, grits are something you make your children at least try ("Just one bite, and if you don't like it, you never have to eat it again") at a quaint diner with home cooking because you want them to like sould food. If you are a military family, however, and have lived on both coasts and many places in between, you and your children are likely a patchwork quilt of the dialects, acquired tastes and experiences of the whole U.S. and maybe even the world.

Some people perceive military families to be sheltered, uneducated and less worldly than their civilian counterparts, when in fact military families have lived in small towns, big cities, overseas, across the U.S.,and in almost every socioeconomic and cultural environment that you can think of. And then they take those experiences with them to their next duty station. Think of them as cultural fairies, if you will, spreading the dust of all the places they have visited and lived in each new place they go.

Having been a military dependent my entire life, I thought I was your average, generic American. I thought I had no distinct dialect or habits tying me to a particular region of the country.

And then I moved to Maine.

"Excuse me, do y'all have a public restroom?" I asked an employee at the local supermarket.

The man looked stunned. He didn't answer. He just scratched his head and stared at me.

"A public restroom?" I said again.

"Ayuh," he said.

It sounded like he had coughed. So I said, "Bless you."

"Excuse me?" he said.

"Yes, God bless you. So, do y'all have a public restroom?"

The man pointed to the back corner of the supermarket, where there was, of course, a large sign and an arrow pointing to the restrooms. "Ayuh," the man said again.

"Bless you."

I guess I should have known that my family would stand out in this new part of the country the moment we put on sweatshirts and pants in 79-degree weather. Still, I clung to the hope that we may remain inconspicuous. I especially hoped that our children would blend in. I bought Boston Red Sox shirts and New England Patriots jerseys to replace their blue and orange Gator clothes, which I thought pegged Ford and Owen as being very much "from Florida." But the new team shirts didn't help this week when Owen, who just started kindergarten, went to his orientation wearing a ski hat and said, "They have big heels in Maine."

On the first day of school, it was hard to watch my children struggle to fit in with the other kids on the playground before the school bell rang. Like my incident in the supermarket, Ford and Owen misunderstood their new peers just as much as their new peers misunderstood them. Owen talked about his Star Wars action figures, hoping it would earn him some friends, then quickly realized that unlike our old neighborhood, Pokemon, not Star Wars, seems to be all the rage here. Kids in Maine play ice hockey more than they go to the beach, and no one, except my two boys, was wearing tennis shoes with built-in air-conditioners.

But the first day of school was hard for me in a different way, too. Like my boys, I arrived at the playground with no friends. I watched other moms stand in circles and talk about their summers. They marveled at how each other's children had grown. No one knew that Owen had grown one inch since May or that Ford lost two teeth. No one knew the Smileys at all. Then I thought about our friends in Florida, how they might be standing around saying, "Have you heard from the Smileys yet? Are they liking Maine?" And I knew that some day, I will be part of the new circles and so will my boys. And then we will leave this new home, too.

Which is the blessing -- and the curse -- of being a military family.