The Physics of Rootlessness
Recently I read the memoir Istanbul by the Turkish author
Orhan Pamuk, who just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He grew up
in one neighborhood in that city, and even now lives very close by.
The whole book is an ode to rootedness, but I remember one small bit,
just a sentence or two, more than anything else. Its very foreignness
stopped me cold, and not because it was Turkish, but
because it was so intensely rooted I was stunned by the contrast to my own experience.
I imagine Pamuk would be very surprised that such
a mundane snippet of childhood would affect any reader as it did--all
he mentioned was that he and his cousins played a game as they walked
the familiar streets to and from school. One kid would point to a
storefront and they'd all shout out the succession of identities of
that place over the years they'd known it: Shoe repair! Pharmacy!
Bakery! Bookshop!, vying with one another for speed and accuracy.
Somehow that snippet captured for me the essential difference between
their luxury of rootedness, and my own childhood in 20 different
neighborhoods. Rooted people can pick a familiar place and expand their
memories backward like an accordion, gathering up all its past
incarnations and sweeping them forward to inhabit the spot again in a
moment of shared recollection. It's as though their rootedness allows
them to inhabit a different dimension: space-time, to coin a phrase.
Maybe that's the difference right there. Rooted folks get to live in
four dimensions, while we transients are limited to three.
Maybe that's how they are able to stay in one place so effortlessly: they're used to using time as an organizational tool. How useful that must be, to have people, places, and experiences all organized behind you through the medium of time. By contrast, I the time-challenged transient, mysteriously tethered to one city for the past 11 years, find staying in one place absolutely exhausting. I am amazed at how much more complicated life seems, when lived experience in one place starts to pile up on itself. It's so...untidy!
Part of my longing to move, I feel sure, is just this need to simplify everything and start fresh in a more orderly and organized way, taking in new information and people-connections in nice manageable bits and sorting them out as I go. The way things are now, I want to lodge a protest with someone, somewhere, if I only knew who. (Who's in charge here, damnit! The military brat wants to know!)
I'd say, What do you mean I have to remember people and keep track of the interactions I've had with them over the past dozen years! Don't you think that's a little much??? And what's this about having to keep the same identity the whole time, huh? Come on! What if I'm sick of it? Can't I just box it up, well-used and frayed about the edges but still serviceable, and take it to Good Will for a tax credit? Don't you think we've gotten the use out of the thing by now? I mean, yes, I accepted this duty assignment and have fulfilled it to the best of my ability, but you can't keep extending the tour of duty like this...forever...can you??? Aren't there enough rooted people out there already, without indulging in this kind of back door draft???
If anyone out there has a lead on who's in charge in this messy civilian society, would you please let me know? I think I'd like to lodge a complaint in the name of the Young Turks.
Mary, your book made us think so much about time and how we brats think of it. And the rootlessness. My husband and I are both Air Force Brats. It has been a new revelation to us to read your book and see the DVD Brats Our Journey Home. To know others feel as we do just means so much.
We have lived here 27 years. Do we feel we belong? No! We stayed to raise our children.
It has helped us to identify our strenghts and to work with our deficits. We are 53 and just now understanding so many things about us.
I know your book said most brats marry a rooted person. All of our siblings indeed did do that. I wondered how it was for Paul and I both being brats.
I came up with a positive--we understand how each other feels.
Oddly enough soon after we married both our mothers died a day a part of the same disease--breast cancer. We knew each other felt what the other one did. There was some comfort in this.
And can you imagine--both our fathers names are Clarence--and no we did not name either of our sons that!
See we are joined at the hip!
We realize we react very much with emotion and now understand why.
Thank you so, so much for all your research and insight into your book. I am buying copies for friends and family. I am looking forward to reading your blog.
Candyce Zinkgraf Kamphaus
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Candyce, thank you for these very kind words! I'm glad the book has been so helpful for you. It must be particularly nice to be able to to read and discuss it with your military brat husband. It is unusual for a brat to marry a brat, but I have met several such couples. I think there must be a definite advantage in understanding one another! It takes the rest of us in "mixed" marriages a lot longer to acoomplish that--and I would venture to say that in the mixed marriages, it is the brat who eventually comes to understand a good deal about the civilian's background, but the civilian never is able to quite get a handle on the Fortress home culture. As my civilian husband once commented to another civilian husband of a military brat, "Bob, it's stranger than the zulus." Candyce, did you know that Marc Curtis (of the Military Brat Registry) and I are teaming up to provide regional workshops? The first one will take place in Phoenix at the end of March. After that, we plan to schedule them elsewhere in the country.
Mary
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Dear Mary,
Thank you so much for this wonderful book.
I'm not even finished with Pat Conroy's introduction, and am just...totally stunned.
I'm now in my forties, and am still emotionally crippled in many ways due to my experience as the daughter of a naval officer.
I noticed someone is in the Bensalem, PA area. I'm on the other side of "Philly," closer to the Reading area. I would be so very grateful if anyone could suggest a support group, because I'm really in need of talking to others who understand.
My best to all of you!
-Kate
tbell2464@hotmail.com
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Mary, I appreciate your response so much.
You make me think of something funny when my 25 year old daughter was in first grade. They asked her to describe her mother and she replied: "Odd." The "odd" thing was that I was delighted with her response! Is that a Brat for you or what?! So whether we are stange or odd we rejoice in that, don't we. I am smiling reading your husband's comment. I love it!
We live in Bensalem PA which is outside of Philadelphia. Sadly, there is a very low population of brats here. I would like to be notified when there is a workshop either near here or even in Texas. My brother lives there and would it be neat to attend a workshop with him.
I will check in on your blog frequently. It made me feel better as when I finished your book I was so disappointed that it was done. Now it isn't!!
Candyce
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Love your story about your daughter's comment! Yes, I think you're right--the flip side of our strong urge to be assimilated is our equally strong urge to relish and indulge our oddness! Your daughter was pretty darn perceptive for a six year-old! Candyce, please do continue to read the blog and weigh in with your thoughts. The easy way to do that is to subscribe, on the blog home page. I should be writing something new quite soon, since I am overdue! I try to write a meditation on bratness once a month--so as not to overburden my dear subscribers--but I missed February, and March is vanishing beneath my feet!
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Mary - Will you be doing workshops in Northern California perhaps? I live in Sacramento with three (two closed now) bases in the vicinity. I would love to attend one of your workshops! Thanks
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Sharon, Sacramento is one of the places Marc Curtis and I discuss as the site for our next workshop. I am thinking we are very likely to be there within the next year. We'll be sure to notify you!
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I'll keep watching! That would be so great!
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I enjoy reading this. I'm trying to figure out what to do now that I've been in this town for 16 yrs. I don't feel like I belong although those who are around me don't know that!! I want to move, but want to stay - just like in the military! (I was a BRAT, then a BRAT wife.) How do I re-train myself to interact with locals for the rest of my life? Is it possible?
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Nancy, I wish I could tell you. I am struggling with this same thing every day. Does anyone out there have some advice for us?
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I wish I knew as well. I've lived in one town for 32 years now (I'm 61), but it wasn't until 1999 that I finally felt like I belonged somewhere. And it's not here! I kept looking and wondering, like you, where did I belong? Where was home? Nothing and nowhere ever felt right. Even in my own home! I accidentally found it in another country. I thought it was a fluke, but every time I have gone back to Paris, I know I'm home. I have no family there. I don't know the language very well. I have no friends there. I just know I belong there. I'm homesick when I leave, and I've never felt homesick before when I've left all the other places. I lived in England from the age of 12-15, but that's not Paris. I'm a doctoral student writing my dissertation on the Concept of Home for Military Brats over 50. I really do believe we have a different concept of what home is because so many of us feel so rootless. What do you think?
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Sharon, it is so interesting that you feel that connection to Paris. I, too, long to live in France, but I have always felt this was driven by the sense of not having completed something. That feeling is always with me, and anything French is liable to bring it to mind. I suppose I could legitimately call it homesickness, though, because that's exactly the feeling I had even as we left France in 1964. I was 12. Night was falling. I have a vivid memory of standing on the deck at the stern of the ship as it pulled away from the port of Le Havre, watching the receding lights of the country I had come to love with all my heart. Pathetically, I actually tried not to blink,, so I could retain even that flickering glimmer for as long as I could. I felt as though I'd been ripped away from the one place I wanted to stay forever, despite the fact that France at the time was not an easy place to live. I had suffered in the French school, but I did not want to leave it; it was a place where I struggled and where I won something that I could not then have defined, but knew was all-important. As an adult I did try to go back to live there, twice, but could not land a job. I still find it absolutely incredible that I am not living my life in France; that's how central it has been for me.
So what is "home" for us brats? What a great question. I will pose the question in a blog entry at some point, and see what other brats have to say. Most of the brats I've talked to about this do not seem to have a definition of home that rooted civilians would understand. When I do write that entry, I hope you will weigh in on it. I am looking forward to hearing what you discover as your research progresses.
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I'm approaching 55, have lived in LA now for 22 years, still not home. (Of course my civilian wife, native of Hollywood, can't understand this . . .
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I would love to read your dissertation - is there someplace I can find a copy?
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Thanks for the feedback, Mary. I know you must understand where I'm coming from with this. It was when I made a final decision on my dissertation topic that I found your book. Your book is such a wonderful piece for me, I cried the whole way through it. When I mentioned to my parents about my dissertation topic, my mother said that I was from Seattle. I told her that I was BORN in Seattle, but I had no concept of HOME until I went to Paris. She couldn't understand that as she and my father were born and raised in one place. You're right, too, every military brat that I ask where they are from, replies with "Well, I was born in xxx, but I lived xxx and xxx and xxx." Or, at least something similar to that. I'll keep you posted on what I learn and hope you will be in Northern California one day speaking, and we can talk in person. Thanks for all you've done for us Brats!
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My, but I'm glad that I found this website. I thought I was the only one who replied, when asked 'Where are you from?': "Well, I was born in Chicago, but lived in Seattle for nine years. Then went NY, Miami, Chicago again, SFO, LA, Michigan, CA again, NY again - and finally to Ireland." You folks really have made me realize that I'm neither broken or crazed (my Irish wife thinks that); unique or too deep thinking (my Dad says that); mad or pathetic (my children say that). While a Brat of the Airline variety (rather than military), it seems that we mere civilians suffer from this same sort of thinking. And I'm DELIGHTED. I feel like I've found a sort of 'home'; and this from a guy who's working on a novel that starts with a kid (the very young Tom): 'I want to go home', and I cry every time I go back through for rewrites and polishes.
Thank you everyone. You've made one expatriate living in Ireland begin to think that he's not as 'cracked' as he thought he was.
Blessings - Tom
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Mary,
I have just started reading Military Brats. Literally, I am not even through the first chapter yet. I have already learned why I do things that I never really thought about.
My dad retired from the Navy in 1982. We moved from Spain to the middle of nowhere in the South. I was in the 10th grade at the time and was counting the days I could leave for college. Two years later after meeting my future husband, I moved to Savannah, GA - where my hubby had lived since 1976. Boy was he in for a wild ride. Eight years after we were married, yes I made it that long, he came home to find the house completely packed. I had mailed out about 80 resumes for him, most of which he knew nothing about. One week later, he had a job and our house was sold. It sold the same day we put it on the market.
I always knew that it was being a Brat that made me want to move, but what I realize now is that being in close proximity to his family was driving me crazy! I hadn't realized how much not being around my own extended family growing up had impacted me.
I found out a few days ago that his parents will be moving withing an hour of us soon. Hmmm....maybe it's time to go. If it weren't for my kids, I'd most definitely be gone.
One more quick thing. I once reunited with someone I went to jr. high with in Spain. She relayed to me that her dad had retired in Meridian, MS. She told some fellow students that she had moved there from Spain and one person actually asked her which state that was in. I am very thankful that due to my dad's career, I have a much better education, even though most of it wasn't in the classroom.
Thank you so much for writing this book. It is certainly an eye opener...at least what I can read between the tears and laughter.
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Nancy, thanks for your words! And thanks so much for the story about moving your husband out of Savannah. Wow. Only a brat could have pulled that one off. I would like to ask you something. I am working on a book about loss--specifically how the losses of moving so much affect us long term--and I would like to know if you would care to be interviewed for it. Right now it just amounts to my e-mailing you a short list of questions--then there are follow-ups to that, etc. I will probably also create a blog entry about this, asking for interviewees, but since you just offered this great story I thought I'd ask you first.
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Sure, I'd love to.
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Wow~ I have never had a desire to go to Paris. I did live in England as an adult but didn't love it.
The place I desire to go is Germany. 3 of 6 kids in my family were born there. Although I was 2 when we moved back to the US, I have that as a strong part of my culture; I have some german in me. There are so many things I'm naturally drawn to...the german wine, the cars, chirstmas decorations, candies, etc. I love anything german.
Since most of my siblings are older than me, I live my Germany through their stories as well as my parents' stories. We were eating gummi bears way before they were popular here. I'm not sure if that is something other brats experienced but it would be interesting to know.
Re-inventing myself has been the greatest of all about my desire to move. I think to this day, the longest I have ever lived in one house is 7 years. I get bored with it all. I have the need to meet new groups of people, experience new things. I always think there is something odd about people who live the same place their entire lives as well.
The Facebook application has brought to light so much of what I speak. The town where I went to High School keeps everyone there. Most have not moved or gone out and experienced much. I have not even been back for a reunion.
I relish in every new adventure, every new neighborhood, new town, new state, country etc. I love the change. My roots are with my family who are now congregated in one region of the country and have their own roots. The earth is my home, my family are my roots. I'm more like a potted plant and can take my roots with me. I fit in anywhere.
The greatest difficulty for me is assisting my step-daughters to adapt to change. Change was my constant growing up, that's my comfort. It didn't wreck me, it enhanced me. My siblings may have a different view.
I feel that anything that causes massive acceptance of others could never be a detriment.
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Loved this - please let us know when you are done with your book on loss. I want to be sure I buy it. It is difficult to be the age I am, and to feel so unsettled in my life. It is impossible to explain to someone who has not gone through it. It is easy enough to put a brave face on it, but it is still there.
However, when I am around family members that never moved, I am glad to have grown up the way I did. Their views are so different. I was a teenager when we moved to the south, after having lived on base, and that was an eye opener. Even my sister was affected, and she is raising her twin sons in Rochester, NY.
Keep up the vision Mary, love your blog posts. All the best to you.
Kathryn
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Hi Mary. I stumbled upon this blog by googling Military Brat. I always knew that something was wrong with me but this site and the comments blew me away. I am not alone! I am 54 and my Mother passed away when she was 66. I started to feel the lonelyness when I could not remember my childhood. Only small tiny weird things about the places and people. The military is very different now than 1954 to 1972. The base was all I knew. Some of them were better equiped for life on-base than others. Being an enlisted brat was very different than an officer brat during those times. Not counting the temporary housing while waiting for base housing, we set up household 14 or more times. The summer before my senior year, my father retired and moved home to Tennessee. Being a new kid was something I dealt with all my life but a senior in high school with non-brats was brutal. Here are some things that stick out in my mind about the brat life. Maybe some readers can relate:
The different moving company stickers that stayed on the lawnmower. The brown dependent I.D. card that was my ticket to everything. Seeing that black girl in Arkansas on TV being escorted to school while we were stationed in Little Rock living next door to a black family. Being introduced in class as a new kid during the middle of the school year. Measuring the height of our grass on a SAC base. The small blue buses. Hiding my Led Zeppelin albums from my Father. The smell of the oil on the clippers for the Sunday night burr haircut by my Father. Sonic booms from a B-58 bomber in Texas. Get under your desk nuclear drills. The national anthem before the movie that only cost $.50. The change in my Father after his first tour in Vietnam. The beatings stopped. Thick metal doors on the base housing. The empty feeling during the middle of the school year when I was told, "your father has orders". Going to the commisary with my Mom. Nightly Baked potatoes and body counts by Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. I don't remember names and very few faces. I always feel comfort when I move to a new place. I can't wait to read your book. God Bless you.
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Jimmy, thank you for these comments, and especially for the memories you shared.... They are very powerful, and I know a LOT of brats can identify with them. I know I can. Rest assured, you are definitely not alone. Thanks for writing.
Mary
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Dear Mary,
I have been working on a book on the feminine, based on articles I wrote for a Japanese newspaper, trying to piece together my life in the process. When I met Elizabeth Edwards on the campaign trail in Iowa, she made me aware of my military brat upbringing because she had once lived around the corner from me on a navy base in Japan. I then found your book which was illuminating. It would have saved me years of search and therapy had I found it before. I cried with tears of deep recognition and was happy to understand the roots of my sensitive confusion. I have recommended the book to other brats. I am still in the process of telling my story and would love to connect with you around this. Was happy to find your blog as a first step.
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Dear Jane-- Thank you so much.... I am very glad you found your way to the book. It's also good to hear that Elizabeth Edwards sees the importance of a military brat background; not every brat does, of course. I would send her a copy of my book if I could.
Your own book project sounds extremely interesting, Jane. I would love to know more about it, and about that series of articles you wrote for a Japanese newspaper. Would you write to me at my email address, so we can continue the conversation?
I'm at: publisher@brightwellpublishing.net.
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Hi Mary,
I got your response but can't find the thread on this site to which it responds! If I recall, the Berger book in question was The Homeless Mind. Berger's thesis is that modern consciousness is by definition cosmopolitan & rootless. In my view, brat-ism is like Judaism in that we are in a permanent state of diaspora. If Berger is right, potentially this puts us ahead of the curve; on the other hand (and surely I am not the only one to have noticed this) some of us thrive on this fact, but some of us are damaged by it. I think about my own brat alumni network (Ft Slocum) and I see some of us have become our parents (down to moving back to parents' region), but some of us are completely different. We still have a community (esp. via Facebook; btw I would recommend this to alumni of other posts & bases) but it is virtual. I notice our Facebook community tends to be most frequented by those brats who were adolescents when they lived on Slocum; even though now eligible for AARP, it is a virtual way to go back (without perhaps all the Sturm und Drang!).
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Wow, okay, I read this and could not stop laughing. Believe me I feel the same way sometimes. I've lived in the same place (well same state) in the US for 9 years now and I'm often planning overseas vacations I can't afford to take... And the part about not wanting to keep the same identity! until I read that I never realized how nice that was, if you wanted to change who you were it was as simple as moving, because no one knows anything about you, you can reinvent yourself.
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