Saturday, December 13, 2014

A Beginning...





 My life moves to the sound of cadence. As a child, driving from one duty station to another, my father entertained us with "Jody" songs. He also taught us, much to my gently raised mother's chagrin, a song about paratroopers with the refrain "Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die."  Mother would roll her eyes, daddy would sing at the top of his lungs and my brothers and I would drift off to sleep. Dad was driving us to the next duty station, all was right with the world.  When I was older, my workout music was a cassette of Airborne Rangers running to cadence. Even now, as a middle aged mother of two, I find myself listening to cadence while I do house work and "Blood On the Risers" is on all of my playlists.

I'm an Army Brat. I don't remember a time when the Army was not a part of my life. My earliest memories are of  the sound of "Taps" wafting into my window as after my father tucked me in and closed the door. That sound, and the sound of my father's laughter as he and my mother settled in for the night has always made me feel secure. 

I'm an Army Brat and there are some things I will never understand. Simple things like how it feels to live in the same house, on the same street for your entire childhood. Sometimes I think about the people who grow up not making a PCS every two or three years and I wonder what that would feel like. Then I consider that those people might never get the chance to deep sea dive in the Marianas Trench, explore caves on Guam where the Japanese hid munitions during World War II, or have any of the experiences I share with a million other Brats and I wonder how they ever develop a sense of the world.

I am an Army Brat. My dress up toy of choice was an old helmet liner that my dad gave me. Just the liner, the I couldn't hold the whole helmet up. My first "job" was unlacing a pair of combat boots when my dad came home at night. I can spit shine a pair of boots that would make the toughest SFC weep with pride, and we won't even talk about my skills with a can of Brasso and an old diaper.

Lately, I am hearing that there are some people who think that we Brats are in need of outside intervention to make us feel "accepted" by our civilian peers. I take issue with that if anyone needs the intervention it would the public.

I am an Army Brat. I didn't choose to become Army Strong. I grew up Army Strong. My "hometown" is countless military installations. It doesn't matter the location, just stepping onto the soil of a base, post, fort makes me feel "at home".  I cant retire from my Bratdom, it defines me.

So I've begun to scribble a few lines here. Read them if you will but I offer one caveat. This is MY Brat life, I don't pretend that I speak for all my peers. We're like snowflakes, none of us are quite the same.



4 comments:

  1. I love it, and I can't wait to read more. I may be an Air Force brat, but we share the same ancestors. Brat on, brat strong

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  2. Love this. Guess Gory Gory was a BRAT thing! My brother and I sang that too!

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  3. I think "Gory, Gory" is one of those songs we all sang. lol

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