What's Your Story?
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Mary and I were among the thousands of young Americans -and Canadians and Brits whose parents served in their nation's military forces after World War II, and who lived in foreign countries.
She and I were Cold War Brats beginning in the 8th grade in 1948, in post-war Wiesbaden, Germany. For us for most Brats it was an incredibly rich experience, even while the Germans among whom we lived still suffered from the recent war's aftermath.
We were freshmen together, and sophomores. Then, in 1951, our family shipped out to the U.S. Air Force base in Burtonwood, England, and that was the last I heard of Mary.
Until last year when an unexpected e-mail arrived. I found it a bit weird that I had just placed on my scanner an old snapshot from those days and in it was a picture of Mary and others from our freshman year.
We got together in June, after nearly half a century. Misterman, I can tell you it was some fun. And the e-mails continue. Oh yes, I still have my yearbooks and the portraits below were made in our sophomore year, in 1951.
But recently a need for a sense of belonging to a "place" began to assert itself and I found myself at almost 65 years of age looking for something that would tie my life up in a neat package and that would say "here is where you belong."
I began my nomadic life at the age of six months, and early pictures show a cute little girl doing all those things parents record of their first child. I'm lucky to have those pictures -- my brother and sister who came along later received much shorter shrift in the photo department.
However, it turns out the pictures are all I have to prove that I didn't arrive fully grown on this earth.
Favorite things of my childhood -- a toy airplane, a set of blocks, an army truck, dolls, a quaint box with tiny wooden tea cups inside, Lincoln logs, tinker-toys, art projects, a beautiful blue pinafore, books, letters from grandparents, shells from the beach -- things that would have given me a tie to my past were all gone.
Successive moves from Rockford to St. Louis to Wichita Falls to Miami Beach to Fort Worth to Shreveport and back to Rockford at the end of World War II depleted my store of memorabilia. The battle cry as we military dependents packed to move was always "Remember the weight limit!"
Thus, beloved objects were jettisoned along the way like excess cargo tossed off a sinking ship.
When I was in eighth grade we moved to Germany, and left behind were yearbooks, scrapbooks, roller skates, art supplies, and friends in favor of a three-year supply of clothing. While "remember the weight limit" did not necessarily pertain to good friends I learned to end relationships and move on.
I have memories of a few elementary school friends -- Beverly McCormick, Patricia Urich, John Patterson Carver, a girl named Ann, and Guy Mitchell (Guy was memorable for wetting his pants in fifth grade, and I'm probably known for throwing up strawberry soda), but no one stuck in my psyche as firmly as Suzanne Peterson. She became a friend in sixth grade and is someone with whom I still have a solid friendship.
As I moved through high school and college the casual ending of friendships became the norm as stuff became less important. I had learned well how to say good-bye to friends and never look back.
That is the source of my deepest regret and one I've since tried to rectify through email, letter writing, phone calls and visits with old and dear friends from high school and college.
Both he and his wife's families date back generations in the area, and the local cemeteries are filled with their cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and great-grandparents. They know virtually everyone in their township and everyone knows who they are.
It is this knowledge of a personal history and a sense of belonging to an area that I have missed most acutely in my own life.
I made a plaque years ago for a dear friend -- also a service brat. Like "Chicken Little," a bird lies on its back, its feet extended heavenward. It is valiantly trying to hold up the falling sky.
The inscription reads: "One does what one can."
So my immediate family has been in Colorado since 1966. My girls spent their school years here; they went to college here; they were married here; their children were born here and they both now work here.
I recently accepted that I had done what I could: I settled down. I gave my children roots. I gave my children a sense of belonging to a place. And in so doing, I realized I had accomplished it for myself as well.
Copyright © 2000 Mary Ferree/Log Cabin Chronicles/07.00 |
When I was asked to write about growing up as an Air Force brat, I couldn't for the life of me think of one thing that differentiated my childhood from the childhood of anyone else I know.
I went to Canada recently to visit a now-married friend from the American School in Wiesbaden, Germany, and I was struck by how thoroughly right it is that he is where he is now.