Cultural Amnesia
Recently,
scientists have found that amnesiacs have difficulty imagining the future.
I read this in the thought-provoking “Findings”
feature of a Harper’s Magazine (my
favorite magazine in all the world), which every month publishes a kind of collage
of research findings of all sorts to top off the issue.
I don’t know what scientists take away from
this finding. Nor does it really matter
to me for the purposes of this blog. What interests me is the way that finding
resonated for me as a military brat.
Amnesiacs can’t recall the past, so they can’t
imagine the future. I'm supposing this means that
past lived experience provides a kind of mental scaffolding on which we build
our projections of the future. If the
“scaffolding” is missing, as in the case of amnesiacs, maybe it is not possible
to map out a tentative future because there is in effect no mental record of a
map of the past.
An amnesiac, it
follows, would have to live very much in the moment. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Isn’t that something we brats learned to do,
to survive?
Now of course I am not saying that military brats can’t
mentally recall the past we have lived. But
the finding does raise an interesting question concerning the effects of our
peripatetic childhoods. What kind of mental
“scaffolding” of past lived experience are we likely to have? What does the typical scaffolding of a childhood spent in the military culture look like? Wouldn’t it be a bit of a
structural oddity, thrown together from an amalgam of found objects, mismatched
parts, and pieced-together bits? There would be no overall design, no solid, consistent structure. While our hodge-podge scaffolding might not
collapse, it wouldn’t exactly inspire confidence as the underlying support for
building a vision of the future, either.
It is such a thrown-together, chaotic affair, it doesn’t suggest a
convincing blueprint for what the next phase of building should look like.
In other words, I’m wondering if the
many moves experienced by military brats growing up make for such a crazy quilt
of lived experiences that, on some level, we have unusual difficulty figuring
out our long term life possibilities and planning accordingly.
I noticed this among the brats I
interviewed for my book, who seemed to live life in a rather reactive mode,
responding to events rather than planning a path forward. I already put this idea out there, in the
“Legacies” chapter (see pages 351-354).
There I tied it to what I call a distorted relationship to time. I refer you to it, because it does have a lot
to do with this blog subject, but the point is that it all comes down to the
same thing.
Whether we call the problem a flawed
perception of time or an incoherent set of lived experiences, it can be traced
back to moving many times at a young age.
This would not apply to a civilian family that is unsettled early on but then
stays tied to one place after that. It
applies to families in which children grow up with the understanding that no
place is forever and there will always be
another move. A childhood set against a backdrop of
transience may be the key factor
in a compromised ability later on to project the future for ourselves.
Long term planning. It’s challenging for everyone, but I suspect
it comes more naturally to rooted civilians.
I say this based on a great many interviews and conversations with
brats, and on examining my own life. We
brats are good for planning a couple of years out, but after that it gets
really tough. If you are a brat who
figured out at a young age that you wanted to follow a path through medical
school, or law school, or graduate school of any kind—and actually stuck with
it--stop and give yourself a big pat on the back. There are a whole lot of us out here who just
couldn’t get our thoughts around so long a timeline.
One of the manifestations of cultural
amnesia is a kind of passivity. I
recall, for example, the words of an Air Force general’s daughter I interviewed
for my book. She accepted each childhood
move as it came, but was never one to go out and seize her opportunities. “I figured it would all be decided for me, so
I didn’t have to make a decision. I had
a tendency to wait and be overcome by events.
And I know I have a pattern of that now.”
Wait
and be overcome by events.
Isn’t
that what amnesiacs do?
WOW. I had to call my husband while I was reading this. I think you are dead on about this.
My husband and I have said we feel we react to the emotion of the moment. As our personalities are different yet we are very much the same on this.
I think you are right about the fragments of childhood memories. We don't have the cues of most who can go back and visit where they lived. Who can be stimulated by people and places they knew so well all their lives. I have said we have the lost childhood. Our children have met so few people that knew us as kids. I would think...was it real? Of course it was but I was having trouble validating it.
We have bits and pieces here and there and don't have the same affect of many who were raised in the US. Some will talk of TV shows and things that I never knew as we were overseas for years at a time. Yet, if we visit where we lived oversees we didn't stay there terribly long--like a childhood in one place--and cannot identify totally with them. Just the bits and pieces.
We identify with the passivity you talk about.
Mary, I feel so much that I understand myself and husband by reading your blog. I think that is a good thing.
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Thanks. I absolutely believe that the more we understand about our culture of origin and its effects on us, the better off we are.
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It is such a gift to have someone as insightful and eloquent as Mary Wertsch to decode our quirky brat DNA and explain ourselves to ourselves. Thank you, Mary!
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Dear Sarah...Your book was amazing to. I had forgotten so much about Okinawa until I read your book.
It was so amazing to me that our families were in Okinawa at the same time. My brother was like you--a college student that came over to see us briefly each year.
I wrote you a letter through your publisher too.
Candyce
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Boy did you ever hit home with that one! I'm going to see my younger brother this Father's Day and we have talked about a little trip down memory lane in Beaufort, South Carolina. I know now we will have to go and see some ghosts. Thanx. Semper Fi
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That pretty much describes me. I'm really good in spurts, but lose interest and focus after a couple of years. Then, off to my next challenge (assignment, duty station, base..etc, it's inbred)
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I have your book on my desk as my Bible of All Things "Brat." I also have a book about my brat days, published by PublishAmerica in 2002. It came about after I met Dr. Tom Drysdale at the Overseas Brats Homecoming at DFW in 1999, when he noted that I was obviously one of the "older" brats who deployed overseas with the US Occupation forces in 1946. At the age of 8, I received my very own orders from The War Department, and thus began my journey. Dr. Drysdale suggested I write about my experiences for the AOSHS Archives and I did. After he received my manuscript, he sent an email, saying "This needs to be published." I was not aware of Brightwell Publications at the time, but as I had already published a novel with this same publisher, I sent Once a Brat off to them.
I will be selling copies of my book at the Friday night gift shop event at the DFW Sheraton's Overseas Brats Homecoming, Aug. 3-5 of this year. I have met Joe Condrill and Marc Curtis over the years and hope to meet you one day. Thank you for the book that touched my life so deeply, and that of many others, as well.
Best,
Marilyn Celeste Morris
I was delighted to see your site and hope to participate often.
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I just read this thread and I agree. I married a home town boy in Lawton OK (Fort Sill) where I was able to attend high school all three years! A rare opportunity for me. I yearned for stability; we would live all the rest of our lives in that one place.
Wrong! His job took him to several different cities until we divorced some 10 years later. I called upon my background of packing and moving, unpacking and settling in, only to do it all over again in a few years. I certainly had no other plans for my future. I was supposed to be a wife and mother, maybe teach school a while, but other than that, my future looked only at those goals, which I now understand were typical for us brats.
I am now devoting my time as a retired secretary to writing novels, along with my book, Once a Brat, and another book about my struggles with lupus. I wanted to write as a child, but it was somewhat of a daydream I pushed down as just a daydream, not a goal. Since reading about brats in general, I recognize how much I fit in the mold, yet I believe our flexibility enables us to break out of the mold, too, when we realize our daydreams can really come true.
I've been in this house now for 3 years -- and I'm ready to move again. I doubt this urge to pack up and move, to settle in and do it all again, will ever leave me.
Marilyn Celeste Morris
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Spot on observations, Mary, spot on !
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Hi, Mary, I think there's a lot to your assessment here. Interesting that military brats, who can be seen as such overachievers, can also be so passive.
Erica Smith
W&M 2002
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This really rang true to me. Childhood memories have catalysts that make one remember them. Such as running into an old friend or being in a familiar place. I rarely find myself in either situation. Which can make one feel amnesiac. The holes I cannot seem to fill in.
When my kids were young I wanted them to know more about us but could find very little to make the ties. Our mothers both died before our children were born. They would have been the one source for us. Our fathers remember but not like a mom would.
My brother says I am his memory, as he remembers less than I do. Being younger I remember so much about him and he enjoys that. So I can fill the gap in some ways for him.
It's funny how a little cue will come along to make one remember--yes, they do come to brats, just much less often.
A high school friend of ours has a daughter graduating from high school. She sent us her announcement. As I held it I had memories flooding back.
When we graduated I recieved many such announcements in the mail. I went to three different high schools. So I got some from friends of the other two schools. I also got several from friends from the other two schools that, like me, had moved. I still have them tucked away.
When my own children graduated they did not get any such announcements in the mail. Their friends had been with them the years they went to school. I hadn't thought about that until I got this one in the mail.
Somehow seeing it was chaotic and disjointed brings some sense of stability to it. It makes me understand myself.
Mary, I enjoyed your thoughts on this very much.
Candyce
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All I can say is Wow! I have long believed that those of us whose lives were so greatly influenced by being Brats had a lot in common. I see so much of me in what I have read in such a little amount of time. When I meet a fellow Brat, we a common bond that is unknown to most. I went to 16 different schools before graduating from high school. I went to 3 different kindergardens in Germany. I have vivid memories of the rituals and regulations that ruled our lives. I still have "dogtags" that my mother wore. Don't know what happened to mine--probably lost in a move somewhere. The idea of Hometown is a big one. I trace time in my childhood by where we were stationed.
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Another great column, Mary.... Consider also that, in some ways, perhaps, milbrats' chaotic childhoods result in more flexible mental structures which stay open, adapt, adjust, and move through pain and sudden or unwanted or even gradual change more hopefully than some others' more rigid mental structures, which were perhaps shaped by a one-town childhood to fit well only in specific, narrower environments...? And isn't living primarily in the present moment/NOW a worthy and noble spiritual goal, one we milbrats are uniquely more suited to than planning, by our upbringing? After all, everythng good and worthwhile happens NOW, not in the past or the future, where all suffering also lies (we can always get through the challenges of the moment, it's regretting the past and dreading the future that burden us most if we let it.... As a milbrat, I do feel my "differences" but all-in-all, they're good differences I admire in myself and others who share them....
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Seem to have missed this entry when it was first posted, but caught it this morning. I think this is so true. I agree wtih Nancy above that there are very good things that have developed from being a brat. I am resilient, flexible and ambitious. But I am horrible at planning ahead. Thsi really struck a chord. I am one that had a goal early on to exceed academically and that saw me through a PhD, but in hindsight that was as much someone else's goal as my own. I was expected to excel...didn't really matter in what. But if I was going to do it, I had to do it better than anyone. But here I am well educated, great job, great house. But seeing past next year is nearly impossible. The thought of planning for retirement seems like such a weird concept...some abstract thing. I'm lousy at gardening, home upkeep. I just don't think that I get the idea that I won't just leave it all behind soon (even though it is decidedly un-military form now). And relationships? What's that? I know all these things...and this blog has helped to grasp them a bit better. But really hard to change them.
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OK, it's official, this site is my salvation. Again, I thought there was something so wrong with me. That I lacked focus...I've been saying that about myself since my last move. My husband moved out and I was left with a two year task of taking care of...well...everything. Dove right in, made it all happen, found the new place to live by the water, moved in here and....nothing. It took a few months ''till I had the eureka moment...I forgotten to make any plans for after I'd moved. Felt like an idiot. How could anyone do that?
Knowing this makes it easier...well, at least it gives me a place to start.
Like the rest of you I've lived my life like I play chess....always waiting to see what's going on so I can react in the proper way and taking the criticism from pretty much everyone because of it even though it's something I do instinctively.
The life of a chameleon. As Nancy said, the ability to cope, adapt, live in the moment, move forward and all those other skills we were granted by our brat years are a blessing but it's nice to have some insight into our many quirks as well.
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Hi Mary,
Hope the book is coming along. I have been thinking a lot about this lately. As a brat, I find it is ingrained and innate to try to fit in where-ever I go, even though I never fit in anywhere. This causes problems in that if you are so busy trying to fit in, perhaps you are not always being discerning enough about character and consequence. It is something I really have to think about on a conscious level, as the impulse is to try to blend into the woodwork. I have moved 23 times. It has been a real task to try to create a stable sense of self and identity; I am still working on it and it will probably be a life long task. On the plus side, I do have an affinity for internationals here in the states. It is much harder for me to understand my cousins from the south than it is a person visiting from England or Japan. I try to be open minded and kind, but sometimes you simply have to learn to say no to things, and for me that has been hard. Perpetual adolescence I guess.
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Very nice blog.
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