First Entry: Fortress Home
The really odd thing is that so many of us grew up thinking we had no roots.
Granted there were no hometowns. No friends from nursery school. No aging neighbors, no houses with cluttered attics or basements bearing witness to decades of half-finished projects. Few if any cousins' weddings, or funerals of our parents' high school friends. No teachers from the early years tracking our progress in the upper grades. We grew up winking in and out of such communities, burning bright one moment and vanishing the next. The rooted folks I know have a very different story to tell. But does that mean we have no story? No common culture? No roots?
I'm here to insist otherwise. We brats have roots all right--roots that link us to a culture as powerful and shaping as any on earth. Roots that link us to many millions of others who grew up as we did. Roots that can tell us who we are and why we do the things we do. Roots that can shed light on our familiy histories, and lead us to a compassionate understanding of our parents, our siblings, ourselves.
It took me many years and the writing of a lengthy book to figure this out, but I'm telling you that the fact we have roots--and I mean a home culture that is as worthy of validation and understanding as any you can name, is the truest thing I know. And although I did write the book that put forth this idea, and backed it up with almost 500 pages of evidence, I'm also telling you that my book was just the tip of the iceberg. There is a great deal more to discover. There is a huge amount of visual art , literature, drama, and music yet to be created--on top of what already exists-- to express our experience. And there is an enormous amount of work to do to get the idea out there, among our millions of military brat kin here in the U.S. and around the world, that we need to know our culture of origin if we are ever to know ourselves.
Need to know. A familiar phrase, brothers and sisters of the warrior culture? My whole life has been lived on a need-to-know basis. I have always needed to know, and I ihave made it my life's work to find out.
So I propose this blog, as a place to reflect on our common experience, a place to share our stories and share put the pieces together. For it is only in the sharing of our stories with othere brats that we understand them in their right context. This is the only way we can ever go "home" again.
It is my intention to post entries with reflections and questions on this strange and unique home culture of ours. I hope you will find them thought-provoking enough that you will contribute your own reflections as well. Let's see where this leads us. I think it will lead us homeward.
Yours in the journey,
Mary Edwards Wertsch
Army brat
Author, Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress
Mary, Brat Goddess, we all salute you! You named our Invisible Nation and now will help us to understand it. I can't wait to find time to add a reflection or two and to read comments as they come in. I will spread the word as best I can. We can never thank you enough, Sarah
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Sarah, thanks for your lovely comment. Brat friends, this is Sarah Bird, the supremely gifted author of many novels who has given us one of the gems of brat literature, the highly-acclaimed novel, The Yokota Officer's Club. If you haven't read it, you've been missing something and I strongly recommend you go out and rectify that omission as soon as possible. Sarah, can't wait for you to add your reflections on the vast subject of bratness and brat culture! Mary
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I'm proud to be a military brat, but it has been hard to get rid of that need to relocate every 3-4 years...
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For most of my adult life it didn't even occur to me to get rid of it--I just moved! I lived in 20 houses growing up, and have added 25 more since then. I currently live in house no. 43, because nos. 44 and 45 were temporary homes in other countries, and we lived in each just for a few months. I hope to add more houses, but of the limited-stay variety, always returning to house no. 43, until we move to something smaller in our dotage.
Mary Edwards Wertsch
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Thank you. I look forward to more articles and to contributing some, too.
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Instead of motor mouth today, I have motor fingers. I very well know about the moving thing. Quote "wherever you hang your hat, thats where you live". I learned how to live and survive like that. I liked(like) that. The downside to that is when you get the "chance" to do that, if you are "smart", you won't make the same "mistakes" in the new place that you made in the old. You "reinvent" yourself. I did. Add on to that some life events, you can get to a point in life that you do not know who you really are.
Just some "fodder" to think about.
Patrick
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You said it--and interestingly, that is almost exactly what one of my brat interviewees (for my non-fiction book) said. I called him "Carl" in the book (not his real name); he is a clinical psychologist working with members of the military and their families. Here's an exceprt from the book, from the chapter "Military Brats as Nomads," page 274:
I asked Carl, the Navy commander's son and therapist, to comment on military brats as social chameleons. He said that for a long time it was a term he used to describe himself. "The difficulty is finding the real you under the ability to look like anything," he said. "That's the bottom line. Because if you can't do that.... You see, being a chameleon has advantages, but they are time-limited. Eventually all the people that you're trying to blend in to please leave you. They die. They go away. So basically you're going to be a blank wall--and about that time you better have some Real You down there, or else you're in big time trouble."
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WOW
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Dear Mary---
I had been hearing about your book, "Military Brats" from my next door neighbor for about two years.
Last weekend, I found it in a thrift store (maybe not good news for you, but wonderful news for me!) My hope is that someone else read it cover to cover, soaked up what they needed and passed it on.
I have been an avid reader since age 5. No book, short of the Bible, has held such power and meaning for me. I don't think I have EVER had to put a book down every few pages or so because it had such a powerful impact on my emotions.
Thanks to your strong, clear and loving voice, I finally, finally have a glimpse of the chrysalis that is my "self".
Thank you for the tears, the pain, the joy, the laughter that you went through in order to bring these work to birth.
yours in a journey,
Sherry
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Sherry, thank you for these very kind words. I'm very glad you followed through on your neighbor's suggestion and picked up the book when you saw it! And I'm especially glad that it's helping you. Believe me, researching and writing it was an incredible help to me. That process took me five years--so be glad you could get the message in just a few days! I hasten to say, though, that reading the book should just be the beginning. The next step is to get together with other brats and share stories. This is important for two reasons: There is so much to know that it's far more than one book can contain, and the process of connection to other brats is therapeutic in itself. Part of what we need is connection to others like ourselves. I am in the process of writing a booklet that is meant to be a guide for discussion groups using my book. I hope to have it available on the Brightwell Publishing site by the end of October.
Mary
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Hi, Mary---
Thanks for your reply. I have just finished reading your chapters about the invisibility of women in the Fortress. Concurrently, I found a copy of The Great Santini on my doorstep one early morning this week, left there by my kind neighbor! So I began reading it in tandem with your book, Military Brats.
Whew! What to say!?? Pat Conroy's character Mary Anne (his sister), doing her sad little dance around the Great Santini, begging for his attention as he reads the evening paper.
It took me up until about three years ago to realize that I WAS invisible to my father. That thought and realization triggered a rage in me that was almost beyond description. I can understand Pat Conroy's Ben character, wishing that his dad would not return from a mission. I had visions of personal violence myself, and I have been something of a pacifist my adult life.
After about six months of sleepless nights, and months spent at the computer writing about my life and my feelings, I confronted my father with my rage.
As a side-note question. In reading The Great Santini I was amazed, dumbfounded really, by the verbal expressions that the father and mother used in communicating with their children. Everything from "flack" to "Beauty is only skin deep" was in there. It was like being in my family as a young girl and a teenager again. It left me with the uncomfortable notion that perhaps all officers and their wives go to some sort of Linguistics training class where they are inculcated with the appropriate military verbiage and philosophy on "How to speak to your Brats". Do you have any thoughts on this? I found it amazing, just amazing, that Pat Conroy came from a Marine family, I come from an Air Force family, yet the verbiage and the message were the SAME!
Yours sincerely,
Sherry
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Finally a place where I can connect to a place "within" myself. I would like to read alot more information on the detachment dynamic, that having been an army brat has left me with.
Thanks so much
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Dear Mary,
I read your book many years ago, and I had a shock of recognition I have rarely found anywhere in popular culture; only _The Great Santini_ touches on these things.
I'm an Air Force brat; I left home to go to college in 1983. I'm severely hearing impaired but even so every now and then I'd get a conflicted sense of guilt about not joining the military in any way, but it wasn't long after I left home I became fully aware I was going down the radical peacenik path. Still I'd whipsaw between "If I would or had put myself on the line then maybe people would listen to me" and "Oh yeah that's right, they don't want _you_ anyway, thank God!"
I'm of the generations just past the cutoff point for your book; one reason I looked you up tonight was to see if perhaps you or anyone has followed up or formed a net community or something about those of us born too late for 'Nam but not too late for that war to loom in our childhood memories; the later generation where there were indeed women in uniform and for which it was the Seventies and Eighties and Nineties with all their changes we grew up in.
I've been skipping around in the book tonight; this time around I'm feeling more aware of differences between me and so many of your own and interviewees experiences than the similarities. I feel like I got off pretty easy compared to your generation, though that could have been just the luck of my Dad's career pattern or his and my Mother's personal choices.
One theme I wonder if you noticed but didn't feature, or perhaps would find more common among later brats, is a relationship with technology. I was always a science fiction nut; one early memory I have is seeing 2001 at the Loring AFB theater when I was three or so. I just watched it again last night; I wonder if most brats, even people who don't consider themselves SF fans normally, would tend to read Kubrick's weirdly sterile, tightly controlled epic differently than your average civilian would; a weird love-hate of comfortable recognition and familiar suffocation. I feel I have much the same special relationship with _Dr Strangelove_; the first time I ever saw it, "Burpelson AFB" felt exactly like childhood expeditions into the operational parts of Loring HQ (my Dad was pretty good about bringing his kids to the offices, mostly at IWS at Tyndall AFB in my childhood). And while of course I never went up in an F-106 or F-16 let alone a SAC bomber, the scenes in Maj. Kong's plane also were a breath of home that set me apart from my definitely non-brat peers, who were just disgusted.
I feel luckier than many in that once I left home I made California my home; as my extended family was here I consider myself having grown up as a Californian in Exile.
But I'm also a Son of the Fortress and always will be, for good and for bad.
Bless you for your work, Mary!
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Dear Mary,
I must start by saying your book is amazing and it is partially responsible for my dissertation topic. I married an army man and was very sad about leaving my family and my job. I couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like to constantly move. I was sad about it as a woman in my twenties. I knew I could find another teaching job but I wanted to investigate how best to teach students from military families, something I didn't have to think about at my last job. So, I started doing some research and read your book. Your book inspired me to further delve into the topic of students in military families and the roles of educators. This is my way of giving back to the military community and to learn how to be the best teacher I can possibly be. Now, if only I can get this dissertation done by May...
~alicia
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Alicia, research on how best to teach military children is desperately needed. I am absolutely thrilled to learn that you are doing this, and that my book helped inspire you. I want you to know that I have been working on a book for educators and counselors of military brats--and I, too, consider it my way of giving back to the community and helping the younger members of our "tribe". We must talk and compare notes! I will write you a separate, private e-mail.
--MaryReply to this
Mary,
Wow! I am so excited that you are working on this book. It is definitely a gap that needs to be filled in education. I look forward to your email and future conversations.
~Alicia
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Not sure where to ask this. As I'm reading 'Military Brats' so many of the phrases and acronyms are so familiar. So heavily ingrained in me are two more: "There are dead soldiers in your bed", said when I didn't perfectly make my bed. "You are wasting bullets", when I left the light on. Does anyone else know these.
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I decided I should begin at the beginning of this blog as I don't want to miss one thought!
Mary, I know in your book you wrote of returning to France where you lived. I am returning to England with my only brother and his wife and my 11 year old son to where we lived. I have longed to walk along the pebble beach where I flew a kite made with brown paper and my fathers navy AF tie as a tail. It is one of the few places we lived that I can actually go to visit. With so many years passing in between I doubt any of the local people would remember us. Still, I heard it is very much the same and am excited to experience this. We had planned this trip before I read your book. I think now it will be even more meaningful and form a stong bond with my brother.
Something I wanted to ask you is do you find yourself still very affected by a culture? We lived in England when I was 7,8 and 9. The funny thing is I couldn't wait to get back to the states. I had promised myself I would kiss the ground when we landed. And I did! (The tarmac is not so nice to kiss in July!)
Yet, those three years affected me in so many ways. I will only drink English tea. I found any story book I picked up for my children was by an English author. My kids know all Jane Austen movies by heart and often quote them. I love to give Afternoon teas and actually found a store that has clotted cream.
We also lived in Okinawa in high school. I don't think that culture affected me quite as much--perhaps the timing--had I flip flopped these two assigments it may have been different. Although, come to think of it, I love asian food and Korean dramas.
Anyway, I would enjoy your thoughts on this.
Thinking of you...Candyce
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Oh my--you've really opened a floodgate of thoughts for me on this one! Do I find myself still very affected by a culture? I sure do--and I think I will write an entry about this very subject! Thanks for the question, Candyce!
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One other thought. Just to show how much we missed the US, my aunt (who I met maybe 4 times in my life) sent me a bag of smartees. I was so happy to have American candy. Now, Just think of all the wonderful candies in England. They had licorice tied with a little ring, the best chocolate and all sorts of goodies. Still, I missed the familiar. You could get some of the candies on the base but there were some we missed.
I recently sent my cousin a package of smartees and told her how much it meant when her mother sent that to me when I was 7 years old.
For a woman who had never left Sheboygan WI, it is amazing to me that she thought to send it. Could she imagine what a little girl might be feeling and missing? Or was it a fluke and it was on sale and something to put in the package?
I love your blog, Mary, if you can't tell....Candyce
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I am reading all of these blog entries--and the portions of Mary's book that I could find online--with utter amazement. I am comforted and moved, and very emotional, as so many of what I thought were unexplainable personality quirks and traits unique just to me, can be explained by my upbringing as a child of an Air Force officer.
This response really hit home with me, because our "overseas" assignment (yes, they still called it that) was six years in Canada, and I still find that I identify most strongly with that country.
My favorite snack is ketchup chips, and whenever I find them unexpectedly here in The States (as I still sometimes think of them, though we've been back for nearly 20 years), I pick up every bag they have, and cry when I eat the last one.
I LOVE Canadian authors and television shows, and I feel so homesick for the country where I spent the formative years of my childhood--third through eighth grade.
We were only supposed to be there for 3 years, but they extended our time to 6, which was fine with us as we all LOVED it there. It was the first place we had lived where we had lots of friends, knew all the neighbors, and could come up with family traditions that we could follow for more than a year or two.
Like so many who have posted here, I am fantastic at meeting new people and chatting them up a couple times, but I am at a loss to know how to forge many lasting, deep friendships. At 31, I am still friends with a girl I met when we were 14, and that is the closest thing I have anymore to a childhood friend.
I actually Googled "military brats and friendships" today because of a dream I had last night, in which I was reunited with the girl who was my closest friend the entire time we lived in Canada. I woke up and felt very excited for about 30 seconds, until I realized it was a dream.
I have tried to find her and my other close Canadian friends on the Internet so many times in recent years, and have even gone so far as to e-mail those I've found with the same name. One, with the same name as my very best friend, was even kind enough to e-mail me back and say she wasn't who I was looking for, but she truly hoped I found my old friend.
I have noticed that I am a "joiner"; I am always trying out new things, joining groups and clubs, but never getting truly involved or investing much of myself in them. Even/especially in college, I was far more about breadth than depth. It's not that I didn't want to get more deeply involved--it's in part that I didn't know how, and in part that I didn't see the point.
The "acting versus spectator" entry really got to me, too. I am a complete social chameleon; sometimes I find myself so precisely mimicking the person or group I'm spending time with, it's eerie, even to me.
What I want most is to know ME. With this Web site, it feels like I've opened the wonderful, positive equivalent of a Pandora's box, and I have no doubt it will help me on my way!
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I can't wait to hear your thoughts. It snuck up me when I realized how much it affected me.
I do wish my parents had chosen to send us to the English school instead of American. After I read how yours let you go to school in France.
My Mom worried that it might be difficult to matriculate back into American schools when we got back to US. I thoing though the experience would have been so neat.
Candyce
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Least I sound so superficial and am just concerned about candy, let me add another comment.
We were abroad in the times before McDonald's, Burger King and Pizza Hut peppered the earth. I hadn't even eaten in one in the US much less oversees.
So, we learned to enjoy the local cuisine. Oh yes, of course in England it was fish and chips (mind you they are not potato chips but French fries--oh yes, all brats know THAT) and the best tea ever.
A special fascination for me was their crisps (yes, those are potato chips). They came in a small bag and had little twists of blue wax paper with salt in them...untwist and you made them as salty as you like.
At the time cantaloupe was not available in England--at least where we were. When we landed in NYC, we went to a cafe and had a cantaloupe. To this day I absolutely love cantaloupe.
Do you remember doing without things at the base? One time there was no notebook paper, another time no toilet paper. After each shortage my mom would become obsessive about the particular item and we would have stocks of it forever.
Another thing, Mary, I tell my children of the planes we flew in. When we went to England in 1960 we flew on a propeller plane out of McGuire AFB in New Jersey. It took hours and hours and so many were ill on the journey. We had a fully cooked meal with real dishes on a big tray. With the turbulence and my lap being very small at 7, my tray slipped off my lap thus depositing peas and gravy on my Dad's brief case in front of me.
Also it was very cold in the cabin and we were given army blankets to keep warm.
On our return in 1963 we flew on a Pan AM jet and what a difference that was! Quick, smooth and much more comfortable.
Mary, I just thought of this--here is the difference of your writing and mine. Mine are simply memories. Yours paint a picture of how these memories and experiences made us.
I have rambled on long enough.
Thinking of you and your family...Candyce
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I realized I am really food oriented after these last posts! Is this common with Brats?
Candyce
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One other thought on culture.
Recently my VERY civilian friend went with her husband to Belfast on his business trip. I had worried that she would sit in the hotel all day and not experience Belfast.
She actually did venture out one day. What she found was quite interesting to me. She wanted to buy her children and grandchildren gifts from Ireland. What she discovered was most of the stores were the very ones we have here Gap, Banana republic, etc. with the same things we have in our stores. She had to really search to find something culturely from Ireland. She ended up with Guiness tee shirts for her sons. A touristy onesie for her new granddaughter and nothing for the rest.
You see, Mary, I think we were abroad at a very special time. Cultures were not blended so much as today. They were each so very unique.
Some of that exists today but it seems less and less.
Of course, we brats know that culture is just one part of the equation and many other aspects of moving greatly affect us. Your book helped me to see that.
Candyce
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I understand you're looking for Brats who moved a lot during childhood. Is such true?
I have 7 schools, 8 bases, 6 years in Germany, 12 years in the US by the time I was 18 under my belt.
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