The Problem with Not Moving
When we moved halfway across
the country to
It was about six months
later that I began to realize something was amiss. It wasn’t a problem with
It’s very hard to describe,
but the closest similar sensation I could think of was the feeling you get when
you ‘re exploring a city and suddenly realize you’re all turned around; you’ve
confused north and south, east and west, and can’t seem to snap out of it and
get your bearings. Looking at a map
almost confuses you more. I could see it
was a feeling of disorientation that I had, but the odd thing was that it had
nothing to do with geographic orientation.
As time went on and my familiarity with the region kept building, the
feeling did not go away.
One day about two years into
this, it came to me. Army brat that I
am, I’ve moved so much in my life—20 houses or apartments growing up, 23 more
since then—that, as any brat knows, moving is second nature. No breakthrough insight there, to be
sure. But this move was different from
others of my experience, because it was intended to be the last one. The final stop. There’d never been one of those before. And I saw that the feeling I had was not a
spatial disorientation, it was a time disorientation.
It’s comical, really—and I
had an almost cartoon-like image pop into my head. All my life, I’d managed in some sense to keep ahead of my past. It was as though my past kept getting
forwarded from the last location, but by the time it arrived I’d moved on
again. Picture a dented, beat up parcel,
with addresses crossed out and others hand written all over the top, shrouded pathetically
in one of those plastic bags furnished by the postal system, finally arriving
at a house that turns out to have a sign nailed across the mail slot:
Too late, she’s
moved again!
But here in
That fog was my past. My swirling disconnected bits of past,
stupidly sweeping in around me in unsettled confusion. I did not feel assailed by specific
memories—there is nothing specific in this feeling, only a dumb vagueness that
presses in and lets me know it’s out of place.
And after 11 years, I am no less disoriented.
It doesn’t bother me all the
time, but it is still there. I wish
there were a way to straighten out my time in a nice, linear way. Put some discipline back
into it. The past needs to go to the
back of the line, damn it. It’s not
supposed to come railroading in here and bunch up like this. My future is feeling very unsettled, and my
present is downright pissed off.
I suspect this is part of
what‘s feeding my insistent need to move.
I want to slip out of here quietly while my past isn’t looking, and get
enough of a head start that I can string it out behind me again--so far behind
that the past will be forced back into its normal mode, trying blindly to catch
up but never quite making it. That way,
my present might be able to get on with things, and my future will finally come
into focus.
Hello Mary,
Firstly, I received your book and the video, and appreciate your expediency. Now,which to peruse first? I keep reading where ever the book opens when I pick it up, and can't stop, until another distraction draws me elsewhere. I guess my reading habits are much like we, "G.I. Brats," in that I just seem to pick up and go with, wherever and whatever, I am experiencing at the time.
My nickname "Too Tall," has been on again, off again, for most of my adult life and is because of my 6',6" height. (Nope, I was never a good basketball player!) I have an even taller son who tops out at 6', 8", (he is a very good ball player!) but has never been addressed as "Too Tall," although a couple of his friends upon hearing my nickname, called him "Too Tall Junior," for a short while.
Oddly enough in reference to the "G.I. Brat," lifestyle, I could not wait to settle down, have a stable job, raise children, etc.! I got married while in the Air Force (four year active duty enlistment), finished my time, joined the ANG, got a DOD Government job, earned a B.S. degree, had two sons, relocated one time, and after twenty-four years marriage, and eighteen years in one house, I thought I was home free and had finally grown roots. Oooops, a modern fact of today's life didn't escape me and the next thing I know, my wife leaves for another fellow, my job relocates to another town, and I have to transfer with it. Here I am, just like in my youth, starting anew, except this time at forty-eight years old. (that was ten years ago) Well, now I am trying this thing again, I have since retired, moved back to what I call my home town, bought a house and after four years here, realize that even now there is still uncertainty. I have not remarried and to be honest am almost leery to do so, because I can feel my feet planting tiny rootlets again. Oddly more so, is the fact, for some reason, although I am a "Super Handyman," I am no longer motivated to remodel, update, etc., this home. It is almost like, "Why Bother"?
The cultural aspect of our youth is a phenomenal remembrance. I was visiting a local "Dairy of Anne Frank," exhibit here in Kennesaw, Georgia, and while viewing photographs of the Frank family's home in Frankfurt, Germany, I noticed a couple of local KSU students standing there, and taking notes. I made a comment to them, that I had lived just a couple of blocks from the very house, photographed in Frankfurt, Germany. The young students were astounded! Suddenly I became their roving expert and consultant, because I had actually absorbed, as part of my routine in life, the experience of "being there," where a part of the history had been made.
Well, enough of this rambling for now. I am fan of "Blues Music," and oft times, I sit and reminisce, thinking of what great Blue's tunes some of this would make. Like, "I've got them old, Where's my whole baggage, Blues"?
Take care Mary, Keep the Faith, and God Bless.
Jim "Too Tall"
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Mary,
Thanks for posting such a sensitive meditation on the "itch" military brats feel when we are too long in one place.
I really liked the image of the parcel never quite catching up. I think the experience of finally "settling down" sometimes feels like "settling", a betrayal of that particular survival instinct that never accepts stasis as a reality. I was discussing Sartre in my graduate class the other day and it occured to me that in many ways military brats are test cases in always living in, and I'm paraphrasing, the fashion of what we WILL be in the mode of what we ARE. Time displacement lurks in the corners of our souls, and the present tense of our lives is really a rehersal for some mysterious future tense. We have to learn to relax and let our present be our present tense, if that is possible.
I think we deserve the title of brat in the sense that we are spoiled with novelty. For many people, novelty means a new car, or a new friend. For us, novelty means a completely new environment. We say "been there, done that" after a few years and then want to move on.
Thank God for the Internet. It gives us the opportunity to break out of our static lives and to experience novelty. We are able to finally unwrap the parcel from the privacy of that strange, present-tense existence that is every bit as novel as a new APO.
Cheers.
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What a great way to put it: Living the fashion of what we WILL be in the mode of what we ARE. I like that a lot. It covers a host of things, but I'm sure one of the most familiar to us would be when, as children, we would move to a new place and start trying on new versions of our selves until we found the right one for that place. In a way, we were inventing past selves as well as future ones, in order to function in the present.
We military brats tend to play far too free-and-easy with past and future. That behavior is an obvious by-product of the transient lives we had growing up, but it is dangerous and potentially disabling thing. It can undermine relationships, career plans, any kind of long-term project or commitment. It limits our emotional investments. It makes it hard for us to know ourselves. It can't be the way humans are meant to live.
I think you're right--we have to learn to relax and let our present be our present. Sounds like a definition of meditation, doesn't it? But I think that might be the ticket. I've been thinking about starting a regular practice of meditation, trying to sink into the present moment, shutting out past and future. It strikes me that meditation could be a wonderful tool for re-educating our time-disoriented selves. BE HERE NOW--remember that mantra of Baba Ram Dass? I never read his book by that title, but the title alone is a powerful message. Be here now. Hard to do.
Peter, I hope you will keep adding your thoughts to this blog. Your comment above suggests some really interesting topics to explore here.
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I'm not the scholar that Peter obviously is..but I do have some thoughts.
It's been almost 3 years now since my last (and "final") move. I'm turning 52 this month and find myself, once again, beginning to listen to those smallest of voices invading my consiousness that suggest it's time to go - again. I tell myself daily that this is the "last" place - mostly to convince myeslf that it is. It's probably not. And honestly, it's not that I want to stop. I've long since given up trying to convince myself that I need to settle down. I don't, plain and simple. I tried it - once. What I need is the "new", the challenge, the conquering and then, yes - the leaving. It has become the way of my life. I know it, I embrace it and I know I can do it. What I've never learned is the staying, the committment, small places, small minds, dependance.
Of course, I've had 3 marriages, a stream of jobs and careers, houses, people from my past and even a (now grown) child whom I left with his father so he could be raised in a stable environment.
I define myself by where I've been. My birth at Ft Campbell where I lived for 2 months and to where I have never returned, horseback riding at Langley AFB, first drink, sex, drugs in Ankara, first love at Ft. Bragg, first real feeling of freedom in Hawaii, ear operations in Chicago & DC, 1st marriage in Anchorage, son born in Philadelphia, best concert in Maryland, love of my life in Virginia, 1st grade and 1st dog in Korea, finally getting to know my Dad before he died on the intra-coastal waterway down the east coast.
I've always loved to travel. I am so good at short term relationships. I am very independant and self sustaining. I take complete responsibility for everything that I do - or that happens to me. I'm strong - tough even - but I will leave a situation rather than stay and deal with it. I've learned that very well.
I've just finished watching "Brats - Our Journey Home". Wow!! It was totally ME! How cool is that! But it's nothing I haven't known all these years. It is just another place...some more people, and another reason to maybe listen to those tiny voices in my head....
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We have to come up with our own orders. We have to set for ourselves our own futures. Instead of being along for the ride, we should define our own missions and bring them to fruition. We must be our own generals. We should command our selves. I will never realize the wonder of my childhood... the 15th-century architecture or the magical state of being that was... yet I can pass that along in my own way. I think it is less about fitting in than bringing others along. I love you. I love every brat that tooled along and lived things the way they presented themselves. Keep struggling. Keep finding. Keep rolling with the punches. It is a blessing.
Cheers.
Peter
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The itch to move is very real. I think that it has more to do with feeding our emotions of both longing and wanderlust.
The feeling of missing where you've just come from couples with the excitement of experiencing all the "new" that is our new "duty station".
In my life as a civilian (never served in the military) is still punctuated by moves in my life that was predicated by career choices made so that a move was necessary. Or so I thought; but really upon closer examination, it was my own real need to be rootless and move on to the next thing. Even though I lived in the same general vicinity for close to 20 years after leaving the care of my parents. I "transferred" myself to different towns and homes in the surrounding area. Only after I reached 35 did I move over 700 miles away. Over the last 5 years, I have moved 5 times. Each time I told myself that, "this is the last time". I do envy people who can stay put. I just can't seem to. Of the three of us kids, it looks like I have the traveling bone.
I've just recently just remarried. My wife now just can't seem to understand how I can pickup at what seems a moments notice and move somewhere. I think that in the back of her mind she's really scared that I'm going to come home and say, "let's pack".
There's a certain wistfulness in being able to do that. A real contradiction,
though. We all want to stay put because that what people are supposed to do. But we (The Brats) seem to crave and savor the move.
I do feel a sadness in not being able to attach and become a long term member of any community.
There was only one time in my entire life that I didn't want to move. When the orders were cut to leave Albany and go to Quantico. I remember the feeling of shock, disbelief and sadness that were going leave. I still miss that base. I have actually gone to the MCLB Albany website looking to see if the base still looks anything like I remember.
Life there was no bed of roses, but that's another BLOG entry having more to do with homelife than anything else.
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I can identify. I lived in 20 houses growing up, and have added 25 since then. True enough, I've been in this same house now for an eternity (11 years and counting) but I find it painful to think there won't be any more moves. In fact, I can't believe for a second that this is my last house. Probably I don't know how to even process that notion mentally.
I think we frustrated transients could use a set of fallback options when another move, yearned for though it be, is just not wise or rational. Someone suggested rearranging the furniture. Okay, I am working on that, but I don't think that's ever going to be more than a brief distraction. Don't anybody suggest I get a "country house" or any such thing--that's way, way out of both my income bracket and my sense of who I am. Travel...well, brat that I am, I just love that idea, and I have my fingers crossed that I will get to do more of that in the future. But will it sate the urge to move? Remains to be seen.
You know what might help, it just now occurs to me, is developing a new way of thinking about this. Instead of automatically resorting to one of the usual three options when faced with the urge to move--that is, (1) moving as soon as possible, (2) not moving but yearning endlessly for it, or (3) yearning, placating ourselves temporarily with illusions of change, yearning again--we could try to shift the thing over to a new paradigm: a mental state in which we accept the constant yearning as a way of looking at the world around us, and then actively and creatively explore what that new way of looking at things can yield in terms of insights, attitudes, actions.
I've only just thought of this, so I have no insights to offer. Might post an entry about it one day, though. Anybody else have thoughts on this?
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An amazing realisation came to me this week. I was working in my garden. I've been in my home (and it really is home) for close to 8 years (okay really only a little over 7 but I want it to be 8). It struck me that I have never seen a tree grow. I have moved so many times to so many places that I've not been able to recognise the growth of a tree. They were all just presumably the size they were at that time. I have a cherry tree in my yard that I planted when I moved here. It was a wee bit shorter than I am at that time. Now it reaches to the sky. Amazing thing it is to see a tree grow.
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How beautiful Maggie-Lee. I love what you wrote and how true it is.
Perhaps it is truly beautiful that we have such appreciation for things like this that many don't even think of.
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Mary and Peter:
I just stumbled onto this blog today.....wow.....I love what you're doing. A few years ago I read your book Mary and was totally moved by the familiarity throughout. A military brat friend of mine recently wrote that all her life, she felt like an old suitcase. I've thoroughly enjoyed discovering more of the brat connections on the internet recently. I recall after graduating from high school telling my mother, an Air Force wife, I don't want to move around anymore. I think I'll get a job and stay put in one area long enough to have my closets fill up and be able to recognize friends when I shop for groceries or have a meal at a local restaurant. Even though my first ten years after college were rather mobile with graduate school, first job, (having married someone drafted into the war during Viet Nam).....I have achieved the duration I longed for by living in the St. Louis area most of my adult working career. Cheers. thanks for your book and this blog. I look forward to reading the entire set of entries. Margaret
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