Did you catch the title reference to Edie Brickell & New Bohemians’ song The Wheel? Moving constantly, as I did growing up, made that song almost prophetic. Every move meant everything changed—friends, schools, the shows on TV. My parents tried to make each new place feel like home, even though it was a constant challenge. The familiarity of little things—my toys, our VHS tapes, even cereal boxes—became my grounding elements in the whirlwind.

We clung to routines, like Saturday night movie marathons featuring our favorite recorded classics, complete with the commercials my dad sometimes missed while editing. These were our moments of ‘normalcy’ before the inevitable uprooting would start again. Disney World pit stops before each move became one of my parents’ traditions for us—a sweet pause before each new chapter. Looking back, each trip marked my journey from kid to young adult, finding threads of constancy in the most transient of lives.

Thanks to social media, I’ve reconnected with old friends, though many friendships faded naturally, as they do when your entire life is spent on the move. Reunions and conversations have shown me how time distills memories into shared nostalgia. Friendships come and go, leaving their marks before life pulls us in different directions again, as a line from Casablanca aptly puts it: “We will always have Paris.”