Life
I was born in Columbus, Georgia. My parents were stationed at Fort Benning -- a base which may soon get a new name, from what I gather -- but I was not born in Martin Army Community Hospital on the base. It was a busy year for soldiers having babies and my pregnant mother was sent to a civilian ob-gyn for her care.
My father was forty years old when I was born, which may not sound that old to the modern ear as someone fathering a child, but it was unusual for that era. He was one year younger than my ex-husband's paternal grandmother. The ex and I graduated high school together and our birthdays are very close together.
I have family stories and very hand-wavy timeframes for the first three years of my life. I have only two clear memories from that time.
I remember sitting on my mother's lap and riding in the back of a tank at some Army Family Day. My older sister once told me that I must have been about fifteen months old, which fits with my recollection of "September in Georgia" style weather that day.
I also remember being three and walking through a house with wood floors and no furniture. Because it was empty, the place seemed HUGE and the ceiling seemed a million miles away to my little eyes. There was paper on the floor covering the typical walkways because it was new construction and the landscaping had not yet been put in, so the yard was mud.
This was the house I grew up in, the house my parents bought the summer I turned three. This memory is of the first time we all viewed the house with a real estate agent.
She married him on the condition that he promise to retire in Germany. But that isn't how it went because the US Army failed to keep its promise to my father that he would not return to Vietnam, so he dropped his retirement papers rather than do a second tour.
My mother never forgave him. I spent my entire childhood hearing her harp on how "You LIED to me!" because he failed to retire in Germany.
My father's tour of Vietnam occurred sometime during those first three years of my life. I don't know exactly when. I've never been clear on that.
I've been told that when he came home and laid down in my parents' bed on his side of the bed, I told him to "Get off my pillow." because I had been sleeping with my mother while he was away. He moved his head over to the other pillow and I told him to "Get off my mom's pillow."
I didn't know him. He was a stranger to me.
I never really felt close to him.
For most of my life, I attributed that to the fact that he was GONE during a critical time in my life. He was in Vietnam instead of there to bond with me during that early part of my life.
I heard cutesie stories about how much he adored my older sister when she was little and then the above is my one story about my father from those first three years. I spent my life feeling like he loved her but not me.
It also allowed me to make peace with some things. I spent my childhood hearing tales from when my father was in the Army and the family lived in Germany.
Other than that one memory of riding in a tank as a tot, I had no memory of my parents' glory days. I didn't remember my father as a soldier. I didn't remember Germany, though they briefly lived there one last time prior to my dad dropping his retirement papers the summer I turned three.
So I got to be a military wife and I got to live in Germany for nearly four years in my twenties. It allowed me to stop feeling like a cultural orphan, denied my heritage and cut off from forces that had shaped my parents and had shaped my life.
While living in Germany -- an ocean away from my folks -- and in therapy for the second time for having been molested by my older brother, I finally felt safe enough to remember that my father also molested me. It would be many more years before I concluded that he came back from Vietnam, just wanted to hold me on his lap and forget the war and things got weird.
His final weeks in Vietnam were spent behind enemy lines. He slept with his eyes open and his boots on. They medivacced him out of there to Walter Reed where he spent six weeks recovering before finally coming home to his family in Georgia.
When they took his socks off, the skin came with it. He also had shrapnel in his head.
I was this bubbly little ball of sunshine with blond curls. My mother called me Shirley Temple because of my age, blond curls and personality.
I think Dad had a new head injury plus PTSD from his recent second round of fighting in the front lines of a war and I think he didn't intend to hurt me. I think it just kind of happened and then at some point he healed up enough and his mind cleared, so he decided "What I'm doing here is NOT OKAY." and he stopped.
And I think when he got orders to return to Vietnam, he fought them and ultimately left the military over it rather than go back because he didn't want to hurt me again. I think he thought I was young enough when whatever happened happened that I wouldn't remember and wouldn't be scarred by it and he didn't want it to happen again under circumstances where I would be old enough to remember and be permanently screwed up by it.
I write because I am still trying to escape the long shadow of my childhood. I have yet to find my way out of the dark pall it has cast over my life, though THIS blog cast a lot of light for me on some things, so I keep returning to it, convinced -- perhaps erroneously -- that it MUST have meaning and value and goodness.
No matter how much I say that, people do not seem to hear that I have suffered and I'm covered in scars, both physically and psychologically. Like my father, they seem to see Shirley Temple and people seem to want to metaphorically do what my dad did: Hold me on their lap and pet me like a tribble to try to make their pain go away.
And some people openly hate on me, as if they are jealous of my "sunny" personality which is not whatever they think it is but is really a can do attitude. They seem to think I have not suffered. They seem to think I'm not bitter enough to have suffered, not really, not like THEY have suffered.
This is precisely why I write. Not because I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and had everything handed to me but because I didn't and yet I seem to be more okay than a lot of people and I think that okay-ness is something which can be spread because knowledge is power and I'm convinced that at least some other people could do what I've done if they knew what I know.
I'm fond of the rubric that it's better to light one small candle than to curse the dark, but I'm also aware that in a hostile world, a single and very small point of light can make you a target.
Perhaps this blog is only a source of light for me as an individual looking into my past at a father I never felt I really knew that well and not for anyone else. Regardless, it certainly makes me worry about becoming a target of hatred from racist Whites, from Natives with baggage who take issue with a (mostly) White Woman trying to sort her shit and assorted other parties.
My father was forty years old when I was born, which may not sound that old to the modern ear as someone fathering a child, but it was unusual for that era. He was one year younger than my ex-husband's paternal grandmother. The ex and I graduated high school together and our birthdays are very close together.
I have family stories and very hand-wavy timeframes for the first three years of my life. I have only two clear memories from that time.
I remember sitting on my mother's lap and riding in the back of a tank at some Army Family Day. My older sister once told me that I must have been about fifteen months old, which fits with my recollection of "September in Georgia" style weather that day.
I also remember being three and walking through a house with wood floors and no furniture. Because it was empty, the place seemed HUGE and the ceiling seemed a million miles away to my little eyes. There was paper on the floor covering the typical walkways because it was new construction and the landscaping had not yet been put in, so the yard was mud.
This was the house I grew up in, the house my parents bought the summer I turned three. This memory is of the first time we all viewed the house with a real estate agent.
I came here to die with you.My father had spent 26 1/2 years in the Army and had planned to retire in Germany, not Georgia. When he met my German mother and asked her out, she told him "Go date someone else. I'm not living in America."
Or to live with you.
Dying ain't so hard for men like you and me. It's living that's hard when all you've ever cared about's been butchered or raped.
-- Josey Wales
She married him on the condition that he promise to retire in Germany. But that isn't how it went because the US Army failed to keep its promise to my father that he would not return to Vietnam, so he dropped his retirement papers rather than do a second tour.
My mother never forgave him. I spent my entire childhood hearing her harp on how "You LIED to me!" because he failed to retire in Germany.
My father's tour of Vietnam occurred sometime during those first three years of my life. I don't know exactly when. I've never been clear on that.
I've been told that when he came home and laid down in my parents' bed on his side of the bed, I told him to "Get off my pillow." because I had been sleeping with my mother while he was away. He moved his head over to the other pillow and I told him to "Get off my mom's pillow."
I didn't know him. He was a stranger to me.
I never really felt close to him.
For most of my life, I attributed that to the fact that he was GONE during a critical time in my life. He was in Vietnam instead of there to bond with me during that early part of my life.
I heard cutesie stories about how much he adored my older sister when she was little and then the above is my one story about my father from those first three years. I spent my life feeling like he loved her but not me.
Light up the darkness
It also allowed me to make peace with some things. I spent my childhood hearing tales from when my father was in the Army and the family lived in Germany.
Other than that one memory of riding in a tank as a tot, I had no memory of my parents' glory days. I didn't remember my father as a soldier. I didn't remember Germany, though they briefly lived there one last time prior to my dad dropping his retirement papers the summer I turned three.
So I got to be a military wife and I got to live in Germany for nearly four years in my twenties. It allowed me to stop feeling like a cultural orphan, denied my heritage and cut off from forces that had shaped my parents and had shaped my life.
While living in Germany -- an ocean away from my folks -- and in therapy for the second time for having been molested by my older brother, I finally felt safe enough to remember that my father also molested me. It would be many more years before I concluded that he came back from Vietnam, just wanted to hold me on his lap and forget the war and things got weird.
The past is never dead. It's not even past.It would be more years still, with my initial attempts to write THIS blog, before I concluded that my father broke his promise to my mother for my sake. That he did, in fact, love me. Very, very much.
-- William Faulkner. Requiem for a Nun
His final weeks in Vietnam were spent behind enemy lines. He slept with his eyes open and his boots on. They medivacced him out of there to Walter Reed where he spent six weeks recovering before finally coming home to his family in Georgia.
When they took his socks off, the skin came with it. He also had shrapnel in his head.
I was this bubbly little ball of sunshine with blond curls. My mother called me Shirley Temple because of my age, blond curls and personality.
I think Dad had a new head injury plus PTSD from his recent second round of fighting in the front lines of a war and I think he didn't intend to hurt me. I think it just kind of happened and then at some point he healed up enough and his mind cleared, so he decided "What I'm doing here is NOT OKAY." and he stopped.
And I think when he got orders to return to Vietnam, he fought them and ultimately left the military over it rather than go back because he didn't want to hurt me again. I think he thought I was young enough when whatever happened happened that I wouldn't remember and wouldn't be scarred by it and he didn't want it to happen again under circumstances where I would be old enough to remember and be permanently screwed up by it.
Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.My blogs see very little traffic and very little money. I write them at least as much for me as for other people. I'm probably my single biggest "user." It matters little to me if other people read them.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I write because I am still trying to escape the long shadow of my childhood. I have yet to find my way out of the dark pall it has cast over my life, though THIS blog cast a lot of light for me on some things, so I keep returning to it, convinced -- perhaps erroneously -- that it MUST have meaning and value and goodness.
We fight over an offence we did not give against those who were not alive to be offended.Though I may be writing primarily for me, other people can and do read my writing. Whether Native or Caucasian or some other category, I feel like other people bring their baggage to this blog and wish to continue some "war" that lives on in their hearts and minds and wish to make it my problem though I don't even know them and am in no way somehow responsible for whatever they have suffered.
-- Kingdom of Heaven
Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.I'm quite open about the ugly details of my life. I was molested as a child by both my brother and father. I have a genetic disorder classified as a Dread Disease and one of my two children has the same thing. I spent years homeless.
-- Helen Keller
No matter how much I say that, people do not seem to hear that I have suffered and I'm covered in scars, both physically and psychologically. Like my father, they seem to see Shirley Temple and people seem to want to metaphorically do what my dad did: Hold me on their lap and pet me like a tribble to try to make their pain go away.
And some people openly hate on me, as if they are jealous of my "sunny" personality which is not whatever they think it is but is really a can do attitude. They seem to think I have not suffered. They seem to think I'm not bitter enough to have suffered, not really, not like THEY have suffered.
Nothing takes the past away like the future.
Nothing makes the darkness go like the light.
This is precisely why I write. Not because I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and had everything handed to me but because I didn't and yet I seem to be more okay than a lot of people and I think that okay-ness is something which can be spread because knowledge is power and I'm convinced that at least some other people could do what I've done if they knew what I know.
I ain't promising you nothing extra. I'm just giving you life and you're giving me life. And I'm saying that men can live together without butchering one another.
I'm fond of the rubric that it's better to light one small candle than to curse the dark, but I'm also aware that in a hostile world, a single and very small point of light can make you a target.
Perhaps this blog is only a source of light for me as an individual looking into my past at a father I never felt I really knew that well and not for anyone else. Regardless, it certainly makes me worry about becoming a target of hatred from racist Whites, from Natives with baggage who take issue with a (mostly) White Woman trying to sort her shit and assorted other parties.