where I'm from

It's a well-worn joke that third-culture kids (military brats like me, but also children of expats, missionary kids, and the ever-increasing number of children who don't grow up in the same country their parents did) have a hard time answering the question, "where are you from?" This question takes on extra weight here, where being from somewhere is a mark of identity so strong that when you become a naturalized Swiss citizen you are not just a citizen of the country, but a citizen of one particular Swiss town. Someone is "really Swiss" if they are a citizen of the town they live in and that's the town their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents also came from. Which...happens more than you might think it would in 2019? (I've probably mentioned my theory about living in Switzerland being like living 40 years in the past?)

A fun benefit to living abroad, though, is that I don't actually have much trouble with the "where are you from?" question here. I say "Seattle." It doesn't matter that I didn't grow up there, or that very soon I'll have spent more time here in Zurich than I did in my two stints there - I'm American; Seattle is a place in America; most people I talk to have never been there; the conversation can move on.

But dodging the question doesn't get me out of answering it for myself. Where am I from?

I can't give you a good answer tonight but just in case you hadn't noticed: it is absolutely insane what you can find on the Internet.

Exhibit A: here is a house we lived in briefly when I was a baby, then again when I was in kindergarten and first grade.
https://www.redfin.com/WA/Oak-Harbor/1235-Cashmere-Pl-98277/home/16698502
See that big tree behind the back porch? I think my parents planted it the year I was born.

And check this out: these pictures were taken a year (maybe less?) after we lived in this military housing area in Japan. I was in fifth grade.
https://www.photoclip.net/wp-content/uploads/nagai_heights_1985/juicebox/
It looked just like this. Peeling paint and boarded-up windows and strangely-engineered swing set and super nasty pool and all.

So there are two places I'm from! Crazy huh?